Christmas gift ideas for adult children

Buying gifts for your kids is fun, but buying gifts for adult children can be really hard. Here are some of my best Christmas gift ideas for adult children!

I honestly hate Christmas shopping. It’s so hard to find the perfect gift for people.

It’s even harder when shopping for adults with jobs and their own money and especially if you don’t see them frequently – it’s hard to feel like you aren’t wasting yours.

While you can exchange specific lists – that’s not super fun. To us at least, it starts to feel like you’re just trading money.

If you are looking for gifts for the grown up kids in your family, hopefully these ideas will inspire you!

Note: these gifts are assuming your grown children have a job and their own money and don’t “need” anything. If they need something or are short on cash, I encourage you to ask them what they want and buy them that!

Christmas gift ideas for adult children

Experience gifts

I’m just going to say it – I am anti-gift card.

Ok, sometimes gift cards are good. For example, gift cards are great teacher gifts.

However, they are impersonal and when given to an adult child feel like just exchanging money, which as I’ve mentioned, is not the spirit of gift giving in my opinion. You’re basically just giving them money to a limited place.

An exception to that is a gift card for an experience, especially something that your son or daughter might not think of doing for themselves.

Some cool experience gift ideas could include:

• A cooking class
• Dance classes
• Spa services
• Restaurant gift card (to somewhere special or a treat – not Wendy’s)
• Sports, music, theater or event tickets
• Painting class
• House cleaning services
• Hot air balloon ride

I give extra plus marks to any experience that you might do together or if you offer to watch their kids while they do the activity with their spouse.

Memberships

Memberships are a great gift to give to adults. I’d be excited to be added to someone’s Costco membership!

Other memberships you can gift include:

• CSA membership to a local farm
• Gym or exercise class membership
• AAA membership
• Warehouse like Costco or Sam’s Club

A weekend away

The ultimate gift for me would be a weekend away. You can play this a few ways.

One, if they have kids, offer to keep the kids while they take a weekend away!

Or, you can plan a weekend away for them and you together.

Finally, just gift them a stay at a BnB or hotel. If you have a ton of hotel points, offering them a weekend at the Hilton of their choosing is a really nice gift!

A chance to do something together

If you don’t spend a lot of time with your kids any more, planning an event together could be a great gift.

This could be as simple as lunch and a mani-pedi or as elaborate as a weekend away together.

Think of something that you did together in the past that you have really good memories of. Pairing a fun activity together with a healthy dose of nostalgia is always an awesome gift.

Custom house painting

If you have a home that your child grew up in, capturing that home in a custom portrait is a really great gift.

You can also think of a place that you know is very special to your child, whether it’s their college or a family vacation spot or the place they got engaged. Any of these would be a wonderful painting.

Be sure to plan ahead on these as they do have some lead time to get them painted, especially right around the holidays!

What do you give a grown child for Christmas?

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