This 26-year-old woman only has one nephew, named Eric, who is 8-years-old. And while she doesn’t visit her sister and Eric a lot because she lives far away, she makes sure to see them for birthdays and holidays.
Plus, whenever she visits, she usually purchases Eric some candy or a toy as a surprise.
“To be honest, I like to spoil him, and maybe I am a little bit to blame for what happened, too,” she prefaced.
Since it was Eric’s birthday last week, she visited her family as usual and bought the little boy a nice toy car. Apparently, the car was pretty big and even had lights on it.
Anyway, after she arrived at the party, she first wished her nephew a happy birthday before handing over his gift. Eric immediately opened up the present and reportedly loved it.
“So far, this is the best one,” her nephew said.
Now, at the time, she figured Eric was just excited about the car. Later, though, it became clear that the comment was probably intended more maliciously
This is because about an hour after the party started, Eric started making an announcement to all of the adult guests. During that announcement, he revealed how she “won” and was now the person her nephew loved the most.
Why, you might be wondering? Well, because she apparently got Eric the birthday present that he liked the most.
Afterward, though, her nephew then proceeded to essentially rank everyone else’s gifts. First, he told her mother– his grandmother– that her board game gift was bad. So, Eric claimed not to love his grandma anymore!
Then, her nephew turned to one of his friends and said that next year, the friend wouldn’t be invited back because his gift– a set of dinosaur figurines– was also bad!
She was appalled by her nephew’s statements and really thought her sister or brother-in-law would step in to say something. To her surprise again, though, they just stood there and laughed along
So, she took matters into her own hands and decided to tell Eric that he was not supposed to say such rude things about his birthday gifts. She also pointed out how guests buy what they can, and Eric should be grateful for what he received.
At that point, though, her nephew just doubled down and claimed he didn’t understand why he needed to love people who don’t buy him nice gifts.
“I genuinely can’t believe my sister is teaching this [stuff] to her son,” she vented.
Her brother-in-law still agreed with his son, though, and said to Eric, “Yeah, they should give you all the best.”
She was not going to let the situation go, though, and reiterated to Eric how a person’s worth is not tied to the size or cost of presents they purchase. She also decided to tell Eric that if he really believed that, then she would not keep buying her nephew gifts anymore.
After she put her foot down, Eric apparently began to cry. Then, her sister told her off for making her nephew upset at his own party
Thankfully, though, most of her family and even some of her sister’s in-laws were on her side– agreeing that it was really bad to teach children such ungratefulness.
And since her mom was pretty upset, too, they both wound up leaving afterward.
Her sister was seriously angry at her, though, and texted her later– berating her for leaving before the candles were blown out. Her sister was also furious that she told Eric he wouldn’t be getting any more gifts from her and claimed that she shouldn’t ever make empty threats to a kid
“But I said it’s not empty, and it’s not a threat. It’s a promise until they teach their kids some manners,” she revealed.
Ever since the whole birthday gift incident, though, she has started to question her actions. She’s not sure if it was right of her to discuss the issue in the middle of her nephew’s birthday party– while Eric was obviously present
So now, she’s been left wondering whether making her nephew cry on his birthday after he started ranking his gifts was the wrong thing to do.
Were her nephew’s comments extremely rude and inappropriate? Can you believe Eric’s parents did not step in? Did she do the right thing by trying to teach her nephew a lesson? Or could she have handled the situation in a better way?
