When to start your child's Sinterklaas wishlist
The Sint arrives in the country in mid-November, and by then the popular toys are already sold out online. Families who have the list done in October are the ones who are not driving to three shops on 3 December for a Lego set nobody stocks any more. A list also makes a child think for a moment about what they actually want, instead of pointing at whatever is on the shelf in front of them.
Start in the second half of October
Wait until the autumn holiday is over and school has settled back down. That is also when the Intertoys and DreamLand catalogues land on the doormat, so a child has something to leaf through and react to.
Six weeks sounds like a lot. It is not. Grandparents need a week to look at the list, ordering takes a few days, and the one item every child wants this year is gone by the end of November.
Keep it short for toddlers, hand it over to teenagers
A two to four year old cannot hold a list in their head. Three to five things they can point to in a catalogue is plenty: a Duplo box, a wooden train, a doll's pram. Anything abstract, like "something to play with outside", is for the parents to fill in.
From about five, children can build a list with some range in it. Ask for one thing to read, one thing to make, one thing to run around with and one thing that is just for fun. That question alone produces a better list than "what do you want", which gets you five variants of the same plastic toy from the same advert.
From eleven, let them do it themselves. A teenager can look up prices, compare the two versions of a game and put a link next to each item. They can add a line for a younger brother or sister too. Set a limit on the number of items, otherwise the list grows to forty things in an afternoon.
Make an evening of it
Pick a Sunday evening, put kruidnoten on the table and write the list together. The letter to Sinterklaas belongs in the same evening; it is the oldest trick there is for getting a child to slow down. A child who has to explain why they want the walkie-talkies quite often crosses them off halfway through the sentence.
Put at least one outing on the list next to the toys. Tickets to a children's theatre, a day at the swimming pool with a friend, an afternoon at the climbing hall. Children remember the outing longer than they remember the third Playmobil set, and a grandparent who does not know toys is glad to give it.
Share the list with grandparents, aunts and uncles
The relatives who buy every year should see the list in early November, and they need one place where they can mark what they have bought. A shared paper list works for a small family. For a larger one, a digital list where an item can be reserved does the same job without the phone calls, and the child does not see who bought what.
With a big family it is worth agreeing a budget per child (25 or 30 is common) and a rough age range, so that a six-year-old does not end up with fourteen parcels and a teenager with two.
One item for someone else
For every few things a child puts on their own list, let them pick one to give away: a toy for the collection at school, or a parcel for a local charity to pass on to a child who gets little this year. Plenty of towns run a Sinterklaas toy drive in November. Talk about the difference between wanting and needing while you are at it. Children who have had that conversation are less disappointed on the day, because they were not expecting everything on the list.
The list does not need to be finished in one go. You can create a wishlist for each child at the end of October, let them add to it over a week or two, and share the link with the family before the Sint's boat is even in the harbour.
