I have a seven year old son and five year old daughter. This year for Christmas, they received a number of lovely and thoughtful gifts from their grandparents, aunt, and uncles. Then, there were those gifts that either were less well considered, or are evidence of my family’s deep seeded animosity toward me. Those include:
A three-story doll house that took approximately 5 hours to assemble, and that fit together poorly so that I had to whittle pieces down to make it go together.
A “microphone” that essentially just amplifies the voice and optionally adds reverb. A small bullhorn is what it is, really.
a vuvuzela.
So I now live in a home with a five year old who has a bullhorn and a seven year old who has a Loon Tune and a vuvuzela. Coulda been worse I suppose. Coulda been drums, spray paint, Jarts, a puppy. But still. A fucking vuvuzela?
Anybody else have kids who got gifts you really have to question the motivation for?
I love giving noisy toys;) No, I kid. My DIL is the worst for having limits as to gifts for girls. It’s been a battle since before they were born. I say accept the gift, have the child say thank-you. And later on toss it. Good manners and all. I’ve quit fighting it with my DIL over it. We had a kerfuffle in the summer over gift cards I got them. I thought ‘oh this is perfect, she can let them get a gift and she can be the bad guy!’ But, no. She returned them to me saying the girls were too young to get the idea you can have toys with no money. WTF? I mailed them to my daughters boys. They accepted them, heartily. My daughter never looks a gift horse in the mouth. For Christmas the granddaughters got savings bonds, from us. I’m waiting on the fallout.
I am one of those gift givers that if one an asshole to their kid about wanting something I will do my dammedest to procure that object……… and present it in front of the family and one can just suck it ……
such as my nephew likes the sims and his dad hates it for no good reason other than he thinks its stupid So guess what he received for xmas ….same thing for the dc superhero fighting game………
MANY years ago my little brother decided to give my first born a chameleon for her third birthday. She loved it of course. I had to bring him aside and explain to him that he got to see her happy for a few hours while I would have to see her cry and pout for a week when it inevitably died in short time (to be fair to those of you who keep reptiles I’m sure you treat them well and they’re cared for).
The inevitable happens 10 days later. Tears, wailing, gnashing of teeth, the whole fuckin’ nine yards…
One year later this prick pulls the same shit with a goldfish. Now I know goldfish are pretty hardy but 4-year-old girls are not the most responsible people in the world, I work 60 hours a week and travel, and I know for SURE her mother doesn’t give a fuck about this new burden. I told him there and then I’m buying his first child a FUCKING horse. So once again a few week later…tears, wailing, gnashing of teeth, the whole fuckin’ nine yards.
A few years later his wife announces she’s expecting…
I kept that kid in absolute terror for 4 years. I even showed up at his house with a friend’s pony on her 2nd birthday (the owner agreed to give the kids at the party supervised rides) and although he denies it, I swear he almost shit himself.
My kids would have loved a bullhorn. One of them did get a drum set. In fact I think he got a bullhorn. Another one got this thing called a Zube Tube, which was basically a long cardboard tube, decorated with pop art, with a big spring inside attached to what looked like, and may have been, plastic cups. It was ugly. It was awkward. It made noise. When I packed it up after the party I asked the mother who gave it to him if it was very breakable. You know, for packing purposes. She said something like, “I suppose you could break it if you slammed the trunk down on it…” So maybe her kid had something like it? And she’d thought about it a lot? I dunno.
Anyway, yeah, he loved it. Fortunately he got tired of it pretty quickly. Much more quickly than the other kid got tired of his drum set.
A vuvuzela though, man, that demands some sort of answering gift. I don’t think they make the Zube Tube any more or I’d recommend that because it was exceptionally annoying. And pretty much unbreakable.
My brother in law and his brother deliberately bought ludicrously annoying toys for the opposing kids. It was a bit of an inside joke.
On my own, I bought a set of Tonka trucks at Costco that didn’t seem so loud in the middle of a million cubic foot warehouse. In my own house, they were deafening, and would go off at the slightest provocation, such as nudging it a half inch. I had to create my own triangular shaped screwdriver tool* from a filed down flooring nail to take the damned things apart and disable the speakers.
My recommendation to you, get some cotton balls, glue and a screwdriver and start muffling these noisemakers yourself.
*because a $5 plastic tonka truck needs to use security screws
I think they just honestly thought they were cute toys and the kids would love them, and didn’t stop to think that the kids’ dad suffers from depression and has a struggling marriage and lots of job stress doesn’t need a goddamn vuvuzela and bullhorn added to the mix. :mad:
A few years back, my brother pulled a “prank” where he borrowed a puppy from his neighbor and put a bow on it like he was going to give it to my son. This was when, unbeknownst to him, my depression was uncontrolled and the word “divorce” was creeping into my vocabulary, and I was ready to kill him for that.
Speaking of surprisingly loud toys, a year or two ago, my mom gave my son a remote control Darth Vader car that was fucking deafening. Lots of engine and lightsaber sound effects with no way to control the volume. To be fair, she was embarrassed when I told her how loud it was.
I generally try to be as honest with my kids as I can, and avoid tricking them. But that’s a damn good idea. It doesn’t help with the vuvuzela, but it would solve several other problems. Hmmm…
I didn’t intend for this thread to be entirely about me, though. I look forward to other stories of gifts the kids loved and the parents hated.
Our town holds a swap meet type event a few times a year. Donate what you want (or not) on Friday and take what you want (or not) on Saturday, it’s pretty freeform.
One year my son picked up a toy noisemaker, weird little thing, you pull a trigger and it makes this RARARARARARARA sound and has a kangaroo head. Annoying as hell.
So, another swap meet is scheduled and the wife says “He hasn’t used it in ages, let’s donate that dopey thing to the Swap, and get rid of it”.
I, being the paragon of virtue, suggest that we should just thrown the damn thing out, and not subject some other poor parent to the RARARARARARARA. I’m overruled.
Fast forward to Friday, the offensive toy goes out with other Swap stuff. Saturday rolls around, we’re at the Swap and my son looks through the toys and says “Hey, why is my kangaroo here? RARARARARARARA I’m taking it back home RARARARARARARA”
My husband has a distant cousin who decided that our four-year-old needed a musical instrument. So he sent us a tiny drum set, which arrived the same week that baby brother was born. Unfortunately for us, a drum set cannot be given a “midnight batterectomy” (the preferred term in our household), although the drum sticks did mysteriously go missing pretty promptly.
When my nieces were toddlers, my sister got their family a chips and salsa dish that had a button which played “The Mexican Hat Dance” when pushed. The older one, who was almost 3 years old, thought this was the greatest thing on earth, and before the day was out, they removed the battery.
I once got my own kid a toy drum. He was about 2, and it wasn’t terribly loud. He played with it a bit off and on.
My husband was out of town when this happened. He got home, saw the drum, went :eek::eek::eek::eek: and yelled “Whatever it is I did, I’M SORRY!!!”.
My mother gave my son a Matchbox car set for Christmas, when he was about 5. A zillion pieces of track, had to be put together, the cars constantly ran off the track.
It got lost on the way home :D.
A SIL gave my daughter a Winnie The Pooh toy. You had to plug it into a Windows computer to set it up (then it would play some games on its own while unplugged, but for the most fun it needed regular access to the computer). The only Windows box we had at the time was my work computer. :smack: And the kid was about 3 at the time.
So needless to say, she didn’t get the full benefit of it.
Glitter is a whole other kind of evil gift for little kids. Especially when packed into unstable, easily tipped-over containers. Bonus points if the parents normally wear nice clothes (or even better, uniforms) for work.
