Neighbour’s kid picked my daffodils

[Lucylooloo2]

Just that really, had lots of notifications of movement on the doorbell camera and lo and behold a kid (8ish years old) from a few houses down with a bunch of daffodils in her hand.

Checked mine in my front garden when I got home and Every. Single. One. has been taken.

I’m just really sad tbh. Know there are much bigger problems in the world but they were a little spark of joy for me 😕

This reminds me of an incident a couple of years ago. Near where I live next to the road there is a small hill shielding the houses behind from the busy road. It has trees and shrubbery and each spring daffodils grow. I always love to see them. I was crossing the road to see a young woman about 19 or 20 with a Tupperware box picking the heads off! I told her those were for everyone to enjoy and not for her to just pick the heads off depriving us all of seeing them.

I did this as a child, they were growing along a verge... my mum went mad, she was mortified 😂

Ridiculous. The child's mother should buy them not the victim of the theft.

Exactly. Otherwise how far do we take that logic? If someone steals the ops car should she have to buy them one too because they don't have one and it would make them happy 🥴.

Thanks I am a joy. And my children (now adults) would not have dreamed of going into someone's garden and stripping the flowers from it.
Before you think otherwise, I would not be shouting, raging or starting a war. Not my style. I would be expressing my disappointment/sadness about my garden though. But in a polite measured way. And then it's up to the parents.
And I wouldn't reward the child with more daffodils.

Picking one in MY garden is not forgivable, especially as she had all oof her mother’s daffodils from which to choose.

She’s 8, not a toddler.

I remember a few years ago, two little girls in the village near us going door to door selling daffodils they'd picked from other people's gardens so not 'super sweet' at all!
Children need to learn to respect other people's property and the OP needs to feel confident her tulips won't be next so it's good that messaging the Mum and the resulting peace offering seem to have worked.

Yep. This is how we end up not being able to have nice things at all. If people can’t have flowers in their gardens without them getting nicked they just won’t bother to plant them.

It not super sweet to steal. It's super selfish.

I think I might attach a sign along these lines to my front garden fence. First a tulip height, then at clematis height.

Don't be ridiculous. A harmonious civilised society is not created by ignoring and excusing selfish and thoughtless behaviours. Children need adults to teach them about boundaries and model good behaviour. In this case both Op and the child's mother went some way in doing that. No one should demonise the child, who doesn't have the same understanding of the ramifications of her behaviour, but the adults have a duty to her to put boundaries in place for her learning (and safety).

"Victim of the theft"
absolutely insane way to talk about a child unthinkingly picking some daffodils.

it wasn’t done unthinkingly, the child who the Op said is around 8 intentionally took all of them

I don’t see how. There was a theft - the daffodils. And there was a victim of that theft - the OP.

Yes. She ‘thought’ at least long enough to decide to take from someone else’s garden and not her own.

Why "unthinkingly" when she "thought" to leave all the daffodils in her own garden untouched, preferring to enter the garden of one of her neighbours and take all the daffodils there? Seems quite deliberate to me. She just didn't know that neighbour had a doorbell camera, so would know who took them all.

Absolutely cleaned OP out, too. No ‘some’ about it.

Wow I hope I never live such a miserable life that I'm unable to give a child grace for a mistake.
kids don't always think things through, they are impulsive and their understanding of consequences of their actions aren't the same as an adults.

What does giving grace look like to you?

This is really not OK at all. Sounds as though the mother hasn't come round with daughter to apologise, which is a real shame, and bad parenting. If you see them locally, you might say something to her?

I don’t think expecting her parents to discipline her so that it doesn’t happen again and to do what they can to make good the loss is a sign of someone with a ‘miserable life’. Surely a child’s ‘understanding of consequences’ develops exactly like this? I’m not aware that anyone is calling for her to be flogged in the public square or anything.

Well op said her neighbour and daughter left a plant for her on the door step, so I'd assume that is an apology and the child has been spoken to about it and it won't happen again.

This wasn't a 'mistake', this was a deliberate act to deprive the OP of her property and by a child who is old enough to know better.

Nobody is suggesting the child should face adult consequences fgs. Just that she should be made to face appropriate consequences such as: being made to apologise in person to the OP, and pay for replacements out of her own pocket money. That would be enough to teach her that actions have unforeseen consequences.

That has absolutely zero to do with how miserable (or otherwise) our lives might be. Personally speaking my life is not at all miserable, though unfortunately it is occasionally blighted by the selfishness of others.

I would certainly hope so. An apology to OP’s face would have been less craven, but perhaps this is all she’s going to get. It’s not kind to rip up someone’s hard work like that. I hope the parents have made that clear.

It's not unthinking when they cleared out every single daffodil in the OP's garden, but didn't touch those in their own garden.