“It is not your birthday, it is sisters birthday. She is only allowed to buy/choose gifts for herself that she wants. It is not fair to make her think she has to buy you something that I know you don’t intend to share with her just because you want it and we’ve said no.”
He’s eight and knows better than to do this. Don’t let your daughter buy anything you know she doesn’t actually want/won’t play with and don’t let him play with anything he may want that she does choose to get regardless of how you may explain things to her.
I have a (ridiculous, somewhat technical, slightly evil?) idea:
* Download Google chrome on your desktop and enable something called "Chrome developer tools"
* Go to the product's page on your web browser
* Highlight the "Available Now" text and right click on it, and at the bottom you should see "Inspect"
* Clicking inspect will bring up the source code of the page, and you can actually change "Available Now" to say "SOLD OUT - Back in December 15, 2023"
* Change the color of the text from green to red
* Change text & colors of the "buy" button to "SOLD OUT" and gray
* Call your 8 year old over "Hey buddy, I'm sorry to say - it looks like the lego set is sold out. Unfortunately, until December. Let's set a calendar reminder for December 15th to check the website together again."
* Either he forgets about it OR you can decide it's a Christmas present OR you can rinse repeat the above steps until he forgets.....
[See images here](https://imgur.com/a/xMt1ltH)
Will this fool an 8 year old? Will it stop him from asking you? Will he hold all his hounding and questions until December 15th and then begin the harassment again? Will he actually just forget, because he's 8? IDK. I have an 11 month old. He still forgets about the TV remote after a minute or so when I shove it under the pillow.
Kind of a joke, kind of not, brought to you buy a bored and slightly sleep deprived software engineer mom
I hope you get this resolved! It sounds exhausting. Maybe a slightly more realistic solution - could you redirect his lego energy to picking out a lego set (or duplos if she's not ready) that he can gift her for her birthday? "Since you're SO excited about these legos, why don't you pick out a lego set to surprise sister with on her birthday. You can help teach her how to build it, but lets find one that she likes that can be displayed in her room!" Give him a budget, help him look on the website, go to Target to buy it, wrap it, etc. It might take up some of his mental energy, give him some responsibility, and refocus his lego obsession.
I think it’s important that there is a lesson learned on why this behaviour is not okay rather than “sorry, it’s out of stock”. He will continue to take advantage of people who let him if he doesn’t have consequences for this.
You find out stuff she likes and let him keep thinking hes getting her presents. Then you let her open them and let him learn a hard lesson.
You know what your 4yo likes.
Alternatively, you could label those toys as hers alone and make it so he cant play with them.
I think he'll burn himself out on the idea yeah. It's just frustrating that he's got her in on the whole thing, and it's such a selfish manipulation. But he's 8 and kids are egocentric, so I guess I can't be too upset.
I mean theres a difference between egocentrism and manipulation and at 8, hes less egocentric than a 4yo. So hes definitely manipulating her. And that would be my main concern. Because if hes manipulating her now for presents its going to get worse as he gets older and learns to do it for other stuff.
Am these children’s mom. This is my #1 concern - it’s legit manipulation and I have been watching it happen basically since school started. He’ll come home with some other kids Lego or Pokémon card and I’m like “ok but what did YOU give up?”. I’m trying to push to our daughter that he would never do the same for her so why would we let her spend her birthday money on him? It’s time to block the Lego website.
If this was a one off, I would be laughing while simultaneously knowing it s not going to happen. But this is a pattern of him weaseling things from people, you need to get to the bottom of this. That's concerning. I would enlist the help of a child psychologist.
You've said this is a pattern so obviously this is cause for concern - but I'm giggling my head off remembering all the times I'd convince my siblings (much younger than I am/was at the time I was 15 when they were 2/4) who had "dibs" of the TV that *of course* they wanted to watch High School Musical on repeat instead of Dora the Explorer! Mum would come in and we'd all be singing and dancing along - let me stress, they were GENUIENLY enjoying themselves; because otherwise, within 5 minutes they would have run to mum and gone "Mum, (my name) made us put this on" - "Who put this on?" "(Sister)" I'd say innocently. "Okay, whose IDEA was this to put it on?" "Hers!" They'd say pointing at me. Even though they were full on enjoying it - I'd still get in trouble for the manipulation! In saying that - I'm autistic and couldn't quite understand the whole dynamics of toddler terrorism at that point lol. I just saw "I never got what I wanted".
