The Best Gifts and Gadgets to Help Your Youngest Child Build Character

The Best Gifts and Gadgets to Help Your Youngest Child Build Character

Children are wonderful miracles. The way they go from babies to chaos to creatures with genuine personalities and feelings all their own is remarkable. But youngest kids of a multi-child household are another story. They are nightmare hellions with little regard for others, an incredible capacity to care only about themselves, and a tattletale cry that can summon a parent from three states over. You don’t want your youngest to be like that right?

Instead of getting them all the cool toys you thought were totally unnecessary when your oldest asked but are starting to make sense for kid number three try one of these gifts instead.

Pixel 4a

Photo: Sam Rutherford/Gizmodo
Photo: Sam Rutherford/Gizmodo

They wanted an iPhone but do they really need an iPhone? Sure their older sibling has one, but they also probably do things like “chores”. The Pixel 4a has a big honking camera module just like an iPhone. It takes photos. It plays videos. It basically does everything an iPhone does but it only costs $599. And if their friends reject them because of a green bubble they probably weren’t friends worth having to begin with were they?

A Nintendo Switch Off Ebay

Photo: Alex Cranz/Gizmodo
Photo: Alex Cranz/Gizmodo

Kids love consoles, but unless you’ve been on the ball months in advance they’re not getting the latest and greatest consoles. After a shortage earlier this year the Nintendo Switch is much more available, but it’s a lot cheaper to buy one on Ebay. It might not include JoyCon controllers, a dock, or even a box, but this gives kids a fun activity after they open the gift. Remember how much character you built having to track down batteries for a new gift? This is like a hard mode version — which means even more character building!

Lazi Kitchen Dish Towels

Image: Lazi
Image: Lazi

Forget socks or an itchy sweater or a terrifically uncomfortable dress. Instead, get them some attractive towels. Towels can do so many things. Superhero? Tuck it in the back of a shirt. Want to dress up as a Roman senator about to make like the Ides of March? Safety pen them into a kind of toga. Need bedding for a sick fort? These towels have your kid covered. Besides working materials for a costume or as fine bedding for a fort, a dish towel can also be used to clean and dry dishes.

Skullcandy Jib True Wireless Earbuds

Photo: Andrew Liszewski/Gizmodo
Photo: Andrew Liszewski/Gizmodo

Airpods are great, but Airpods are expensive and easy to lose. Skullcandy’s truly wireless earbuds are not easier to hold onto, but they’re also only around $40. A kid could lose both earbuds four times before they’d match the cost of a pair of $US130 ($172) Airpods. And as a bonus they have tiny skulls on them, so you kid will know how rad you think they are.

Dyson v11

Photo: Andrew Liszewski/Gizmodo
Photo: Andrew Liszewski/Gizmodo

The best vacuum you can spend obscene amounts of money on shouldn’t just be reserved for a spouse. Kids can vacuum too! Because they’re lower to the ground they can see all the messes that have been missed in the last decade, and because the Dyson v11 is light and manoeuvrable that kid can get right in there with the vacuum head and make that floor look like new again. Best of all swappable batteries means they don’t have an excuse for skipping the cleaning in other rooms of the house.

Star Wars Black Series Din Djarin Action Figure

Image: Hasbro
Image: Hasbro

Din Djarin is the Mandalorian and the Mandalorian is awesome. A $45 action figure is a little pricey, but maybe your kid is worth it! But kids have very high expectations and the sooner they manage those expectations in life the better. Once they remove this figure’s helmet and take in the face that is, ostensibly, Pedro Pascal’s, they will experience such a shock that they will be better prepared in the future. And best of all they can probably super glue the helmet back on so they never have to be reminded of that visage every again.

Also it includes Baby Yoda. Everybody loves Baby Yoda.

Beverly Micro Pure White Hell Jigsaw Puzzle

Image: Beverly
Image: Beverly

Because they’re the youngest child they’ve obviously gotten a lot of hand me downs, plus all the brand new stuff their older siblings never would have had. That means they’ve rarely had to really work to be entertained. Now they can work to be entertained.


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