After traveling to developing countries and back, I am left with the impression that American children seem to get everything they want. Two major news companies have published reports about how children are dominating their parents. Even marketing efforts have targeted children to influence big family purchases such as cars and vacations. How do our children get so spoiled and what can we do about it?
There are two ways to spoil children. One way is to give anything and everything they want. The other is by giving the child all the attention all the time – even when they don’t deserve it. In both ways of spoiling, children learn to manipulate people. They learn to get things or attention even without earning it. Spoiled children become self centered and interested only in self satisfaction. They get fleeting satisfaction from new things or by controlling the attention from their parents but never are truly happy or satisfied. But there are ways to fight spoiling.
Parents need to distinguish between our children’s needs versus their wants. We mistakenly give into our children’s desires thinking they can’t do without those things they want. But they can!! Kids can actually get by with very little. I know. I have seen it in action in the orphanage in Honduras. The orphanage director, my friend, Richard, says that kids actually do better with the less “stuff” so long as they have food, shelter, clothing and love. Obviously, our kids are exposed to so much it is natural to want things. It is just important to know they don’t need everything that “everyone else gets”. Kids really don’t need much to be happy.
If your child wants you to buy them everything, decrease exposure to advertising. Throw away newspaper inserts and decrease exposure to TV commercials. Saying “no” more often to their requests will decrease their demands on you over time.
If you have the monetary means to buy your children everything – don’t. Give your child a way to earn things. Let them obtain enough by their own effort to buy things for themselves. At least they will learn about earning and making good and bad purchases.
Some children are spoiled by dominating their family’s attention. This manner of spoiling promotes behaviors such as whining, tantruming and crying to get their way. Parents need to learn that you don’t have to own every emotion your child throws at you. Let them have their emotion and behavior after expressing some understanding. If parents can learn to face behavior and emotion without giving substantial attention, their children will learn to deal with these situations without dominating the attention and, therefore, without being spoiled. Put more simply, whining, tantrums and crying to get their way should never work for children.
Our children need to grow in environments that foster understanding of the world, development of a good work ethic and a decreased sense of entitlement. These lessons can only come if our children grow up without being spoiled. It is with spoiling that our children grow up thinking that the world revolves around them. We must teach kids what they can contribute to the world instead of what the world should be giving to them.