At church today, I had an interesting conversation with a young mother and <a href="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Sara.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-772" title="Sara" src="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Sara-156x300.jpg" alt="" width="156" height="300" /></a>father, whose baby daughter is 14 months old. Last Christmas, at two months old, their little girl was too young to know what was happening.  This year, we all agreed, Christmas should be a delight for the three of them.

Then this mother told me that they plan to follow this advice: the Baby Jesus received three gifts, therefore, each Christmas, they plan to give each of their children three gifts.

What a wonderful idea!

When our children were small, deciding on a number of gifts for each child proved to be something of a dilemma for us. Since we often bought their gifts at garage sales, and therefore spent little money on them, we tended to over-buy.  After all we might spend only $20 on one child, and get 10 gifts for them to open.

The two or three years that we did that, opening gifts on Christmas became a long, laborious process.  By the time the last gift was opened, everyone in the family had lost interest and was thoroughly bored.

And our children were somewhat overwhelmed by the numbers of new things. They couldn't seem to decide what to play with first. Which lead to quarrels and irritable behavior.

We soon learned to scale back on the number of gifts.  I wish we had learned this three-gift idea when our children were small.