The Societal Consequences of Raising Spoiled Brats

As times have changed, parenting has become more and more permissive. In an age of materialism, parents want their children to have what they didn't have when they were growing up, and they don't help their children to realize that owning things should come with the cost of having to work for the item.

In my daily work taking care of a disabled person, I have constant contact with the spoiled children in his extended family. No limitations are set on their behavior. Daily, they scream at each other, hit each other, steal and break each others possessions, make accusations of each other. They don't clean up after themselves, and they yell at their parents, sometimes hit their parents, and they are constantly fighting, cursing, and constantly in tears. One of the children was suspended from school for three months.

The consequences of not setting limits on the children's behavior ricochet off of every single person who comes in contact with the family. One day rocks are thrown in the center lane in the road. The next day a maid is hired to come in every morning to clean up after all the messes they have made. The next day the kids are yelling and screaming at each other for two hours. The next day the mother is screaming at the kids for losing the phone when it was off of the hook and the father is yelling at the kids to get their messes cleaned up. Two hours after the maid has cleaned up all the messes, the whole house is a disaster again.

Children naturally are born selfish, and must be taught to share with others, be kind to others, and to bear responsibility. Every adult in the environment has a share in making the children who they are. (“It takes a village to raise a child.” If a child is rewarded with a cell phone and with sleepovers, as well as many Christmas presents, regardless of their behavior, what incentive do they have to do anything differently? Parents with messy children who can never find anything might investigate the causes of the disorganization. Does the child have their own dresser? Were they taught to put things away? Or do they leave their laundry in a heap and go through it every time they need something? They can be taught if someone in their environment would take it upon themselves to logically set up an organizational system and expect them to abide by it.

As a child, I got an allowance but it was not free. It had to be earned. I got between 10 and 50 cents per task completed, and necessities such as doing the dishes were not among the paid tasks, and had to be done anyway. The only task which paid more than that was cleaning out the car, at a whopping $2.00. If I wasn't nice to my sister, I had to put a quarter in the “Kind Word Bank”, which my mom then used for her own spending money. The reason why I have a sister – they said – so that I wouldn't grow up spoiled. Now I realize the magnitude of this revelation.

As a teenager I said “That's what YOU think!” to my mom, and boy, did I get grounded from an activity that I was about to go on. I cried for hours and hours but nothing changed. As a young adult, I had to earn my own way in the world because my parents could not buy me a car, pay for the insurance, pay for college, or anything else. I learned that you can have as much money as you want if you are willing to work for it. My sister was given a car at some point, but I took pride in the fact that I had to earn my car.

Having a strict upbringing isn't easy either, but I can see where it had advantages. I just feel sorry that the children in my working environment do not have great futures to look forward to. Their lives, unless they get some perspective on it, will continue to be fraught with frustration, failure in friendships, failure in employment, failure when they raise their own children, because they do not know how to respect others, earn their own way, and treat other people's things properly. The true child abuse is allowing children to grow up spoiled, always expecting their own way.

The consequences that ripple throughout society from spoiled children are delinquent teens and incarcerated adults, as well as children who grow up without both parents because of out of control teenagers gave birth too early, or because two adults were never educated on how to get along.

We can change this – if we realize that everything in life has boundaries, from the ocean having its boundaries, to our own boundaries. We can set limitations and ask children to live within the limitations and enforce it when they don't. It is the right thing to do, to teach them that life has disappointments and frustrations but that you can't cope with it by throwing a fit – that you must learn to grow in spite of setbacks and that life involves learning how to get along with others.