Before You Present An Expensive Gift To A Child

This is regarding presenting a costly toy to a child who is not your own.
The relationship between children and their parents is very complicated. Parents use many tricks to make the child to toe the line. (and many of them are near-illegal 😉 ). 

Tricky parenting policies:
Appeasement: You are my favourite child in this world. I love you soooommmmuucchh. NOW, finish this meal for me. 
Give and take – You can play for half an hour now, but you have to finish the homework before sleeping.
Bribe – Eat the meals now and you will get to play outside with neighbours tomorrow and a day after.
Blackmail – Stop throwing tantrums or I will call your teacher and tell him that you are a bad boy.
Harassment – FINISH THE HOMEWORK NOW or I will… (wide open, anger spitting red eyes)
Hide a deed – Do this thing and I will not tell dad that you tore the sofa cover today.

Needless to say that parent-child relationship involves lot of cocktail of emotions, a complex chemistry, indescribable love and hateful-love.

As soon as a guest enters the home, this parent-child fragile emotional balance becomes a bit more shaky.
The child starts thinking –
This aunt speaks so nice words to me, unlike mom! 
Wish I get to spend more time with this uncle, than parents.
Its okay to break some rules. Anyhow mom is not going to scold me in front of  this uncle. 

The situation can really go out of control, when the guest presents an expensive gift to the child without the parents being aware of it, ahead.

Dad always talks about rules, homework, eating, discipline, but this uncle talks so nice and gifted this!
Mom always so rude but this aunt fulfilled my wish in a second.
So…. the uncle is rich and dad is poor….?!

As you can see, the parent-child emotional balance gets a hit. It takes a lot of hard work for the parents to get back this balance.

So, what I suggest is to let the parents know well ahead that you are presenting such a thing to their child on that particular day.
This will give a chance for the parents to remix the chemistry, write a new give-and-take / bribe policies / stories well ahead.
This will ensure that the new expensive gift does not create a big ripples of emotional confusion between the parents and the child.
This will make the life of parents a lot easier.

So, whenever you present an expensive gift, try to surprise the child but not the parents.