DC/birthday punishment?

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Ok, long term poster here who name changed for something else a few days ago and I've been trying all day to change back, I get an error message - so we'll go with my temporary username for now, as I have a burning question:

Is it ever ok to refuse to buy your own child a birthday present, following their recent bad behaviour? It was threatened as a consequence stupidest threat ever!? and the behaviour continued/worsened despite the threat, so now the person is intending to carry through with it...child is 8, the exact words used were "you're not getting anything from me for your birthday" even though the present would have been bought out of "family money"

Thoughts please?

it depends on so many things, the behaviour the present who is saying it is it part of a pattern of stupid threats.
but generally speaking surely birthdays are a chance to say i love you whatever even if i dont like your behaviour sometimes

Stupidest threat ever! It's a shame that the child didn't take the threat seriously and change their behaviour, but I'm guessing it was such an outlandish thing to say that they didn't believe for one moment that it was real.

To go through with this would be really cruel. There's a time and place for punishments and the birthday of an 8 year old is not the time. The adult in this situation needs to back down gracefully, expressing their disappointment and perhaps coming up with an alternative, explaining that they shouldn't have threatened this in the first place, but they were frustrated and angry.

It's ok for adults to admit they got it wrong, in fact it might help this particular child to see that sometimes we make mistakes but we can resolve them.

Who has made the threat?

It's an horrible thing to do.

And a lesson in not making ridiculous threats.

Birthdays are to celebrate who you are, and from your parents pov , that you were born. So if a child is to that a parent will or might abandon a celebration of their very being, what do they have to lose?

However because parents are only human , and it is fine for kids to see that , it is OK for a parent to say 'look, I was mad because you did this and that , and I don't like that behaviour. But I do love you, and will always want to celebrate your birthday , so I did the wrong thing when I said I would not give you a present on our special day. But I think you can behave better and to prove that here is this pasta jar...." Or whatever. If they get pasta in the jar they get a small treat (unrelated to birthday) if they behave badly , a piece of pasta goes out.

Posted too soon. It's also a wake up call that punishments and threats are doing nothing to help your child improve their behaviour and that you need to find yourself a better bag of tricks.

No, birthdays are events that shouldn't get affected by punishments. They made a mistake with that threat. MarkRuff's advice is good.

If you threatened to - yes, totally OK.

dss was really badly behaved around his birthday. He had asked a for a screen for his gaming PC. We didn't even bother to threaten not to get it, we just didn't. And told on his birthday wht he hadn't got it. He got a few things and we went for the pre planned motocross day, but we would have cancelled that and his sleepover the night before if both hadn't involved letting so many other people down.

I don't think he's learnt anything from it though. but we did at least save a hundred quid or so

Absolutely not ok, that's all they'll remember of their childhood if they have a birthday without presents from their parent one year! Birthdays are incredibly symbolic, and the behaviour leading up to it will be forgotten (even by you in a decade) but the punishment not.

I sometimes make threats and don't follow through, I think my children know me well enough to know sometimes I am just exasperated. I don't believe you have to follow through whatever otherwise you have no authority as a parent, an eight year old can understand anger/things done in haste. Obviously most of the time you do, but I have backed down a couple of things and just reclarified what the consequences will be when we are all calmer.

I would make it very clear that your love/birthday party/presents are not in jeopardy, and then think about how you can reset things so that the behaviour might improve. The two need to be independent.

Thank you, all, for sharing your opinions with me (sorry I didn't come back last night, fell asleep with my littlest DC). You've put things into words so much better than I was managing to! The only reply I could muster up last night when DH said it again, was me saying well you're a cunt then - not much progress and not constructive. Now I have some better explanations I can take to him, and have it clear in my mind just why this is so so wrong.

I absolutely agree birthdays should be a celebration of when the child came into the world! There's no way he will be left without a token gift from us at the very least, there is also a friend coming for takeaway tea and an outing after school so they will still be going ahead.

I don't hold it against him for making the silly threat (I wasn't there to point out that it was a very stupid idea!) most parents have threatened a daft consequence at some point and yes I've backed down from one or two myself. Like has been said here, I've explained I was wrong and we've moved on, no biggie.

Thanks for your input, hopefully this can move on to sensible discussion later!