Reply to Until what age did you give birthday gifts to nieces and nephews?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We have always been generous with one nice/goddaughter. When turned 18. I gave her the usual cash, but not as much. She did the usual non heartfelt thank you and i could tell she was surprised that instead of $100, she got $50.  Now that she is turning 19, she hinted about how aunt lala (me) knows what to get her for her birthday. I wasn't planning on getting her anything. How would you handle the inevitable "where is my present?" [/quote]

Carolyn Hax actually answered this last week with what I thought was a nice suggestion (although perhaps too late for your situation).  She suggested making the last gift larger (if possible) and including a note in the card that said it was the last one now that she is an adult.  She had an elegant way of phrasing it that escapes me at the moment, but something on the lines of being so proud of the way niece has grown, excited to know her as an adult, etc etc.

In my mom's family there were enough kids that the adults set up a pollyanna system long ago wherein each adult was assigned to buy a gift for one kid for birthday and Christmas (or whatever ratio was necessary to make that work depending on how many kids and adults were in the picture at a given time).  You stopped receiving gifts the year you graduated college, which the kids knew so there were no surprises (well, I didn't as I was the oldest and they made the rules as they went along, but I didn't care).  Once there were enough adult cousins we set up a white elephant among ourselves for Christmas day.  
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