What Really Spoils Our Children?

No parent wants to raise a spoiled brat--a kid who is selﬁsh, demanding and insensitive to others.

But what is it that spoils children? I don't think it's an abundance of love and thoughtful attention. I think it more likely happens when we substitute material things for genuine love, when we try to give them everything they want, when we try to appease their every desire, when we indulge them with loads of toys and feel like failures if they aren't always happy.

I think spoiling happens when we give our kids junk food that provides short-term pleasure, instead of providing them with real nourishment.

The truth is that we live in a culture where, as environmentalist Bill McKibben puts it, "almost everyone is a little spoiled, where spoiling children underwrites a significant part of the economy."

If a child's needs become so paramount to the parents that they sacrifice everything, the child feels insecure, with little chance to learn how to live a self-reliant life. If parents can't tolerate any discomfort from their child, if they can never say no to him or her, the child grows fearful. If parents have no sources of joy other than their children, the children may believe they are the center of the universe.

What spoils kids is when they are taught to ﬁll up their emptiness from the outside by purchasing things and activities, rather than learning how to ﬁll themselves up from the inside through making good choices, caring, and creativity.

It's not love that spoils our kids. They become spoiled when we ply them with too many toys, too much stimulation, and too much of the wrong kind of attention. They become spoiled when they learn, often from our example, to identify their self-worth with others' approval, with how they look, with how much stuff they have, with how expensive their clothes are, or with how large their homes are.

We spoil our kids when we teach them to meet their deepest spiritual and emotional needs with material things. We spoil them when we don't help them to learn to deal with disappointment or to learn about the joys of helping others.

Spoiling happens when kids aren't helped to know their own inner beauty, when they feel they will be valued only for their looks, possessions or performance. Spoiling happens when children aren't celebrated for who they are -- when they are forced to pretend, to put on a mask, to ignore their own deepest promptings and truth. Spoiling happens when kids aren't valued for their inner qualities, their kindness, their laughter, their inspirations, their passion for life.

You may sometimes feel that children aren't listening to you, but I can assure you they are always watching you. They may not seem to be heeding your words, but they are paying a great deal of attention to your example. They are great imitators, so be careful what you give them to imitate.

When you thought I wasn't looking,

You hung my ﬁrst painting on the refrigerator,

And I wanted to paint another one.