Remember when shopping for gifts for our kids was easy?  

When our little ones were little ones, a mere trip to a toy store would furnish us with a cornucopia of playtime options.  You could walk into one of these little plastic joy havens totally stumped on what to buy, but within moments you’d be tempted by labyrinthine shelves lined with Super Soakers, Gameboys, Power Rangers, Barbies, Bop Its, and Beanie Babies.

But then one day buying gifts got harder. 

Right around the time our kids hit 4th or 5th grade, it became a bit trickier finding the perfect gift.  We started settling for not even a perfect gift, but simply a gift that might be used for more than a couple days before being discarded and forgotten in the toy closet mausoleum.

We then had to figure out what it was our kids actually wanted.  And now, today, we still wonder, what do they want?

A USA Today article came out earlier this week, titled unfortunately “It may be awkward, but Gen Z, millennials want money this holiday.” In the article, close to 50% of all gift receivers just want cash, money they can spend however they want.  

But not the gift givers.  For the gift giver there’s something selfishly fulfilling in seeing a physical present taken on a journey from shelf to bag, from wrapped to unwrapped, from giver to receiver.  Something gets lost when we simply buy a gift certificate, top up some Roblox or toss some cash in an envelope.  We feel cheap when we give money.

So instead, we walk warily into our children’s adolescence, compiling an inconsistent track record for finding the right gift.  

My track record was impressively blemished.  I had a bit of success one year with the City Experience Gift Card where we spent out Winter Holiday bouncing around a bunch of sites in Singapore - scootering, lugeing, ice skating, bike riding, science museuming and sitting in a store with our feet in an aquarium as thousands of fish nibbled our feet (an odd sensation one never has to have repeated).

But most of my attempts were ultimate fails, lowlighted by the time I bought my high school sprinter child some camouflage mid-knee spandex workout gear.  Within seconds of opening the box, their reaction clearly showed I’d erred.  Badly.  Note to self - don’t buy clothes for children when they’re experimenting with their identity, especially clothes that come across as judgey, awkward and clueless.

Today, I’m no less flummoxed when trying to figure out what to get.  What to give.

What even is a “perfect gift.”  One definition might be…”it provides you with the best way to express your love and it meets the needs of the one who is receiving the gift.”

If that’s the definition, then I can look back at my favorite gifts.  Let’s call them the Fab Five:

• The high school mix tape that got replayed until the magnetic tape snapped
• The 21st birthday trip to Chuck E Cheese
• The card and videos last year that listed the 52 reasons why my loved ones put up with me
• The karaoke room screeching of “That’s What Makes You Beautiful” with my teenage offspring
• The Nerf football that was endlessly thrown around the culdesac until my dog decided it could serve a higher (more edible) calling 

I also started thinking about “gifts” like easy to access health insurance; lunchtime conversations that made me go “hmm”; friend-guided tours through Sofia’s city streets; and the financial hiccup in university that forced me to get my priorities straight, find a few part time jobs and finally learn how to be a student.  But although those experiences retroactively satisfied the criteria of fulfilling a need, they weren’t exactly an expression of love.  I doubt the protectors of socialized medicine have a hidden speck of affection for me.  

So what’re the things all my Fab Five had in common?  

They were shared experiences.  They provided for heightened emotions, heightened sensations.  And they were able to be replayed, revisited over and over (well…except for the mixed tape…it died).

So for you, if you’re heading into a gift-conceiving stretch, and your receivers have graduated from the toy phase of their existence, what are some things to consider?

First, what is your lifetime Fab Five?  Maybe consider sharing that list with the ones you love.  They’ll get to know you a bit better, and if in the oft-chance their gift made the final cut, you’ve got yourself an unintentional reciprocated re-gift.

Second, can you possibly find, create, build, share something that could one day make someone else’s final list.

And third, if you have to resort to the USA Today-sanctioned money gift, make that cash contribution conditional.  Require the receiver to bring you along for the purchase so you can still satisfy a little giver sensory fulfillment.

But whatever you do, make one solemn oath.  Never, ever buy camouflage workout gear.