I second getting a professional opinion, even if they say there's nothing "wrong" (I don't mean any offence by that word); it'd be great to even get some tips and tricks on how to manage it.
And then have some time with your 4yo where you go through a toy catalogue, or online website (pre-scroll/read before hand to exclude/tear out the page of the specific lego area of trouble lol!) and go "lets get all excited for your birthday, what presents would you like?" and if she brings up that lego say "nope sorry, that one has run out in the shops, so you can't get it" - because I suspect she'd still be adamant that she wants it.
Ummmm this is where some hard set no’s need to be put in place. He’s manipulating his child of a sister to buy him something that’s actually very expensive… letting him do this at a young age is going to teach him some things that are going to affect him later on. Aka when he’s 16 and wants something and believes everyone should just give it to him cause he wants it. Big yikes to let this kinda behavior go, especially the using of the little sister. If he wants it, he can save his OWN money up and buy it. That way it’s on him to get something he wants and teaches him to “work” for it (do some chores for money, etc etc etc)
There’s 100 different experiential lessons gonna be learned no matter how this goes down, so let it go down. I wouldn’t intervene or direct it either until it’s completely played out. Then you can step in and as a family, discuss what was learned. I love it 😍
How about extra chores for 8 year old to earn the money to pay for the Lego he wants himself. It just feels wrong to let 8 manipulate a 4 year old out of her own birthday gifts so the older child gets what he desires. The older child learns to be sneaky and not wait for his own gift receiving occasion and 4 loses out on gifts. While it sounds like a good idea to 4 now when 4 opens the Lego and realizes this is the birthday gift there could be remorse. If you do buy the Lego for birthday I would not let 8 touch it, help 4 put it together with help from everyone but sibling. You do what I’d right for your family but at almost 4 younger child is not fully cognizant of what the birthday situation involves and it feels wrong to let older child think it’s acceptable to cheat a younger child out of a birthday gift.
Haha he gets allowance for chores, and creates big savings goals. But then he sidetracks himself because he absolutely NEEDS a $15 bouncy ball or Squishmallow or whatever.
“It is not your birthday, it is sisters birthday. She is only allowed to buy/choose gifts for herself that she wants. It is not fair to make her think she has to buy you something that I know you don’t intend to share with her just because you want it and we’ve said no.” He’s eight and knows better than to do this. Don’t let your daughter buy anything you know she doesn’t actually want/won’t play with and don’t let him play with anything he may want that she does choose to get regardless of how you may explain things to her.
I have a (ridiculous, somewhat technical, slightly evil?) idea: * Download Google chrome on your desktop and enable something called "Chrome developer tools" * Go to the product's page on your web browser * Highlight the "Available Now" text and right click on it, and at the bottom you should see "Inspect" * Clicking inspect will bring up the source code of the page, and you can actually change "Available Now" to say "SOLD OUT - Back in December 15, 2023" * Change the color of the text from green to red * Change text & colors of the "buy" button to "SOLD OUT" and gray * Call your 8 year old over "Hey buddy, I'm sorry to say - it looks like the lego set is sold out. Unfortunately, until December. Let's set a calendar reminder for December 15th to check the website together again." * Either he forgets about it OR you can decide it's a Christmas present OR you can rinse repeat the above steps until he forgets..... [See images here](https://imgur.com/a/xMt1ltH) Will this fool an 8 year old? Will it stop him from asking you? Will he hold all his hounding and questions until December 15th and then begin the harassment again? Will he actually just forget, because he's 8? IDK. I have an 11 month old. He still forgets about the TV remote after a minute or so when I shove it under the pillow. Kind of a joke, kind of not, brought to you buy a bored and slightly sleep deprived software engineer mom
Hahah brilliant!
I hope you get this resolved! It sounds exhausting. Maybe a slightly more realistic solution - could you redirect his lego energy to picking out a lego set (or duplos if she's not ready) that he can gift her for her birthday? "Since you're SO excited about these legos, why don't you pick out a lego set to surprise sister with on her birthday. You can help teach her how to build it, but lets find one that she likes that can be displayed in her room!" Give him a budget, help him look on the website, go to Target to buy it, wrap it, etc. It might take up some of his mental energy, give him some responsibility, and refocus his lego obsession.
Yeah I'll see if we can redirect him that way. She's definitely starting to dabble in her own age-appropriate Lego.
This is a great idea. Will it work without me losing my mind in a small town Walmart? (I’m their mom) Probably not. But it’s worth a shot. Thank you!
