If there’s one thing guaranteed to test even the strongest of family ties – or friendships – it’s this: how you feel about other people’s parenting style.
Whether you think they’re too soft or too strict, how other people parent their children is usually pretty much their own business – until that is, you go on holiday with them or are thrown together for a family event, like Christmas. For one Reddit user, the final straw came after a Thanksgiving dinner ended in tears after the Reddit user told his brother that no, his 3-year-old son couldn’t take home one of his cousin’s toys, even if it meant him having a tantrum.
The Reddit user explained that, as people were leaving, his brother asked if he could take home the truck his son had been playing with all day (that belonged to the boy’s cousin, the Reddit user’s son). The brother said he’d replace the toy at some point, but the Reddit user refused for two reasons, explaining: ‘Firstly, my brother/sister-in-law have a terrible habit of giving my nephew everything he asks for. He is way too old for that. Secondly, I don’t want to reinforce in my nephew that it’s OK to just take things he wants. My brother said that my nephew would throw a tantrum if he didn’t get the toy then and there, and that everything would be easier if I just let him take the toy and get sent a replacement in the mail. I told my brother that I would not be an enabler for my nephew’s bad behaviour, and that it’s my brother/SIL [sister-in-law]’s problem if he throws a tantrum.’
Of course, the inevitable happened – the nephew began shrieking inconsolably. The Reddit user got an angry text later that night from his brother who said his son had screamed for the entire three hour car journey home, only stopping to pass out ‘from exhaustion’. The brother accused the Reddit user of ‘back seat parenting’ and said it wasn’t anybody else’s place to set an example for his son.
Many of the comments agreed with the poster: ‘Four is old enough to learn that sometimes you have to wait for things you want. Today it was a toy truck. Next year it will be a video game. In a few years - the newest phone. Then a car. I can see this kid in 13 years pitching a fit because he sees a Range Rover and must have it RIGHT NOW (even though it’s not for sale).’
Another said: ‘No parent likes to see their child upset, or throwing a tantrum. Having said that, it's important for children to experience a full range of emotions while they are children so they know how to navigate them as adults. So children need to experience sadness, disappointment, happiness, excitement, anger, curiosity, etc. and have their parents guide them in how to manage these feelings appropriately.
‘Even if he eventually grows out of tantrums, which can happen when they get to school and peer pressure starts kicking in, by never letting their child experience disappointment, they're seeing him up for a lifetime of misery when he asks someone out and they say "No" or when he applies for a job and doesn't get it. Even if he doesn't have a tantrum, he still won't be able to actually process those kinds of emotions.’
While another simply said, ‘If your brother keeps harping [on] you tell him this, "Close your eyes and remember that tantrum. Now imagine it from a 30-year-old man. That's what you're raising."
The original poster’s wife, however, said he should have just handed the truck over to make life easy, especially since their own son isn’t even that attached to the toy. But the poster stands firm on his decision and says, ‘It’s well within my rights to set an example for my nephew even if it goes against my brother/SIL’s parenting style of coddling their son, and that the tantrum is 100% a result of their terrible parenting habits.’
So what do you think? Should we give in to our own – and other people’s – children for the sake of an easy life? Or did this Reddit user do the right thing?