A child cannot be too loved, but a child with zero boundaries is a lost child who may act out because they need and want those boundaries.
(on another note: how did you post this? I have tried all morning to post a topic and when I hit the Conversation button nothing happens. I tried to send a private message to @mamajoy and nothing happens there either. It will let me post responses as you see here.)
@Gina
( I changed time zones! I think she’s actively working on the site right now. Things are fixing, un-fixing, and re-fixing themselves.)
So do you think there comes a point where things done to help them actually work against them in the long run? And why do you think we have such a hard time seeing when this line is crossed?
it transitions to spoiling in the manner in which the nurturing is received. If the response is genuine appreciation and gratitude, versus any degree of self entitlement, you are not spoiling.
I have three kids. Two of them show genuine thanks when we do things for them. One doesn’t. Two have been nurtured and one has been spoiled, but they were all treated the same way.
@spitfire3dc
I wonder if factors can conspire to have a child acting spoiled even though the parenting was effective and not overly coddling?
Ultimately a parent’s role is to put themselves out of business: to have the child taking on the role of parent for themselves as they become adults.
If parents fail to do this out of the guise of loving their children I would call this “spoiling”.
I’m dealing with one family right now where all of the children — now adults with children of their own — were unnaturally dependent upon their parents; who have now both passed.
In all practical senses, they were addicted to their parents and now are in radical withdrawal. And as a friend of the family I’ve been asked to “father” over my friend’s estate for them, because they can’t. They were never prepared to be without their parents.
What was done out of professed love for the children, wasn’t really. And that really hurts to say that of a friend who is now passed.
@griz I think some people need to be needed. A parent with this behavioural pattern see their own value as a person, based on how indispensable they are. I know people who get ansty when someone tries to serve them because it has the opposite effect on their personal perception of who they actually are.
A generation of children, raised with the misguided notion that everyone gets a participation trophy just for showing up, and then perpetuating that same misguided notion when they enter college. That is a generation of spoiled brats with no sense of reality, responsibility, or respect. Millennials.
@immortal_pirate
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This hits the proverbial nail right on it’s FUCKING HEAD!!!!!!!!! Great answer.
I think that nurturing without accountability, responsibility, and consequences is a recipe for disaster.
I try to practice balance in nearly every aspect of my life. I’m not always successful but I hold fast to the idea that balance is a necessity for success – in all areas.
I think that nurturing a child to the point of enabling undesired or self-limiting behaviors are hurtful. The foundations of a person are often created at a very young age, making the right or wrong decisions in child-rearing can affect a person for a very long time. Though I do think that innate personality traits should be taken into consideration too.
To answer the headline first, i think nurturing becomes spoiling when someone is being given everything they ask for instead of what they need. when everything is being done For instead of teaching How To yourself. Helping doesnt mean doing it for you, it means doing it together – is something i have said to my wee Only Child of a Son a few times. and also, a treat is only a treat if it is a surprise. right? if we spoil, give always and give in always, we teach them to take for granted what they are given. and we might even be teaching an eschewed sense of what Need is!
i was a bit thrown by the wording, of that maybe being “hateful”. What i know of being subjected to hateful treatment is a different shade of loving, not so much the spoiling…… see childhood … But, I do get the merit of this wording. I also think that too much giving, giving in, coddling or catering too, spoiling, can create behaviours and patterns and senses of entitlement that wont do that child any favours when she or he grows up into an adult who acts in these same ways. so while i still dont like the word hate (thats my own personal issue) i do think this can be very negative, not nurturing at all.
@BelleMadre
Do you think spoiling is easier than nurturing in the short run?
I used the love-hate dichotomy on purpose. I know it’s harsh.
When patterns are nurtured that makes things easier for the parent in the short run but harder for the child in the long run that is not love. It’s not even indifference (what some consider is the opposite of love). It’s perhaps something else.
As I believe you mentioned, it is the pattern over time. And as @spitfire3dc mentioned, the personality of the child is a factor.
So parents shouldn’t be afraid of doing nice things for the child, of doing some things for them that the child is capable of doing themselves. It’s when it becomes a pattern; when it becomes expected, or they start feeling entitled.
