"The Kids Don't Want Anything" — Until They Do

It's a phrase we hear all the time in this work: "My kids don't want anything."

Parents say it with a shrug, sometimes with a little sadness underneath it. We're helping them sort through a lifetime of belongings — furniture, china, photographs, the things they chose or collected or were handed down through generations — and their grown children have said no thanks, take it to donation, we don't need it.

And then something shifts.

We start sending photos. A box gets opened. A cabinet gets emptied out onto the table. And suddenly the kids who "didn't want anything" are asking questions. “Wait, is that the lamp from the living room? Didn't Grandma have a set of teacups like that?” Memory does something a list can't do — it stirs. And once it stirs, it turns out most people do want a few things from home. I think that's exactly what most parents hope for, even when they say otherwise: that their kids will want some piece of what they worked hard for, gathered over the years, or carried forward from the generation before them.

This scenario took on new meaning for me recently, on a personal level.

The Bluebird Dishes

Since last October, when Mom moved to memory care, I've been slowly cleaning out my parents' home. Mom was endlessly creative — she loved to entertain, and she decorated in ways most people would never think of. And she had dishes. So many dishes.

Along the way, I asked our daughter more than once if she wanted anything. She declined most of it.

Recently, our whole family was together at the house, and while she was there, my daughter asked about the bluebird dishes.

My heart sank. Those had already gone to auction.

Mom loved those bluebird dishes — they were her thing, distinctly hers — and I had let them go. I felt terrible telling my daughter they were gone. "I thought I asked you," I said.

Her reply has stayed with me: "I thought they would always be there."

I remembered there were a couple of platters left, and I promised to save them for her. She said something else I haven't stopped thinking about: that she would always look at them and think of being here, at the house, when we were all together.

What I'd Pass On

To parents: your kids may want things they simply assumed would always be there. It's not that they don't care — it's that they haven't had to image home without those things in it yet. It's okay to make a list of who wants what before you have to downsize. And here's the real gift buried in that list: it gives you a chance to pass on the stories connected to each item, while you're the one who still remembers them.

To adult children: if there's something in your parents' home you'd hate to lose, take a picture of it now — not because you need to ask for it today, but so you'll remember what it was, and what it meant, when the time eventually comes to decide.

The bluebird dishes are gone. But there are still a couple of platters waiting for my daughter, and a story that goes with them. That's not a bad trade, in the end.

Copyright 2026 by Christine E. Smart