Reply to Nephew broke my cell phone screen. Deduct repair from his graduation gift?

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Reply to "Nephew broke my cell phone screen. Deduct repair from his graduation gift?"

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[quote=Anonymous]
OP, you said yourself that your nephew is always clumsy. Sounds like he wasn't exactly tossing your stuff around, but did a dumb thing. He did tell you what happened when it happened and didn't lie, right? That moment was your chance to say, "OK, I get that it was an accident, but you need to think about how you're going to take responsibility and put it right." Did you say that in the moment?

Tying the phone issue to his graduation is unnecessary, unless you really do plan to tell him outright, I docked your grad gift to pay for the phone you broke. That is not the high road at all, OP, and he actually will not feel the pain of that at all -- he won't really feel the loss of money he never had in his hands anyway.

Talk to him adult to adult and in person and just say simply, "I do get that you didn't mean to do this, and I accept your apology (assuming here he did say he was sorry), but it is a real loss for me as this is a work phone. Let's work out either some payment, or you can do some chores for me and 'work it out' that way."

If he has to do some chores for you or produce money he already has in his wallet, he will feel that. He won't truly feel any loss if you dock his gift money. Unless you do plan to announce to him that you're doing so, and then frankly he'll likely shrug it off and say, "Yeah, that's fine." Give him the opportunity to take responsibility by separating the grad gift from the phone problem. A gift should be given unconditionally.

Yeah, chores may not really pay for the repair, but seriously, this is a clumsy kid who did a dumb thing and admitted it. If he is willing to own it and shows remorse and willingness to repay you or work it off -- why take a positive thing like graduation and mess with it? [/quote]

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