Reply to How do I get my family to stop sending unwanted gifts?

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[quote=Anonymous]From my experience, there's not much you can do.  You can keep repeating yourself every year and hopefully after a decade or so, it will eventually "start" to sink in.  That's what we've done.  My husband has said it nicely, not so nicely, and he has also said it very angrily - to his own parents.  I also stopped sending thank you cards for the gifts, because I think it just kept it going.  We thank them when they gift us, and leave it at that, and then donate if we don't need it.

The pandemic was the only thing that really scaled down the gifts - this year my in-laws only gave one huge gift to each of our children, and then maybe 10 or so smaller gifts for each of them, and actually finally skipped presents for us adults.  I think it's just like one of my MIL's hobbies to go shopping for things and also fills some emotional need for her because she grew up with crappy Christmases envying other children who received gifts.  So to take that away from her, I realized it is like asking her to give up one of her greatest and most enjoyed hobbies, and also one of her dearest coping mechanisms for dealing with the trauma from her past.[/quote]

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