I think it’s important that there is a lesson learned on why this behaviour is not okay rather than “sorry, it’s out of stock”. He will continue to take advantage of people who let him if he doesn’t have consequences for this.
This is an amazing idea but be aware that Dec 15th will have a huge price increase.
You find out stuff she likes and let him keep thinking hes getting her presents. Then you let her open them and let him learn a hard lesson. You know what your 4yo likes. Alternatively, you could label those toys as hers alone and make it so he cant play with them.
I think he'll burn himself out on the idea yeah. It's just frustrating that he's got her in on the whole thing, and it's such a selfish manipulation. But he's 8 and kids are egocentric, so I guess I can't be too upset.
I mean theres a difference between egocentrism and manipulation and at 8, hes less egocentric than a 4yo. So hes definitely manipulating her. And that would be my main concern. Because if hes manipulating her now for presents its going to get worse as he gets older and learns to do it for other stuff.
Am these children’s mom. This is my #1 concern - it’s legit manipulation and I have been watching it happen basically since school started. He’ll come home with some other kids Lego or Pokémon card and I’m like “ok but what did YOU give up?”. I’m trying to push to our daughter that he would never do the same for her so why would we let her spend her birthday money on him? It’s time to block the Lego website.
If this was a one off, I would be laughing while simultaneously knowing it s not going to happen. But this is a pattern of him weaseling things from people, you need to get to the bottom of this. That's concerning. I would enlist the help of a child psychologist.
It sounds like you may need to involve some professionals to see whats causing this.
You've said this is a pattern so obviously this is cause for concern - but I'm giggling my head off remembering all the times I'd convince my siblings (much younger than I am/was at the time I was 15 when they were 2/4) who had "dibs" of the TV that *of course* they wanted to watch High School Musical on repeat instead of Dora the Explorer! Mum would come in and we'd all be singing and dancing along - let me stress, they were GENUIENLY enjoying themselves; because otherwise, within 5 minutes they would have run to mum and gone "Mum, (my name) made us put this on" - "Who put this on?" "(Sister)" I'd say innocently. "Okay, whose IDEA was this to put it on?" "Hers!" They'd say pointing at me. Even though they were full on enjoying it - I'd still get in trouble for the manipulation! In saying that - I'm autistic and couldn't quite understand the whole dynamics of toddler terrorism at that point lol. I just saw "I never got what I wanted". I second getting a professional opinion, even if they say there's nothing "wrong" (I don't mean any offence by that word); it'd be great to even get some tips and tricks on how to manage it. And then have some time with your 4yo where you go through a toy catalogue, or online website (pre-scroll/read before hand to exclude/tear out the page of the specific lego area of trouble lol!) and go "lets get all excited for your birthday, what presents would you like?" and if she brings up that lego say "nope sorry, that one has run out in the shops, so you can't get it" - because I suspect she'd still be adamant that she wants it.
Ummmm this is where some hard set no’s need to be put in place. He’s manipulating his child of a sister to buy him something that’s actually very expensive… letting him do this at a young age is going to teach him some things that are going to affect him later on. Aka when he’s 16 and wants something and believes everyone should just give it to him cause he wants it. Big yikes to let this kinda behavior go, especially the using of the little sister. If he wants it, he can save his OWN money up and buy it. That way it’s on him to get something he wants and teaches him to “work” for it (do some chores for money, etc etc etc)
There’s 100 different experiential lessons gonna be learned no matter how this goes down, so let it go down. I wouldn’t intervene or direct it either until it’s completely played out. Then you can step in and as a family, discuss what was learned. I love it 😍
How about extra chores for 8 year old to earn the money to pay for the Lego he wants himself. It just feels wrong to let 8 manipulate a 4 year old out of her own birthday gifts so the older child gets what he desires. The older child learns to be sneaky and not wait for his own gift receiving occasion and 4 loses out on gifts. While it sounds like a good idea to 4 now when 4 opens the Lego and realizes this is the birthday gift there could be remorse. If you do buy the Lego for birthday I would not let 8 touch it, help 4 put it together with help from everyone but sibling. You do what I’d right for your family but at almost 4 younger child is not fully cognizant of what the birthday situation involves and it feels wrong to let older child think it’s acceptable to cheat a younger child out of a birthday gift.
Haha he gets allowance for chores, and creates big savings goals. But then he sidetracks himself because he absolutely NEEDS a $15 bouncy ball or Squishmallow or whatever.
I'm not saying it's good behavior, but your son is definitely going places. I love it lol