My four year old son is showing some serious signs of spoilage the past few months.Last Friday when picking him up from preschool, he threw a tantrum and refused to leave with me. He had snuck a Target advertisement into his bookbag that morning and showed his friends at school a toy he wanted. When I got there, he was going around to every kid on the playground talking to them about asking their parents for a dollar so that they could all buy him the toy. Smart business sense? Sure. But uhhh, not okay.At CVS on Saturday, he ran away from me to the toy section as soon as we walked in. We then had to leave because he was throwing a fit about "needing to get his toy." I told him we weren't there to get a toy and that we could look at the toys for a few minutes after we got the stuff we needed. He screamed "I WANT MY TOY NOOOWWWWWW!!!" and threw himself on the ground. So we left.Yesterday at Target, my wife (6 months pregnant) wanted to go in to grab a few things for our vacation next week. My son threw such a wild and aggressive temper tantrum about wanting a toy that she had to let him play on her phone to calm down. She went to carry him out of the store but realized that it was too tough on her being pregnant to carry a tantruming kid.I would say that we are pretty good about getting him new things on occasion. We're more big on experiences and spending money on others or spending money on doing something new. He gets new toys from us on birthdays and Christmas. The occasional new toy at a special event. He even has his own Paw Patrol piggy bank where he can take a few dollars to festivals or stores or wherever when it's appropriate to buy something new. I feel like that's a good teaching experience for him to see that money he earns or gets can be saved up or spent on things he wants.But it's the stuff he's getting from others that seems to be spiraling out of control. He's the first and only grandkid on both sides of the family and we're the first of our friends to have a kid.To give you an indication of how much he's receiving:He got a total of 67 presents at Christmas. My wife's extended family came into town, and we were really excited to spend time with family we hadn't seen in a while. But all 14 of them got our son 2-3 presents EACH. And they were nice presents too. My mother spent about $1000 on his Christmas presents.Our friends buy him things or give him things all of the time. My wife's best friend's husband had a fidget spinner and my son thought it was cool. So he said, "You can have it."We're visiting friends next week on our vacation and they told me last night that they got our son a few things for him to open when we got there. I told them that they didn't need to do that and that we were just excited to see them. Then found out they got him four new toys and games.My wife's parents' neighbors will bring him random toy sets about once or twice a month. Their grandkids are grown, so they bring him new toys all of the time. He got a really nice set of dinosaurs this past Monday. He's gotten to the point where we hear "When are NEIGHBORS going to bring my new toys over?" about once a week.My mother is probably the worst about it because she feels that being a grandparent entitles her to shower him with gifts and praise. I'm fine with her being an involved and giving grandparent, but she will take him to a store to get a toy simply because he asks to go. And there's no dollar limit. About a month after Christmas, he was spending the night at their house and said he wanted to go to Target to get a new toy. So they went and got a $60 LEGO set. Which is wonderful to hear about as she talks to me about how they're struggling saving for retirement.We've spoken to our parents about how much he's getting in terms of gifts and presents. My mother gets really defensive about it and says I'm limiting her ability to be a good grandmother. We spoke before this past Christmas about not getting him too much and she said he'd only have a few things to open. And she was right sort of. She just stuffed multiple gifts into large boxes.Any advice for having this conversation? I'm really ready to say that if they buy him any more toys without discussing it with us first, he won't be allowed to spend time with them without our supervision. Is that too harsh? via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2HUDwuK
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