Background: My husband and I have a 22 month old son, he has three sets of grandparents: MIL/FIL, my mom/step-dad, and my dad/step-mom. My son's birthday is also the week before Christmas so you can see by the sheer amount of grandparents and timing of his birthday and Christmas he is inundated by gifts in December.Problem: My MIL goes completely overboard with the gifts, we knew this before we ever had our son because she has two other grandchildren that she spoils rotten. One example that absolutely disgusted both of us was when my nephew, who was probably 11 at the time, was tearing through gifts on Christmas morning. He would open up a video game and literally throw it over his shoulder and go "NEXT!" before grabbing the next gift out of the mountain of gifts. We have also heard both him and our niece say "Let's just ask grandma, she'll get it for us". Needless to say this prompted a discussion between my husband and I about how we planed on dealing with the gifting situation once we started to have children. We both are very much about experiences and quality time over any type of material gifts but we know kids want "stuff" so we prefer to buy less but maybe get higher quality so those things last longer. Overall quality vs quantity would be our motto.When our son was a week old, and not even supposed to be born before Christmas, he has close to 20 gifts under the tree. We had not discussed gift giving with my MIL because honestly we didn't think he would be here before that Christmas and he was days old so how much could a baby really need or want? Last Christmas/Birthday season we asked that my in-laws keep the gift limit to two for his birthday and five for Christmas. My MIL sobbed, legitimate tears and sobbing over us "ruining her fun" at Christmas. She ended up sort of sticking to the gift limit but really pushed the boundaries, "four outfits count as one gift since they're all clothes!", "stocking stuffers don't count as gifts!"...you get the idea.This year she has already started asking about what she can get him. I set up an Amazon wish list thinking that would make it easier for all of the grandparents and I put things on there that I know he'll like. Yeah that didn't work at all. She has literally texted me asking about a four wheeler, a stuffed snoopy, a book, a teepee, tickets to a children's museum, a sit and spin, clothes, another book, and a backpack. And she doesn't mean which would he like better, these are all things she plans on purchasing!Questions: How can I explain to her that he doesn't need this much stuff and we don't want him to have this much stuff? I don't want to ruin my relationship with her but it's been not so great in the past so any little thing can send her over the edge. I don't want to seem ungrateful because I'm not at all.My relationship with my husband is very strong but this stuff with my MIL really pushes it to it limits because I get so stressed out about it. He is firmly on my side but doesn't know how to handle her and their whole family is the type to just say "that's how she is, cant' change her!". That is not good enough for me when I'm trying to raise our son to not feel entitled and spoiled.Also, my parents all feel like she tries to out do them, they won't outright say it but I know them well enough to know. They have far and away more money than she has to be spending but they respect my wishes and stick to the plan we've talked about (I mentioned the "something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read" thing to them and they loved the idea so they buy according to that) but they feel like she is buying his affection buy buying the way she does.Please help me! via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2Sla9rg
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