What a Nice, Um, Bundle of Leaves? How to Respond When a Kid Makes You a Gift and You Don’t Know What It Is

Plus: a parent on sharp knives; a nonprofit leader on charity ratings; the Trader Joe’s parking lot will destroy you; immigrant found family; OOO messages during miscarriage; a cute kid.

‘Tis the season to receive homemade gifts from children! I looooove homemade gifts from children, but let’s be real: it’s not always clear what they *are.* A beautiful colorful drawing of… something. A gorgeous hand-crafted… thing that involves (semi) air-hardened clay and a stick and some beads. A note that says… well, the word “love” is in there, as is your name, so that’s nice.

How to respond when you receive such a treasure? It’s so lovely and sweet! But it’s also kind of awkward. The child gazes up at you, wide-eyed, loving, eager for your reaction. And somehow “Wow!... Um, what is it?” doesn’t feel like the ideal response.

I’m here for you, Aunties. You don’t need to reveal your ignorance, you just need to be a bit strategic. Here’s what you do.¹

Lead with enthusiasm. Just like anytime anyone gives you a gift, your job is to express that you love it. This goes doubly for gifts that were selected or created for you by children. But you don’t have to lie. Notice whatever genuinely strikes you as pleasant about the thing and pour on the warm, effusive, specific encouragement.

• “Is this for me?? Oh my gosh, thank you so much!”

• “I love all the bright colors/feathers/that you wrote my name/how you folded the envelope!”

• “It’s so beautiful! I can tell you worked so hard on it!”

I thought these might be offerings to the fairies but it turned out they were tacos.

Ask the kid to tell you about it. This is your big move. This is how you’re going to collect intelligence without betraying that you have no idea what you’re holding in your hands.

• “Can you tell me about your idea? What’s happening in this picture?”

• “How did you decide to make it?”

• “Why did you decide to put this part here?”

As the kid explains their process, they will usually reveal their artistic vision. Indeed, half the time “tell me about this” will lead to a guided tour. The kid will say something like: “This is you, and this is your laminating machine,² and here’s me and here’s mom and here’s my brother and this is a T-Rex eating an airplane.” But even if they don’t talk you through every part, you’ll probably be able to pick up enough context clues to figure it out.

If the kid ever visits your home, display their work. You don’t need to leave it up forever, but putting kids’ work on the refrigerator or windowsill is a lovely affirmation that they matter and you genuinely like what they made. There’s a kid in my life whose older sister is an avid artist and crafter, and when he was younger he sort of ceded the territory of creative making to her. When this kid did eventually get into drawing, he was truly excited to see his work on our fridge. I think it was a legitimizing moment for him – an affirmation that he can make cool art just like his sister does.

Receiving hard-to-identify gifts from children turns out to be a great opportunity to encourage their creativity. Indeed, kids’ projects may be hard to identify precisely because they haven’t yet been socialized to do things the way everyone else does. Kids’ natural divergent thinking is something we Aunties can and should encourage – during the holidays and all year around.

From the Mail Bag

Mr. Rogers was an Auntie of the highest caliber. Mr. McFeely (pictured) delivered his mail. I'm not sure how widespread the beloved children's TV show Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood was outside the United States, so if you're not familiar, drop everything and watch the documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor right away! It is beautiful. I watched it for the first time on an airplane and wept openly.

Two reader letters today! First, a parent responds to my recent post on handing a small child a big sharp knife and teaching them to use it. Zena emailed me:

My nervous system is wired for different levels of risk tolerance, which is partly a reflection of my upbringing and inherited intergenerational traumas. I tend to have a lower threshold for activation when our kids are doing certain 'risky' activities, even if on a rational level I know they're safe – and even if I've read the research on the developmental benefits of letting kids take risk in early childhood.

Part of my learning journey as a parent is figuring out how to increase that window of tolerance, as well as knowing when I need to tap out and let a more risk-comfortable parent or other trusted adult (like an Auntie!) take the lead. It necessitates self-attunement and learning my embodied and emotional cues to figure out when I'm getting pushed out of that window of tolerance, as well as practices for staying present and grounded/knowing when it's time to tap in another adult.

I love Zena’s acknowledgment here of how our inherited baggage can affect the risks we’re willing to take with kids. Heck, even just our personalities affect this, and I think it’s an important caregiver skill to recognize what does and doesn’t work for us, and embrace it.

