Is this the best or worst ever "party favour"?

If your child came home with this from a kids party would you be upset?

Mum shares how her excited daughter came home from a kids party with a new pet.

“I got a Finding Dory,” the toddler announced when the babysitter brought her home from the peewee camp at our neighbourhood park.

It had been another girl’s birthday, and the mother brought fish as party favours for all 20 kids.

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” My husband and I foster three sisters. The Toddler is the oldest — at 3 years; the Infant clocks in at 18 months and the Newborn is six months. We have two dogs, both rescues, and an aquatic turtle we built a small pond for after it wandered into our back yard and never left. Our hands were full with responsibilities we chose without having another life foisted on us.”

I ranted on Facebook explains Georgene, “and a work acquaintance confessed to giving hermit crabs to the attendees at her nephew’s birthday. She said the kids thought she was the greatest. Last year, a neighbor found herself the unwitting recipient of two aquatic turtles when her child celebrated her fourth birthday. They died a few months later, bringing more trauma to a kid who was already struggling to cope with her parents’ divorce.

And that was my fear. The Toddler had already suffered so much in her short life — what new ordeal would the death of a pet be?

“We did our best for Finding Dory, got him a proper bowl with gravel and a plant, but our best wasn’t enough. A month after he arrived, I noticed he was more listless than usual, and my husband explained to the Toddler that Finding Dory was sick. The next day, I found the fish floating at the top of the bowl, his deep blue scales turning a washed-out gray.

When the Toddler came home from Head Start, she asked how Finding Dory was doing. I explained he had died, and the Toddler sobbed, inconsolable, for over an hour.”

Read the full article on Washington Post.

How would you feel if your child returned from a party with a new pet?

Share your comments below.

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28 Comments

- - june11 said
  - 10 Apr 2018
    8:19 am
Very irresponsible of the person who gave them. I wonder if the person was prepared to mind them when the recipient was going away for a holiday or was sick and couldn’t look after it, especially if they were in hospital. Would be interesting if several of the families involved went away at the same time.

- - Ellen said
  - 10 Apr 2018
    3:17 am
Not very considerate of the party giver !

- - mom90758 said
  - 04 Apr 2018
    3:51 pm
It’s surely different but it also requires a lot of commitment and responsibility. So, no, I don’t think I would be happy.

- - sars_angelchik said
  - 04 Apr 2018
    9:37 am
Perhaps if the party organiser contacted each parent and asked or put something on the invitation, maybe. But a pet, goldfish or otherwise is a responsibility. It’s a living creature that needs to be looked after, not just thrown away.

- - rachel1970 said
  - 04 Apr 2018
    7:14 am
They should ask the parents first if it’s OK to give any sort of pet

- - ralu said
  - 03 Apr 2018
    9:30 pm
This is definitely a bad idea.Some people don’t realize that pets mean responsibility.

- - BellaB said
  - 02 Apr 2018
    10:52 pm
I don’t think this is fair of the party giver.

- - mom93821 said
  - 02 Apr 2018
    7:00 am
Animals should not be given as gifts. Animal ownership is a massive responsibility and one which needs to be taken seriously. Families need to make decisions about animal/pet ownership and not receive them as a whimsical gift.

- - mom94125 said
  - 20 Oct 2017
    12:35 pm
yeah i mean that thought is nice but it is not really practical for some people. Maybe if it was a party with your actual close friends and you knew their stance on this….if they were cool with the idea, go for it.

- - sars_angelchik said
  - 01 Mar 2017
    2:50 pm
Seriously? Who gives a pet to anyone for a gift? Unless you are a couple and you go to the pet store together and select a pet that will be the gift for either yourself or your partner, pet gifts should never happen! Who are you to choose a companion for someone else. Plus when we are talking kids it’s usually the parents responsibility to then look after the animal.

- - ella12 said
  - 27 Feb 2017
    4:30 pm
I wouldn’t be happy. That is the decision of the parents.

- - rovermum said
  - 27 Feb 2017
    11:14 am
Noooo. A pet of any kind needs to be chosen by the family factoring in many things. I don’t think you should give anyone a pet (outside your immediate family) as a gift, left alone as a party favour. I think this is totally irresponsible and not well thought through at all.

- - mom57619 said
  - 26 Feb 2017
    2:13 pm
Oh dear …. mum of the party but not the school drop off line!

- - Ellen said
  - 26 Feb 2017
    2:46 am
They weren’t very considerate, they should have asked first.

- - meedee said
  - 25 Feb 2017
    3:20 pm
OMG….hell no…. I would not be happy at all.

Several years ago we had an incident with my middle daughter. She came home from her friends house with a puppy. She was so excited. She kept saying that she couldnt take it back because it was a gift. I had taught her that when someone gives you a gift you politely say thank you.
My husband demanded she take the puppy back. She did but she was in tears and so upset that she refused to talk to him for a week. She kept saying over and over “It was a present and I loved him” My husband ended up phoning the guy that gave her the puppy and blasting him over the phone. He told him how irresponsible it was to do that to a child.

After much drama in our household we ended getting her a kitten which was much better suited to our lifestyle.