To make my 10yo pay for a broken lamp out of bday money?

[Articlesta]

Bit of a rant but curious what others would do.

DS (10) was mucking about in the living room on Sat after I’d told him to pack it in. He ended up knocking over a lamp that used to belong to my nan. Not worth loads or anything but sentimental. I was really upset.

He got £80 for his birthday last week so I took £30 of it to put towards a new lamp. Told him it’s what happens when you break stuff through messing about. He cried.

DH says I’m being mean and it’ll ruin his birthday memories or something daft. I think it’s a lesson? Actions = consequences? He wasn’t being malicious but he was warned.

AIBU? Would you have just let it go?

Not looking to get flamed but interested to know what others would do.

What would your Gran think of you stealing the money?

What makes you think her Gran would see it as stealing?

I don’t know what else it could be seen as. It’s certainly not a gift.

Well hopefully the lad, whilst sad, reluctantly appreciates why he needs to contribute to a replacement. In the same way I would reluctantly hand over funds if I dinged someone's car. Again, are we saying a ten year old can't have their x box confiscated for poor behaviour? Because it's theirs it would stealing?

Of course it should be different for adults and children, and yet you are conflating them. In your own analogy you say It's not theft, anymore than it would be if I had to pay to replace something I'd accidentally broken.

@Sundaybananas sorry, I'm not following. Not everything is different for child of ten and an adult....ten is old enough (even in law) to be held responsible for your actions, so the same. However, If an adult broke or damaged something carelessly, most of us would feel a sense of obligation to make good wheras a ten year old may not yet, so different, so that needs to be imposed by a responsible parent so they can learn to grow up into an adult who does willingly make recompense without being taken to small claims court.

But proportionately it's very different. It constitutes a much bigger % of disposable income for a 10 year old to replace a lamp than for most adults.

Spending birthday money is such a huge joy at 10. You can't repeat that 10th birthday and the gifts of money.

I'm not wedded to the rightness if the exact amount, maybe £10 would have been fine but I'm really disappointed by the number of posters which think nothing should have happened except a little chat cos "kids are kids". He was told twice to stop and didn't. Had he not just had a birthday presumably it would have been his pocket money..I don't really see the difference. My kids add together any birthday money to their existing funds, it's not held separately.

The difference is that other people have given him that money for his birthday. It’s once a year money, given to him with the expectation that he’d benefit from it.

Give him his money back, admit you over reacted, because you very much did. Imagine making a kid cry on his birthday over a lamp. Jesus.

YABU OP

The fact that so many people are writing this off as ‘kids being kids’ really goes a long way to explaining why so many towns have such a problem with teenagers running wild and being inconsiderate little thugs.

he was told to stop, twice. He didn’t listen. He broke someone else’s property. There’s a consequence to that.

Yep. Totally agree.
All this shying away from teaching children boundaries, is going to come back and bite everyone on the bum. These children are our future.

You can teach a child boundaries without stealing their birthday money.

Oh give over with the "stealing"! It's not theft, he needs to know when he's been told not to do something, then carries on and damages property, there's a price to pay! He is old enough to know better. Doesn't matter if you consider it just a lamp, it obviously had sentimental value to the op and is irreplaceable.
But hey, let's just let kids get away with whatever they like! It's not like the country isn't already overrun with badly parented children is it?! 🙄