Jimmy Kimmel occasionally pulls these pranks on his show: he gets people to play a joke on a family member and videotape it, and then he plays the results on his show. Go to YouTube and search for:
hey jimmy kimmel I told my kid I ate all their Halloween candy
and watch a couple with the most page views.
I’m curious to know whether Doper parents (or anyone, really) thinks the kids who scream and cry are what you would call “spoiled” or whether they’re justifiably freaked out by what has happened. Some of the parents sound like they’re not hiding their amusement very well, meaning the kid knows that Mom and Dad are laughing AT him and his predicament. If I were a kid, that might be enough to provoke tears (if not screams) all by itself – forget the loss of the candy.
And how do you expect the kids will act around their parents after this?
If the kids are 5 and under, they may not necessarily be spoiled if they react poorly to an adult stealing all of their candy. By the time you’re 8-10, kids really need to have a better grip on the seriousness of losing some candy.
The Christmas present videos seemed more spoiled-kid to me. I mean, unless the parent is really playing up the present as being the “big gift” or, like the 3DS joke, play off the idea that the kid wanted one gift really badly and got a gag version of it, I think the reactions were pretty poor. Who hasn’t gotten a crappy gift at Christmas? If you’re throwing a tantrum every time you get a pair of socks, you have problems. I did like the little girl who was happily trying out her new bar of deodorant.
I’m not watching any of the tapes, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a kid to get upset about such a thing. If somebody stole something of mine in such a way that I had no recourse and then stood there taunting me about it, I’d sure as shit be upset. And if I were a kid and had normal kid ability to deal with that level of upset, I’d probably be screaming and crying.
I could see being kinda confused by the whole thing and the confusion alone making me cry.
But throwing a tantrum? Unless we’re taking about a two-year-old or a kid with some pervasive behavioral issue, then yeah, I’m pretty sure that kid is a brat.
That may or may not be a symptom of overindulgent parenting, though.
No, they’re not spoiled. Parents build up Halloween and Christmas to be a huge deal so of course kids are going to be upset when that gets torn down. In their little minds, it’s the equivalent of the prank where the guy takes a blindfolded half-court shot to win a big jackpot and then the crowd goes wild even though he misses to make him think he won. Is that guy spoiled?
Losing some candy is one thing. Having your parents steal from you, or try to dick you around is something else.
Furthermore, being spoiled is not the same as having a tendency to overreact to things. A spoiled kid might well be less likely to react badly to losing some candy, because they get plenty of candy all the time.
I think this is it. Having someone lord their power over you hurts. It’s less about not getting to eat candy than it is knowing someone thinks so little of you that they’d make you a target and use your hurt feelings for their own amusement. cf. bullying.
What shitty parents. Like kids don’t have enough of that to deal with from people who AREN’T adults.
If anything, the joke teaches kids the concept of sarcasm. It’s mean spirited to do on younger children who might not understand, but an older kid? People are judging the cruelty of the joke by the overreaction of some kids.
While I wouldn’t consider kids spoiled just because they get upset, the reaction some older kids have with this is rather telling.
My brother in law played this prank on his son last xmas. His son, who was ten, looked annoyed, but accepted the gift and thanked his dad. This special snowflake was mature enough not to make a scene. He got his actual gift afterward, but the real gift was to learn when someone is pulling your leg.
Sorry, I don’t buy it. I mean, not that I don’t believe your story, but I don’t buy that pranking your elementary-aged kid for your own amusement is teaching a valuable lesson in an appreciable way.
Being the victim of a person playing with your emotions so they can get a laugh is not a good feeling. No one, of any age, should be expected to be happy about it.
