Just as with shopping for any kid, the trick to
getting the perfect present is to know what your niece is into. Some
girls may love toys like My Little Pony. Oftentimes, sure, that\'s a
safe guess, but what about the girls who consider My Little Pony a
little too, well... just a bit too, you know, girly, and prefer
something more along the lines of Dora the Explorer or a good Lego set?

Sometimes
you can get lucky with a random guess, but there are only two ways to
know for sure that you\'re getting the girl something she can enjoy. The
first approach is to make a call to your sister or brother and ask what
your niece loves more than anything.

This method works, but we
don\'t really like this approach because it\'s kind of admitting defeat.
A gift should really be from the heart, and if you have to ask someone
else what to get, that\'s sort of like cheating.

What we like is,
if you don\'t already know what you want to get for your niece, spend a
little time with her. Take your niece out for lunch, go to the
playground together, do something to hang out with the kid for a little
while, and you should know exactly what to get her before the afternoon
is up.

You\'re going to know right away. When the birthday season
is approaching, kids generally find themselves incapable of talking
about anything besides exactly what they\'d love to open on their
special day.

Besides spending an afternoon together being a
perfect way to get some precious Intel on that baby doll toy your niece
really wants, it\'s also a great way to get reacquainted with the kid.
It\'s important for children to have a full family\'s worth of positive
adult role models. Not just a mom and a dad, but uncles, aunts,
grandparents, and even older siblings all play a key role in shaping a
child\'s idea of the value of family, and even their own sense of
identity. Spending some time with the kid is going to wind up being
more valuable than any toy you\'re going to buy them.

Now, once
you have some ideas for what to get the kid, you\'re going to want to
make a call to the parents. You want to make sure that you\'re not going
to wind up both getting her the same present, of course. It can be
helpful, though, to get toys that complement each other. If your sister
or brother is getting the kid a Wall-E DVD, you can go ahead and get
your niece something like the Wall-E VTECH Learning Laptop.

A
gift is an expression of a certain idea: I love you, I care about you,
I want you to be happy, and I know what you want. Just asking the
parents what to get the kid will wind up with a great toy to unwrap at
their birthday party, but you\'ll be missing out on the very most
important part of what buying a gift is all about. The personal
connection that a gift evokes can only be accomplished when it truly is
from the heart.