Gift ideas for age 0 -2

Originally published on The Whole Sky, lightly updated. See also: Gift ideas for preschool / early elementary age children

If you’re the kind of person who already has toys and outfits picked out that you want to give your friends who have babies, you don’t need this post. This is for people who have no idea what a one-year-old likes and need to give their nephew something.

There are some kinds of presents I think you should avoid unless parents request them:

1. Presents that imply a particular parenting strategy—the baby carrier you loved may not work for parents who want to use a stroller, or vice versa, and then they’ll feel weird for not using it.
2. Presents that make electronic noises, because the child will find them fascinating long after the parents have lost their minds. (Jeff has been known to cut the wires in such cases.)
3. Toys that take up a lot of space.

So here are some ideas:

0-1:

• Really, presents at this age are mostly for the parents, so pretty much get them anything they requested.
• Default for baby shower: A gift certificate to Target, Amazon, or whatever the big-box store is near you. My sister said she was apprehensive about giving a gift card to a friend at a baby shower, until the friend breathed, “Oh my God, thank you, we’re so broke.”
• Clothes for 9-month-olds. Everyone gives you 0-6 month clothes when your baby is born and after that you’re on your own. Think ahead to what the weather will be like in 9 months.
• Balls of various kinds
• Rattle
• Grabby things

1-2 years:

• Stacking rings or spinning rings
• Shape sorter toy. Example (the only toy I’m listing that makes noise, but not too bad a noise and not electronic)
• Pull toy (alligator, caterpillar, snake)  for when they’re walking.
• Bath toys: I like these whale scoops and duck scoops.
• Sidewalk chalk
• Large rubbery balls like they sell at the dollar store
• Blocks
• Books: Kids this age aren’t so good at following a storyline, particularly if the pictures are of the same characters talking to each other over and over. L has loved books with pictures of different objects, pictures of babies, and pictures of animals. Goodnight Gorilla has enough animals to be interesting to kids with no understanding of plot, and a plot illustrated rather than told so L can follow it at 19 months – “Night night. Key! Open!” (Of course, she also considers the banana integral to the plot, which it is not.) At 20 months she got into Richard Scarry and Sandra Boynton.
• Some kind of soft animal or doll
• Monkey Around board game for 2 and up: actually simple enough for 2-year-olds
• Their favorite snack: one of our older kids gifted our 2-year-old with a gallon size carton of goldfish crackers, and it fulfilled her wildest dreams.

Note that we don’t need any of these things because we already have them.

For older kids: Gift ideas for preschool / early elementary age children