Birthday gifts are always special, especially when they come from unexpected sources. One Reddit user received a thoughtful and heartwarming gift from her 11-year-old daughter, touching her deeply. The mom shared her special gift on Reddit, where it was met with overwhelming admiration and love. The mom uploaded a photo of a couple of Canadian dollar bills along with two notes from her daughter. One note read, "Love you mama cutie! From Ivanya." Another note told the mom that she was supposed to spend the money. The daughter requested her mom not to save it. The mom captioned the post, "Celebrated my birthday today..got this money envelope from my 11-year-old with this message ..she knows I am frugal, laughing out loud."
The mom replied to one of the comments by @808zAndThunder that said, "You’re doing an amazing job as a mom OP. Maybe use the money to get some ice cream with her." She wrote, "Thank you. Means a lot ...She is my best friend. She turned 11 on Feb 25 and got a bit of cash from family and friends...I was so touched that she took some of it and gave it to me today for my birthday...Oh, my heart." It's truly special when a child sets aside their gift money to make their mom's birthday extra special. It also shows how observant the girl is, knowing her mom might save the money instead of enjoying herself. Everyone agreed on one thing: the daughter is an absolute sweetheart.
People also wished the mom for her special day alongside praising the daughter. In a follow-up comment, the mom wrote, " Thank you so much, everyone ..your comments and thoughts made my day even more special …I am taking her to the Kung Fu Panda show today with premiere seats." A truly special return gift for a thoughtful girl. Some people also found the daughter's additional request of not saving the money hilarious. As one person pointed out the sentence, another person @Mc_Whiskey replied to them and wrote, "I love that, I remember getting money as a kid and my parents saying things like that's going in your college fund. I just wanted to buy candy and Hot Wheels cars."
People also took to the comments to say that the mom was raising her daughter the right way. People also shared their own stories in the comments. A user @Cute-Cheesecake-8602 wrote, "When I was 21 I left home and started working. Every time I called my mom she was complaining about how tough her financial situation was. So I sent her 500 euros to cheer her up. When I came back home a year later, she showed me that she still had it in a leather wallet inside the closet." The mom replied to the comment and wrote, "Oh my god! I can so relate to it...I told my mom that I was never going to spend this money. Will keep the note and the money as is ... anyway taking her to Kung Fu Panda tonight with some dope premiere seats :) You are a good kid and your mom must have felt so proud and happy that you did that for her." The mom also shared that her daughter made the card herself and is quite creative. Her daughter truly made her mom's birthday special.
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.