That said, I love the idea that parents don’t necessarily have to retreat into a defensive position when they personally don’t feel up to something. Instead, this is a key scenario where Aunties can tap in. I think this is what we mean when we say “it takes a village” – it’s genuinely about letting different people with different strengths fulfill different roles. ❤️

Second letter! In a recent Auntie Bulletin post about white elephant gift exchanges and other alternatives to traditional holiday gift-giving, I suggested giving gifts to a stranger in need, specifically shouting out Heifer International, Toys for Tots, and Prison Fellowship Angel Tree. I know some people who worry, when they give to charity, that their donation might not make it to those in need, so in the original post I included ratings from an organization called Charity Navigator, which purports to rate nonprofits’ quality and reliability. This prompted comments from Auntie Bulletin readers who have a much fuller picture of the pros and cons of orgs like Charity Navigator. Here’s reader Christopher with some much-needed perspective:

Charity Navigator and other similar systems are flawed because they only look at very narrow measurements of very few things and they don't consider the context or the needs of the specific community that any given charity works in. There's a good explanation of the issues here.

The other thing that I need to point out is that the emphasis on low overhead in charities is at odds with what you write about "trading, sharing, collaborating, paying attention to each other, and enjoying one another’s company, which are among the most important life skills we’re going to need for the messed-up future we’re facing.”

Charity overheads are mostly three things: 1) stuff that charities need to spend money on to prove that they are complying with laws or expectations — like audits, program evaluations, impact reports, and providing information to Charity Navigator and funders; 2) stuff that is absolutely necessary to help people like computers, electricity, and working toilets; and 3) people. The people who work in nonprofits and who provide programs, and who do the work of raising money to pay for those programs, and who make sure that 1 and 2 above happen are all overhead. Charities that report no or low overhead are either entirely volunteer-run — cool! but these are tiny charities that aren't usually showing up on lists like Charity Navigator — or are using accounting rules to hide overhead costs (like allocating a janitor's wages to a program or having a separate donor pay for all overhead costs). People who depend on charities deserve services that are safe, clean, and well-run, and people who work in charities deserve to be paid reasonably for their labour.

The best way to pick a charity to donate to is to pick a cause that is important to you and give to a charity working on that cause that is local and known to you or those you trust. Or if you want to give directly to someone who needs help without any of the money being used for audits, or plumbing, or paying wages, then mutual aid organizations are the way to go.

I'm 100% with Christopher that charities need to be well-funded and that nonprofit employees should be compensated well for their labor — which is unfortunately not the case in most organizations. Far be it from The Auntie Bulletin to make things worse.

In response to Christopher’s very helpful comment, I took down the Charity Navigator ratings from the post, which won’t affect the email that subscribers received, but will show up for readers who access the post in the future. Many thanks to Christopher and others who commented on this!

Three Recommended Reads

One. I Am A Trader Joe’s Parking Lot and I Am Here to Destroy You.

I had not fully recognized that Trader Joe’s parking lots are always hellscapes until Amy Estes brought it to my attention. But it’s a universal truth! (Or at least, it’s a United States truth – outside the U.S., there appear to be no Trader Joe’s. For Aunties beyond the U.S., I want to be clear that every single word about the Trader Joe’s parking lot in this recommended read is gospel truth). And geez, an extra double heaping of sympathy to those who have navigated a Trader Joe’s parking lot in the week before Christmas.

As soon as you pull in, I am waiting. I am a sinister surprise masquerading as an average parking lot. Little do you know that each of my parking spots is precisely three inches longer and two inches narrower than the average parking spot. The designers say it is to save money and be economically friendly, but I know the truth: my only goal is to fuck you up.

Two. When Your Relatives Live on Another Continent, Family Friends Are Family.

This one is so lovely. Vignesh Ramachandran writes the newsletter Red, White, and Brown, and while I found it because of the wonderful Auntie post I’m about to recommend, a quick glance at his archives suggests that the whole newsletter might be pretty awesome. He writes about the news and cultural issues through a South Asian lens, and top posts include “The Flattening of the Brown Guy on TV,” and “I Went to a Matchmaking Convention.” I subscribed.

The post I’m recommending here, though, is “When Aunties are More Like Aunts.” Ramachandran points out that “there is no official holiday to commend the family friends in our lives,” and I think this is particularly resonant at a time of year when many people around the world are celebrating a major holiday. When – for whatever reason – our family of origin is not available, found family is especially important. Immigrant communities have known this forever, and there’s an important example here for all of us. Ramachandran remembers:

Our familial bonds were not unlike what I know is common for many of you all in South Asian diasporic communities across the U.S. — those family friends who become your family, when your own relatives live on another continent and you can’t see them as often.