Like the parent is to blame when they don’t do what the child wants or expects.
good morning @griz :) i hope the roads have been good to you this week?!
i think spoiling is easy for a time but then hard to keep up with? i dont know. im an occasional spoiler, but thats when its a treat and a novelty. he knows i do what i can when i can do it, so a surprise is more meaningful than something he might take for granted.
i also dont think nurturing is that hard? it is the most natural in a sense. but i think you are on to something here too. is it easier to give in to a child in the early years, maybe not realizing the later effect or that you are even doing it in the moment? i do know the feeling when your cute as a button little offspring’s eyes light up when they see a thing and you want with all your heart to give it to them, i can see how people would give in to that. same goes with behaviours i guess. and you are right, giving in is not healthy.
This reminds me right now of one christmas when i suggested as a gift idea to family, to pick up a starter thomas the tank engine train set, one of the lovely wooden sets with a handful of track and a few train pieces – (that happen to be super pricy, but a starter set would … well, get him started). my hope was that then in future gift giving times, they could give him more pieces, maybe a new train here and there. it would be a great way to build a collection and mean something every birthday? but someone in the family (with money to spare when they were in the sparing mood…) decided to buy The Entire Set – everything in the catalogue that year “because we never get to spoil him”. it was exciting and overwhelming for half an hour, exploring what was in the crate, but the thing was, it was Too Much at once … i spent more time putting the track together than him. i put half of it away and it still took over half the living room :D and he did enjoy it here and there, but there was no desire to add to it or even an appreciation of it. they said it was because he was already spoiled, and i said it was because it was too big for him to comprehend at the time! it wasnt that he didnt care about it, he didnt understand the scope. he had his favourite one train in the set and the rest were excess… and there went the idea of the excitement over the years. ah well. lesson learned? not really for them but thats ok. its an interesting example anyway. i ended up giving pieces of it away, a few parts of it that had always irritated him in their workings went to a friend who was “building her own set over time” and the rest went to my sister for her son, so the excess is now a new family tradition lol. and he is over it anyway)…
it is possible, i think, to teach a child better ways, later, but that is more work. and they might suffer for it later, with how people react to them or treat them in public. an adolescent or adult who demands all the time, or assumes his/her demands will be met, or who doesnt know how to be polite probably because they dont even feel grateful, those people havent been wronged before they even had a chance to get going. (observations now my sons peer group is in the preteen state – personalities really stand out at 10 whoo boy!)
@BelleMadre
There’s the very real prospect that your rich relative got more out of the experience for themselves than your son!
And you recognized that a valuable opportunity for a lesson over time was lost. And maybe that is what spoiling is: robbing them of valuable life lessons for the sake of a short-term feel-good for the adult.
I saw a bad one once. A young son was being sent to the Rich Kids Camp that I worked at for a while. He was about 12 and was being sent away for the entire summer so his dad could spend time with his new girlfriend. He gave him a gift of a pocket knife saying he had got one at that age from his dad and it taught him responsibility. The kid proceeded to use it to slash every upholstered surface in the coach bus hired to take them to camp. The coach driver demanded that he stopped his son. But he told him not to worry that it was a valuable lesson and that he would pay for all the damages.
I’ll admit I’m not really sure what valuable lesson could be taught in this way!
wow @griz that is some kind of acting out you tell of there! maybe it was a lesson to the father, to not give his child that kind of item without lessons on responsible use and behaviour first?
@BelleMadre
It COULD have been a lesson for the father. But somehow I doubt it was.
Impressions were he thought himself quite wise and loving.
To the child it was a nega-lesson; actively working against him over time. He learned that he did not have to control his emotions and actions; and that Daddy would always step in to foot the bill. This was toxic parenting; retarding the child into infantile dependency and even addiction to the parent.
This ties into what I said before they gave you a bit of a pause: this was more an act of hatred towards his son than one of love.
I think of the current situation where I have been asked to “parent” over a deceased”s estate unto his now-grown children.
I love(d) my friend dearly; but he did his children no favors in retarding their adult growth.
19 responses to “When does nurturing become spoiling?”
A child cannot be too loved, but a child with zero boundaries is a lost child who may act out because they need and want those boundaries.
(on another note: how did you post this? I have tried all morning to post a topic and when I hit the Conversation button nothing happens. I tried to send a private message to @mamajoy and nothing happens there either. It will let me post responses as you see here.)
