A New Jersey mom has some theories about why her 5-year-old daughter thought it was acceptable to open every Christmas gift in the house before anyone else woke up.
Jessica Ciraulo posted the original clip on TikTok December 25, saying her daughter “woke up and opened every single present in the house,” including “her sister’s, my husband’s, and mine.” The video quickly started racking up views.
“You want to talk about a major parenting fail,” the 42-year-old mom said in the now-deleted video, indicating a mountain of strewn wrapping paper and boxes all over the floor.
“I was so looking forward to, like, a magical Christmas morning. I spent three hours wrapping these presents,” Ciraulo continued. “We didn’t get to watch her open a single present.”
“What are we doing wrong here that our daughter would think this is okay??” she asked in the video caption, saying she was “open to suggestions.”
TikTok users came out in force with their opinions.
“This is so not a parenting fail. You cannot control your kid’s actions even if you try. You’re likely a good momma with all that effort. Don’t sweat it,” one popular comment says.
“Honestly mama, sit her down, and then explain what she did, why you’re hurt by it and ask her why she did it,” another person suggested.
“Every day this app confirms my decision to never have kids,” a third person observed.
Some people messaged Ciraulo, she told Insider, saying the video was exploiting her daughter. “I wasn’t ‘shaming’ her in my video, though, and I would never do that publicly or privately. That is just not the way we parent,” she told the publication.
In a follow-up video, the mom said she decided to donate some of the toys as punishment. She also claimed her daughter wasn’t a “bad kid” but “lacks impulse control” and “made a bad decision” partly because of the “amount of time that she spends on her tablet and some of the things she’s learning there.”
Ciraulo told Insider that the behavior prompted her to take the tablet away as her daughter was spending up to five hours per day using it. “She’s not getting it back, maybe ever,” she explains.
“It was teaching her to be competitive and materialistic in an unhealthy way,” Ciraulo continued. “She would also watch a lot of YouTube videos of other kids playing those games, and that was reinforcing those concepts.”
She also confirmed that her daughter knew she was supposed to wake her parents up before opening the gifts.