Spoiled Rotten?

Spoiling. Wow, what a hotbutton topic. Right now, as I type, I’m listening to the Brian Lehrer show, on my local NPR radio station (WNYC; I listen to it streaming live on WNYC.org). He’s talking to Rufus Griscom, the founder of the parenting website Babble.com. Babble has a column called “Bad Parent,” and he’s been on Lehrer’s show every Thursday this month, chatting about different so-called “taboos” of parenting.

Far as I’m concerned, some of these “taboos” are more or less the everyday here in Chez Mean Mom. I’ve enjoyed these segments because they show me that “bad” (a.k.a. mean) parenting is back! But I digress.

So. Spoiling. It’s yet another of those high-class parenting problems, right? Families struggling with the mortgage aren’t fretting whether or not another Wii game is in the cards for their brood, or how quickly you can replace the flat-screen TV, through which their 5-year-old threw the Wii remote when he got angry at a game (a real overheard conversation at the Y the other night). With every generation, the definition of “spoiling” changes, which is as it should be, I guess.

Lehrer referred to an essay once posted on Babble by a mom who was afraid she may be raising spoiled Mama’s boys when her little guys grumbled about their cold clothes on the one morning she neglected to run their pants through the drier to warm them up. Hilarious, isn’t it, imagining those boys, grown up and in adult relationships, sullenly expecting their wives to toast their khakis before work every morning, eh?

Doing every, little, itty bitty thing for our kids is, for sure, a form of spoiling. It’s literal spoiling: if they never learn to make a sandwich, they’re spoiled not just because they expect sandwich service from you (or some other sap down the line) for life, but because they are missing out on learning an important skill. That also goes for doing things around the house that kids could do, but in many cases don’t — like raking the autumn leaves, shoveling the winter snow, cleaning the pool. (Does it go without saying that I did all those things the minute I was old enough? I also, for the record, stacked firewood. My parents had a knack for deciding to move the woodpile every year or so, for reasons that escape me now. I’m wondering if it was merely a character-building exercise for me and my sister? Hmmm…)

Then there’s the other kind of spoiling, which to me is far, far more insidious. It’s the kind of spoiling that encompasses everything from the sense of entitlement that grows like a cancer in homes when kids get everything they want without a moment of having to wait, or save, or consider whether they need it; to the lack of respect that’s bred in families where kids are not required to speak kindly to each other or the adults around them, or where manners aren’t enforced; to homes in which there are no rules, no clear sense of who’s in control. That spoils kids because it slows their progress toward maturity.

This last bit really gets my goat, and I see it everywhere. I see it when parents labor under the very dangerous notion that giving kids choices and letting them make all the decisions (starting from toddlerhood!) is better than just saying “because I said so.” This irritates me (and I’m not alone) because those kids tend to be, putting it charitably, out of control little monsters. But it also saddens me, because these kids end up anxious, insecure, and immature later on. Why? Because they’re dying for someone to just tell them what to do. They may seem as though they want to choose when to go to bed or what to eat for dinner, but that’s not the case.

I indulge my boys far more than my  parents did me, but I want to make a distinction between indulging and spoiling.  Spoiling is tossing things at kids without giving them a sense of where they come from or what sacrifices are being made to give them those things. Indulging is giving them treats just because, letting them know that you’re doing things for them because they’re fabulous children who deserve good things in life.

Here’s an example. This August, I’m taking my children to Disney World. There are kids in Daniel’s class who go to Disney every year, and have since they were babies. There’s nothing wrong with that, and if those kids are spoiled (and from close observation, I can tell you some of them are!), it’s not because they go to Disney. It’s because they expect that a trip to Disney, or non-fake Ugg boots, or an Xbox 360 game system, is simply what they deserve. It’s a shrug of the shoulders, it’s the status quo.

I know my kids are only 5 and 7 and don’t have a mature grasp of money, but that doesn’t stop me from telling them, without drama and point blank, that for the last few years we have not had the money for expensive trips or really cool game systems. I think it’s working. They now understand that a trip to Disney is pricey, a sacrifice, a treat-to-beat-all-treats. They are over the moon. We’re staying in one of the property’s “value” level hotels, which are perfectly nice. I was showing the boys the Disney website, clicking on pictures of the rooms and the eating areas and the pools.

“Daniel, look,” I said. “Our hotel has two pools!”

His already saucer-like eyes got wider. “Can we go in both of them?” he asked.

Rufus Griscom, in the radio chat today (and I’ve been going on so much here that Brian Lehrer’s long moved on from that segment, but check it out if you can), mentioned the famous marshmallow experiment, about how kids who could successfully delay gratification ended up all-around better adults.

All-around better adults: that’s what I’m after, in raising these kids of mine.

Oh, and later? I’m going to be asking my husband if he thinks we should move the woodpile pretty soon.