@Gina
( I changed time zones! I think she’s actively working on the site right now. Things are fixing, un-fixing, and re-fixing themselves.)
So do you think there comes a point where things done to help them actually work against them in the long run? And why do you think we have such a hard time seeing when this line is crossed?
it transitions to spoiling in the manner in which the nurturing is received. If the response is genuine appreciation and gratitude, versus any degree of self entitlement, you are not spoiling.
I have three kids. Two of them show genuine thanks when we do things for them. One doesn’t. Two have been nurtured and one has been spoiled, but they were all treated the same way.
@spitfire3dc
I wonder if factors can conspire to have a child acting spoiled even though the parenting was effective and not overly coddling?
Ultimately a parent’s role is to put themselves out of business: to have the child taking on the role of parent for themselves as they become adults.
If parents fail to do this out of the guise of loving their children I would call this “spoiling”.
I’m dealing with one family right now where all of the children — now adults with children of their own — were unnaturally dependent upon their parents; who have now both passed.
In all practical senses, they were addicted to their parents and now are in radical withdrawal. And as a friend of the family I’ve been asked to “father” over my friend’s estate for them, because they can’t. They were never prepared to be without their parents.
What was done out of professed love for the children, wasn’t really. And that really hurts to say that of a friend who is now passed.
@griz I think some people need to be needed. A parent with this behavioural pattern see their own value as a person, based on how indispensable they are. I know people who get ansty when someone tries to serve them because it has the opposite effect on their personal perception of who they actually are.
we are a complicated species.
@spitfire3dc
We are an oxymoron of complicated simpletude. (Or simplistic complication depending which way we’re coming at it!).
The simple root cause of “Me and my feelings first”, spins off into so many complications the second it’s out the gate.
A generation of children, raised with the misguided notion that everyone gets a participation trophy just for showing up, and then perpetuating that same misguided notion when they enter college. That is a generation of spoiled brats with no sense of reality, responsibility, or respect. Millennials.
@immortal_pirate
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This hits the proverbial nail right on it’s FUCKING HEAD!!!!!!!!! Great answer.
@immortal_pirate
A drive to service feelings (of the child, of the parent) over addressing actual needs?
I think that nurturing without accountability, responsibility, and consequences is a recipe for disaster.
I try to practice balance in nearly every aspect of my life. I’m not always successful but I hold fast to the idea that balance is a necessity for success – in all areas.
I think that nurturing a child to the point of enabling undesired or self-limiting behaviors are hurtful. The foundations of a person are often created at a very young age, making the right or wrong decisions in child-rearing can affect a person for a very long time. Though I do think that innate personality traits should be taken into consideration too.
@mj
Effective parenting means not letting the child (their wants their needs their feelings) run the show!
And sometimes it may even mean not letting the parents’ wants and needs and feelings run the show!
Doing what is best in the long run does not always mean doing what makes you feel good in the short run.
@griz the ever lasting quest for balance :)
@mj yes to all of that!
To answer the headline first, i think nurturing becomes spoiling when someone is being given everything they ask for instead of what they need. when everything is being done For instead of teaching How To yourself. Helping doesnt mean doing it for you, it means doing it together – is something i have said to my wee Only Child of a Son a few times. and also, a treat is only a treat if it is a surprise. right? if we spoil, give always and give in always, we teach them to take for granted what they are given. and we might even be teaching an eschewed sense of what Need is!
i was a bit thrown by the wording, of that maybe being “hateful”. What i know of being subjected to hateful treatment is a different shade of loving, not so much the spoiling…… see childhood … But, I do get the merit of this wording. I also think that too much giving, giving in, coddling or catering too, spoiling, can create behaviours and patterns and senses of entitlement that wont do that child any favours when she or he grows up into an adult who acts in these same ways. so while i still dont like the word hate (thats my own personal issue) i do think this can be very negative, not nurturing at all.
@BelleMadre
Do you think spoiling is easier than nurturing in the short run?
I used the love-hate dichotomy on purpose. I know it’s harsh.
When patterns are nurtured that makes things easier for the parent in the short run but harder for the child in the long run that is not love. It’s not even indifference (what some consider is the opposite of love). It’s perhaps something else.
As I believe you mentioned, it is the pattern over time. And as @spitfire3dc mentioned, the personality of the child is a factor.
