My niece is 13 and her parents are well off and able to provide her with whatever she needs and wants. She is quite spoiled. She slept with her parents until she was 12 as she was deathly afraid of her own bedroom. She seemed to have gotten over that, however. She has received new iPhones, iPads, any gadget she wants, clothes from Abercrombie, etc… She does get good grades and excels in Soccer. Her mother (my sister-in-law) was a stay at home mom until recently when she acquired and opened up her own business. She does not have as much time as she used to in keeping the house orderly. My niece never helps around the house. When her mother asked her to distribute flyers for the business she said, “no way!”. When she was asked to wear a t-shirt supporting the business she was horrified and said she would not be caught dead in that thing.
Recently a very wealthy friend’s family invited my niece to go with them to the Bahamas, all expense paid. Her mother allowed it. While there the mother gave both girls $200 in cash to spend how they wished. Considering how spoiled my niece is, and never willing to help her own mother do you think it was a good idea to allow this family to pay for such an expensive excursion for her? And is 13 a bit young for this kind of trip? She obviously has no consideration of what things cost or doing hard work to achieve wealth. Opinions greatly appreciated:)
Why not? It sounds like a good experience for her.
Well, first of all, if my child acted like your niece, he wouldn’t get going anywhere at all; he would be grounded.
To answer they question you posed in the title of your thread: I have a 14 yo son. If he had a friend whose family I knew and liked well, and they offered to take him with them on their family vacation to someplace like the Bahamas, yes, I would let him go. I could not possibly imagine saying no to such an opportunity.
Sounds like someone is jealous!
But seriously - the girl is old enough to be away from her parents for a few days, the family is well-off enough to indulge their kid and her friend, and they are probably staying at an extremely safe resort. Why would this be bad?
Are you afraid that she is going to be more spoiled than she already is? I’m pretty sure you can’t get more spoiled, just like you can’t get more wet or more pregnant.
My kids have both gone on vacations with their friends families and had friends along on our vacations. For single kid families or where the kids are not close in age it’s more than worth the cost of an extra body for the entertainment value.
They’ve never gone to the Bahamas but that’s just a difference of cost and location rather than function. The fact that your niece is spoiled doesn’t have much to do with it other than the embarrasment of her ungratefulness should she display it to her hosts but it doesn’t sound like that would bother your sister.
What, a misbehaving 13 year old? Especially one who was coddled and always got everything she wanted? Who would guess that she’d be a rebellious pain-in-the-ass?
Sorry, but the parents helped mold that behavior, so I would hardly penalize the kid because of it. If she is used to wearing high fashion clothing, you could see why she would object to a crappy t-shirt with ‘My mom’s store’ on it like a walking billboard.
If the 13 year old kid is with a friend, and the friend’s parents are responsible, what’s the harm. If your sister-in-law is busy with her business and otherwise would like to coddle their daughter on their own vacation, but don’t have the time, I see this as a nice break for her parents. Besides, by giving her ‘only’ $200, hopefully the girl will learn a little budgeting. Knowing a 13 year old, she’ll blow the whole wad at the airport on overpriced Justin Beiber magazines and junk food before she leaves. If she does and has no money for anything else, maybe that will teach her something.
Sounds like you have a problem with her being spoiled because you give a lot of details about how spoiled she is but very little info about the Bahama trip. I might have allowed my 13 year old to go on such a trip, if I had more information. Does the rich couple have a 13 year old daughter they want a companion for or do they just like traveling with a 13 year old girl? Who knows, maybe geting away from mom and dad and seeing a little of the world will unspoil her some.
Not exactly the same thing, but when I was a kid, I went with my best friend and his family to their beach house for a week and my friend came with us on vacations. I don’t think that is terribly unusual.
Slept with mom and dad for 12 years. :eek: That’s just wrong on so many levels.
I have a 14 and a 13 year old. Please take them anywhere you want.
I think you just wrote this to rant about your niece mainly and the trip was just the vehicle for it. As others said, the two aren’t really related. I would let my daughter go to the Bahamas with her friend’s family. I will probably end up taking one of hers with us to somewhere similar in the next few years. I did similar things when I was growing up. I wasn’t spoiled but that doesn’t have much to do with the question.
I guess going on the trip is really not the issue for me, but sending such an ungrateful girl on such an extravagant trip is. For those that commented about it not being a big deal, you are right. I would love my child to have that experience, but I guess it bothers me that she is so spoiled, so ungrateful, so unwilling to help her mother that I feel she doesn’t DESERVE such a trip. But I guess her parents will have to deal with her “entitled” personality when she is in high school…
I don’t know about the other stuff but a 13 year old who refuses to wear a dorky t-shirt seems not at all unusual to me.
Nor does not helping around the house. I was terrible about that when I was 13.
Come to think of it, I’m not much better about it now.
Is OP looking for ammo in your discussion with your SIL? If you’ve got your own opinion on the matter share it with her…do you really need to say a bunch of strangers on the internet think you’re right?
I agree with the others that the kid’s selfishness isn’t really germain to the question. And to answer your question, the answer for me is, it depends. Depends on how well I know the host family.
I guess I am old fashioned in thinking that if you work hard to provide things for your children, they should be considerate enough to help out the parents when needed. It’s a give and take to make a family, not just take, take, take, and never give back. That is what my niece seems to be doing. And if this is acceptable behavior in American society then this is what’s wrong with our country and the next generation coming up.
I agree. The two issues don’t relate. And no I don’t need to be proven right. Just curious if my thoughts were irrational or not:)
What are her parents supposed to do at this point? The only thing they could honestly say is “Sorry, we did a bad job parenting and raised you incorrectly. You are a bad person and we are bad parents. We are all going to do everything differently from now on. You can’t go on this trip. We are going all going to volunteer as a family at the local soup kitchen that week.”
Hold the fuck up. The kid isn’t going to school and being taught that she should never help her parents and should expect to have everything she could ever want. The way she acts isn’t the widely accepted behavior in America.
The kid is being taught these things by her parents. Full stop. The kid’s behavior is only acceptable in her own home.
If there is a problem with kids today then it is directly related to their PARENTS’ generation. They are the ones molding and shaping the kids into whatever you are seeing as unacceptable.
A 13-year-old doesn’t wake up one day and decide to become a brat and stay that way for years. Someone had to mold her to be that way and let her get away with it. It ain’t “America.”
Exactly right. I didn’t mean “America” as a whole was to blame. But it seemed like no one cared that she behaved this way and it is “acceptable” for a 13 year old to act that way. She doesn’t want to wear a dorky t shirt? Well that’s normal! She doesn’t want to help her mother around the house? What 13 year old does? Those comments make me think our society accepts that behavior.