To think no one does this - Christmas toys related

The Playmobile thing ..it varies. Some of the sets, and some kids, like my DD, loved the building process and we didn't build her stuff but my ds, who has dyspraxia and the castle that was v v fiddly, it would have been a disaster and ending in tears. Horses for courses.

I had this with the sims!!

I remember my mum buying a new computer like a day or two later though. I didn’t ask, beg, suggest at all, and they were far from well off but that’s the sort of person she was.
Only now looking back do I realise how nuts it was!
The lengths we go to as parents sometimes.

Well a stay at home mum with the kids in school probably would have more time for that than someone working full time. Obviously depends on if they have other responsibilities etc but surely in general it must be pretty accurate

The playing the games thing is obviously a bit mad. Why can't they struggle with a level?

But we do get toys out of the box, put batteries in if necessary, build things if they need building etc. Basically, we get the toys to a state where they can be played with immediately because I don't want to spend Christmas morning building a sodding car garage with working lift. I don't put them back in the box. (And I work full time..)

I think she probably needs someone to tell her explicitly that she was a shit mum if she's so confident making comments to you after abandoning her kids.

We used to remove most of the cable ties, and put batteries in.
With tech we would pre charge, turn on and upload software updates.
We wouldn't have thought of learning games or reading lego instructions however.

I know you're right, and I know that rising above it is the mature thing to do, but equally the MIL is then allowed to throw digs and hurts left, right and center without any backlash?! I personally couldn't bite my tongue! I couldn't resist pointing out how hypocritical she is, tbh.

Well I'm a sahm and I do/did a lot of this, probably needed to fill my time with real jobs.

I took cable ties off everything because there's always 9 million on everything and it takes fuckin ages to cut them off. I also put batteries in, saves looking for screwdrivers on the morning and trying to fit batteries into everything that needed them, which was basically nearly everything ! I put them all back into the boxes which was easy so when my 5 came down they could play with their stuff straight away.

Consoles well you'll soon find out that you can't just plug them in and start playing 😂

Clearly if you’re a SAHM to kids in school then you’ve got roughly 6hrs more a day to do it? When are people claiming SAHM’s don’t have more time? Yeah if you’ve got a toddler and a baby no, but older kids, of course you have a LOT more time.

Not only did I do this but I made it into the Washington Post. Back in my day toys came wired to a really thick cardboard that I couldn't cut with scissors.
I opened everything before Christmas to remove the wires, sort batteries out and so on.
The Washington Post ask for stories and I made it into print.

Your MIL had way too much time on her hands.

I'd set up a games console and install games in advance. Otherwise you could be waiting hours for downloads and patches.

I also always checked batteries.

I'm a sahm and trust me I don't have time to do that. Yabu to be judgy towards sahms.

We always built the big playmobil sets (castles, farm etc) and took the cable ties off things. Games we installed on the console xmas eve and then put the disc back in box and wrapped it - started doing this after eldest had to wait 6hrs for the game to download and update on xmas day but we live in a rural area and Internet speeds are not good. Never built lego though as that's part the fun and I've never played their video games.

For us it was more that we had 3 boys and not enough hands to build everything at the same time on the morning, especially if i was on shift. Christmas eve night used to be an endurance test!

There's a big gap between DS3 and DS4 so this year it will just be having the batteries, screwdrivers and scissors ready.

Isn’t the point of building toys to build them though?

I’ve never ever checked toys worked before wrapping them. I’ve never encountered a toy that doesn’t work straight from the box, it wouldn’t even occur to me.

I can’t even picture the last thing that has needed batteries, all noisy light up toys come already working these days.

Probably just an excuse for her to play with the toys before the children took them over!

Agree I thought the same!!!
She’s clearly just a bit mad. Can’t see what in earth it has to do with being a SAHM. whenever there’s a thread suggesting a SAHM has loads of free time my first thought is the op clearly isn’t one because if they were they would know this is complete fiction 😂

No one does all that, and neither did she. It didn't happen. Playing all the games? What, all the way through, every level? Every game? Every toy? Testing every possible thing that could possibly go wrong? No. Didn't happen.

Same here.

Batteries ✅
Check it includes everything needed for X to work ✅
Roughly know how X works ✅

I have unboxed and put batteries in before wrapping, but for a limited amount of years when the kids were very small (2 year gap between twins and eldest.) Christmas morning was pretty brutal otherwise! Haven't done it for years though, and certainly don't think it was normal, we were just desperate 😅

Howling at this because it's just unearthed a memory of one Christmas in the 90s or early 2000s when my 'main present' was a computer game (I think Lego harry potter!) that I'd been looking forward to for aaaages......and when I went to play it, our computer was too old to run it! The verdict being I just had to suck it up and wait until my dad upgraded the computer which wasn't straight away I'll tell you that for free

She sounds barking
although we did sort out sylvanians stuff and put stickers on and stuff cos it’s very fiddly and would have ended up being trash as kids outnumbered us, and we did get the kids out of the house and spent a day figuring out Xbox and getting subscription to an Xbox game stream thing and downloaded some games,took like 12 hours to download so was glad we’d done that
did similar with switch, sorted out a Nintendo account and stuff
we would be so rubbish at that stuff that Xmas day would be a disaster if we hadnt
but about the Lego? That is mad!!
Just try to make sure you have the right size batteries, whatever’s listed on the box, sort out consoles and you’ll be grand!
But I think toys usually come with some sort of cheap runs out quickly but means you can at least get going type of battery already installed these days?
also, I have never wrapped presents from Santa, never had them wrapped as a kid either, sounds like such a lot of hassle!