What would you make of this behaviour?

[DinosaursAreCool]

Child is offered a new bike, is encouraged to pick one out that they like and said it will be bought for them. When the bike arrives, child is told the bike won’t be for them but for their older sibling instead. Child is upset as they’d been excited about getting the bike and had been told it would be for them. Child is told they are acting spoilt for being upset, as they’ll have a bike - the siblings old bike - and that should be good enough.

I would consider it emotionally abusive.

This sounds bloody awful

Why the hell would anyone do that to a kid? nasty.

That’s fucking awful.

It’s hard because we’ve always passed down bikes so the elder one does inevitably get the ‘new’ bike and you have to manage expectations around this as it can be upsetting for the younger one.

But you don’t get hopes up like that - that’s the opposite of managing expectations!

Cruel.

Nasty. Really a nasty thing to do.

Playing devil’s advocate, though - do you know for sure this is what happened? Or was it the child’s interpretation of what was offered?

Because, as part of the new bike/bike hand-down, we’ve let the youngest pick the colour of the new bike, so that when it comes to them in due course it feels like theirs/they have joint ownership from the start. But that’s a clear discussion with both children and they alternate who picks colours etc.

But I could imagine if someone had this idea but didn’t communicate it properly to the poor kid picking the bike out and them being all excited.

But also - wouldn’t it be the wrong size anyway? Did a mistake happen and they let the kid choose one that wasn’t suitable for them in the end as it’s too big?