So parents shouldn’t be afraid of doing nice things for the child, of doing some things for them that the child is capable of doing themselves. It’s when it becomes a pattern; when it becomes expected, or they start feeling entitled.
Like the parent is to blame when they don’t do what the child wants or expects.
good morning @griz :) i hope the roads have been good to you this week?!
i think spoiling is easy for a time but then hard to keep up with? i dont know. im an occasional spoiler, but thats when its a treat and a novelty. he knows i do what i can when i can do it, so a surprise is more meaningful than something he might take for granted.
i also dont think nurturing is that hard? it is the most natural in a sense. but i think you are on to something here too. is it easier to give in to a child in the early years, maybe not realizing the later effect or that you are even doing it in the moment? i do know the feeling when your cute as a button little offspring’s eyes light up when they see a thing and you want with all your heart to give it to them, i can see how people would give in to that. same goes with behaviours i guess. and you are right, giving in is not healthy.
This reminds me right now of one christmas when i suggested as a gift idea to family, to pick up a starter thomas the tank engine train set, one of the lovely wooden sets with a handful of track and a few train pieces – (that happen to be super pricy, but a starter set would … well, get him started). my hope was that then in future gift giving times, they could give him more pieces, maybe a new train here and there. it would be a great way to build a collection and mean something every birthday? but someone in the family (with money to spare when they were in the sparing mood…) decided to buy The Entire Set – everything in the catalogue that year “because we never get to spoil him”. it was exciting and overwhelming for half an hour, exploring what was in the crate, but the thing was, it was Too Much at once … i spent more time putting the track together than him. i put half of it away and it still took over half the living room :D and he did enjoy it here and there, but there was no desire to add to it or even an appreciation of it. they said it was because he was already spoiled, and i said it was because it was too big for him to comprehend at the time! it wasnt that he didnt care about it, he didnt understand the scope. he had his favourite one train in the set and the rest were excess… and there went the idea of the excitement over the years. ah well. lesson learned? not really for them but thats ok. its an interesting example anyway. i ended up giving pieces of it away, a few parts of it that had always irritated him in their workings went to a friend who was “building her own set over time” and the rest went to my sister for her son, so the excess is now a new family tradition lol. and he is over it anyway)…
it is possible, i think, to teach a child better ways, later, but that is more work. and they might suffer for it later, with how people react to them or treat them in public. an adolescent or adult who demands all the time, or assumes his/her demands will be met, or who doesnt know how to be polite probably because they dont even feel grateful, those people havent been wronged before they even had a chance to get going. (observations now my sons peer group is in the preteen state – personalities really stand out at 10 whoo boy!)
@BelleMadre
There’s the very real prospect that your rich relative got more out of the experience for themselves than your son!
And you recognized that a valuable opportunity for a lesson over time was lost. And maybe that is what spoiling is: robbing them of valuable life lessons for the sake of a short-term feel-good for the adult.
I saw a bad one once. A young son was being sent to the Rich Kids Camp that I worked at for a while. He was about 12 and was being sent away for the entire summer so his dad could spend time with his new girlfriend. He gave him a gift of a pocket knife saying he had got one at that age from his dad and it taught him responsibility. The kid proceeded to use it to slash every upholstered surface in the coach bus hired to take them to camp. The coach driver demanded that he stopped his son. But he told him not to worry that it was a valuable lesson and that he would pay for all the damages.
I’ll admit I’m not really sure what valuable lesson could be taught in this way!
wow @griz that is some kind of acting out you tell of there! maybe it was a lesson to the father, to not give his child that kind of item without lessons on responsible use and behaviour first?
@BelleMadre
It COULD have been a lesson for the father. But somehow I doubt it was.
Impressions were he thought himself quite wise and loving.
To the child it was a nega-lesson; actively working against him over time. He learned that he did not have to control his emotions and actions; and that Daddy would always step in to foot the bill. This was toxic parenting; retarding the child into infantile dependency and even addiction to the parent.
This ties into what I said before they gave you a bit of a pause: this was more an act of hatred towards his son than one of love.
I think of the current situation where I have been asked to “parent” over a deceased”s estate unto his now-grown children.
I love(d) my friend dearly; but he did his children no favors in retarding their adult growth.