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Bad Manners and Brimstone
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#Post#: 850--------------------------------------------------
Re: Do I have to gift all siblings simultaneously?
DIR By: JeanFromBNA
Date: May 15, 2018, 5:05 pm
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With kids that young, I would have given them both something, or
waited until she was out of sight to give it to him. As long as
it's not a birthday present, I think that you should try to be
fair in a kid's eyes. I don't like getting presents for kids
who are not the birthday child. It's a great time to learn the
lesson that not everything is about you, but it will come around
eventually.
#Post#: 887--------------------------------------------------
Re: Do I have to gift all siblings simultaneously?
DIR By: guest249
Date: May 15, 2018, 6:16 pm
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This one is tough for me. In general, if I were to bring a gift
for a friend's five year old, I would also bring one for her 3
year old. But, I wouldn't consider the cardboard dinosaur a
gift and I do think that sometimes people go a little too far
with the idea of 'fairness.' Of course we should be fair, but
that doesn't mean to treat children exactly the same, all the
time. Handing a little boy a cardboard cereal box dinosaur does
not mean that you have to find something for his younger sister
too. And while I won't fault a 3 year old for not
understanding, she is only ever going to understand if the
adults around her explain it to her. Maybe next time the cereal
box will have a teddy bear on it, and she would get that and her
brother would get nothing. She can cry, IMO, but the answer,
for me, would not be to appease her.
The fact that you asked the mother ahead of time if it was ok
(which is what I think I would have advised you to do if you
asked before gifting the boy), and she was ok with it, makes me
lean towards this being a failure on her part. She allowed you
to give her son something that while enjoyable to him, was
really an arbitrary item with no lasting value. Her response to
her daughter having a problem with that was to give her
something that her son truly coveted and then allow her to ruin
it (even if she allowed it by not noticing/thinking that would
happen).
I don't think you did anything wrong. But, next time it might
be better to give him something privately.
#Post#: 890--------------------------------------------------
Re: Do I have to gift all siblings simultaneously?
DIR By: guest260
Date: May 15, 2018, 6:34 pm
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--- Quote from: Once a Lurker link ---
>
> These are young children so I would take them each something
or take nothing. I don't think you did anything wrong though.
You tried to do something nice and it backfired but it isn't
your fault. The mother didn't handle it very well at all but
that's not your fault either.
>
--- End Quote ---
I agree with this - also, a three year old really doesn’t have
the foresight to stash a marker for the purpose of destroying
something that her brother has, and I think that’s kind of a
weird suggestion. They don’t have the cognitive capacity to do
that. She’s not being a brat, she’s being a three year old.
They’re tiny, amoral destructors.
I think you should for sure start teaching them the lesson that
sometimes someone gets one thing, and someone else gets another
but I wouldn’t expect that lesson to have stuck already.
Edited for weird spacing issues!
#Post#: 947--------------------------------------------------
Re: Do I have to gift all siblings simultaneously?
DIR By: guest264
Date: May 15, 2018, 10:10 pm
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My best friend has 7 kids, I make sure to bring something that's
for "everyone" when I go over, usually a bag of candies. Then if
I do have something special for one of them, a book I found in
my old trunk or whatever it may be, I sneak it to them with a
wink. They get it, siblings are used to knowing that it's
usually everyone or nobody.
The 3 year old wasn't being sneaky, she was decorating the
wallet she coveted, she doesn't know that now it's ruined, have
you ever seen a 3 year old's "pictures"? She still needs to be
taught that's wrong but that's a different story and a different
person who would need that advice!
She can easily be a wonderful mother who made an error. It's
just like caving to a tantrum any day which happens to every
parent ever, you pick your battles.
#Post#: 971--------------------------------------------------
Re: Do I have to gift all siblings simultaneously?
DIR By: Meglena
Date: May 16, 2018, 12:18 am
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I think this depend on the children's ages. With little kids I
would try to give each something except for birthdays.
The mother was probably trying to do her best to cope with the
little girl's reaction, but I agree that giving her the son's
valued possesion was a mistake.
Checking with the parents beforehand, as you did, is the way to
go. After the children's actions are on the parents.
#Post#: 976--------------------------------------------------
Re: Do I have to gift all siblings simultaneously?
DIR By: iolaus
Date: May 16, 2018, 3:28 am
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If it's a 'just because' present at that age I would give to all
the kids (so for a birthday I wouldn't feel I had to but a free
cardboard cut out - I'd have printed out a colouring picture for
the little girl
#Post#: 1257--------------------------------------------------
Re: Do I have to gift all siblings simultaneously?
DIR By: lithigin
Date: May 16, 2018, 7:09 pm
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Good responses, for sure. At that age, a wildflower or yellow
dandelion head is a sufficient gift for a 3 y.o., for future
reference. Or a drawing of a stick figure or a sun or whatever.
Hopefully that helps, that a gift doesn't necessarily have to be
bought!
#Post#: 1452--------------------------------------------------
Re: Do I have to gift all siblings simultaneously?
DIR By: Sweet Jane
Date: May 17, 2018, 11:30 am
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I can't imagine giving something to one child and not the other.
I don't think it's a hard and fast rule, and certainly the
younger child does have to learn that sometimes only one sibling
gets a gift, but at that age it's a tough lesson.
Did you give the gift to the older sibling in front of the
younger one? Even the best-behaved and most gracious
three-year-old would probably not react well to that. I would
make sure to give the gift outside the presence of the younger
sibling, or slip it to mom so she can give it to him privately
at a later time.
#Post#: 1702--------------------------------------------------
Re: Do I have to gift all siblings simultaneously?
DIR By: Loves to polish silver
Date: May 18, 2018, 3:36 am
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As a mother to a 6 year old, 4 year old & 10 month old, I agree
that this was a complete parenting fail and not your fault at
all! I can also say that you did your friend a favor by leaving
so that she could deal with the aftermath of her poor handling
of the 3 year old. While I'm 50/50 as to whether the wallet
destruction was to be unkind to the brother, I find it likely.
At this age, I think it's often better to do all or nothing for
random gifting - even of a cereal box dinosaur. The only time I
think you truly should give a gift to all children is when a new
baby is born because the older ones can truly be missing out on
attention & do emotionally nedd that extra bit of love then.
#Post#: 2058--------------------------------------------------
Re: Do I have to gift all siblings simultaneously?
DIR By: Take2
Date: May 18, 2018, 9:08 pm
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I would do a gift for every child or a gift that is easy to
share. And I would hold the dinosaur until next time and keep an
eye out for something of like value for the sibling. Why? I like
my friends, so I don't set them up for a fun episode of "hard
lessons with toddlers" when I visit and I trust them to handle
that important topic another day without the discomfort of
parenting a challenging moment with an audience.
The wallet thing is weird to me, because I personally would not
hand one child's possession to another child without the owner's
permission...that's part of how we teach respect for other
people's stuff. (I may even still hold a little grudge for the
time my mother demanded to borrow one of my prized possessions
that wasn't replaceable for a project and accidentally ruined it
when I was 8...more than 30 years ago!)
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