My family was so fortunate to have my maternal grandmother and two maternal uncles living in Denver for many years, and we regularly saw them dozens of times each year, while other relatives were hundreds or thousands of miles away. So in addition to them, local aunties became aunts and the local uncles became like familial uncles. The kids of those aunties and uncles — our childhood family peers — often became more like cousins or siblings.

It’s an inherent part of the immigrant experience in the United States — and one that I think is worth honoring because there is no official holiday to commend the family friends in our lives. Our Denver aunties and uncles are our family, too — the people who were not only there for the birthdays, graduations and other milestones, but also just those everyday weekends and clubhouse get-togethers.

Three. How to Write an Out of Office Message When You’re Having a Miscarriage.

Caitlin Dewey lost her third pregnancy in a row just before Christmas of 2023 (I’ve been there). In January, she wrote about it, which was very brave and not something I would’ve been able to do on that timeline at all. In particular, she wrote about the bleak absurdity of composing an “out of office” autoresponse when you’re off work due to miscarriage.

Writing such emails requires you, a tearful puddle, to hold many competing motives in your head at once. Most importantly, you can't reveal too much information in this type of email, because that could make you look vulnerable or needy, and need makes people uncomfortable. In their discomfort, people will say cruel things. They’ll say too much or not enough. Perhaps they’ll say the right thing to your face, but in secret decide that you are not the competent, reliable professional they thought.

I am uncomfortable too, of course — with my cramps, with my crying, with this level of disclosure. There’s no telling what I’ll say when I’m trying to disguise my discomfort to assuage yours. “If you don't laugh you'll cry,” I say, reflexively, when my miscarriage jokes don't hit their marks. Like: No, mom, I can get lunch today — I just saved a quarter of a million dollars! Or: Insurance won't cover the mifepristone? That's a real miscarriage of justice!

Sometimes I cry and laugh at the same time, further discomfiting my audience.

And yet, and yet, modern etiquette demands a damn good excuse for taking two weeks off. If I still worked a normal 9-to-5, I would have been expected to meet with HR and document the extent of my devastation by now. They would want a note from my OB, sure, but probably also from my therapist, confirming that I am in fact really fucking sad and the sadness could spoil my work product.

This is an invitation to remember that not everyone’s having an awesome holiday season. Maybe this week you could message your loved ones who have lost someone in the past year. And maybe this wasn’t that fun of a snack? But I kind of liked the miscarriage jokes, to be honest. I’m here for what’s real, 52 weeks a year. Happy holidays or whatever!

Coming Attractions

Later this week, I will be nagging you to complete the Guidance from the Aunties survey and help me plan for the future of this newsletter. You could just do it right now and get it out of the way.

Being real, I will actually only nag you if I don’t forget. I’ll be at my parents’ with lots of family all week, including a couple of small nieces who routinely expect me to play with them instead of working on my computer – which, fair.

Then in January and beyond, what delights await us!

• The long-awaited, absolutely, positively, #1 best way to decide if you want kids

• An encouragement to move toward your people

• “We’re all in this together”: What does it mean, really?

• And in the Kinship Snacks, a bunch of great how-tos:

  • How to tell a really good story to kids

  • How to disrupt the patriarchy, one family at a time

  • How to prevent a toddler from toddling into the street

  • How to apologize to a child

  • How to lose at Uno (👋)

And Now, the Cute Kid Video of the Week

I love the look on the kid’s face at the end of this video. Divergent thinkers indeed!

Hey, if you come across any cute kid videos that you think should be featured in The Auntie Bulletin, please send them my way! You can drop them in the comments of any post – I always read the comments – DM me in the Substack app, or email me at auntiebulletin@gmail.com.

Be apprised that I don’t publish videos or images of children that are not already available on the internet – so don’t send me videos of your friends’ kids, please. I know it’s hard – I have so many good ones too!

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1. Hot tip: You can use these guidelines to talk with artists of any age about their work. It works on everyone! And you will probably actually learn things about art in the process.

2. Children love nothing more than to laminate. They love laminators even more than they love salad spinners. If you have a laminator in your home, bust it out next time the kids come over, along with some art supplies and/or old magazines to cut up, and get laminating. They will never forget this experience for the rest of their lives, and they will adore you forever. This activity has my 100% Auntie Bulletin Guarantee.™