#10: How not to spoil your kids and what to do if you have - Amazing Book Takeaways

Richard Watts looks at the ways in which well-meaning parents often weaken their children by overindulging them and over managing their lives. Moreover, when parents give their children too much, it often prevents them from recognizing their true aspirations. It takes away their opportunity for discovery and the self-pride and contentment that follows adversity and struggle. 

Sounds terrible, right? Let’s try to avoid having children who cause us worry during our entire life and make us feel unappreciated on top.  

Most parents are unwilling to admit responsibility for their entitled children. They believe somehow their children had “choices” and could have “chosen” no to take their station in life and material possessions for granted. These parents are sincere in their belief. Yet, it is the parents whose responsibility it is to teach the children to value them and respect what they have created. In fact, the entitled child doesn't feel entitled at all. It is the parent who feels unappreciated and misunderstood. 

You should know that Entitlement begins with codependence

Codependence very much describes the reality of the relationship  many current-day parents have with their children. It describes a dysfunctional helping relationship where one person supports or enables another person’s immaturity, irresponsibility or underachievement. Parent-child codependency is a bit like a heroin dealer who injects his own kid with heroin. Soon the kid is hooked, hopelessly addicted, and looking for more of the same. Mom and dad continue to supply them so long as they are retaining control over their kid’s life, dictating moves, and manipulating direction. Eventually mom and dad get so involved they forget about their own present lives. In the end, calamity occurs, children stumble, and disappointment arrives. 

The good news is that you can repair the setback you may have unwittingly and unintentionally caused to your child. 

And the even better one is that if you’re just starting your parenting journey you can consciously parent in ways that prevent this from happening.  

The author gives us great tips on what to do and what not to do from now on:

1. Be a parent, not a best friend!

Let your kids have a best friend their age, one who will accompany them into their future and experience the same joys and difficulties life has to offer. They will benefit from you being first and foremost a parent. Rather than being a copilot with your children you should be more like an air traffic controller. You track the entire flight, yet, leave the flying of the plane to the pilot.  You only respond to pilot inquiry and advise of irregularities so the aircraft can avoid catastrophes. 

1. Break the Mini-Me compulsion

One of the most difficult concepts to accept in parenting is that you don’t have title to your kids. Custody, yes; ownership, no. They are guests in your house, and only temporary guests! A child is not a product to design, a project to be managed, or a possession to show off.  Some parents even see their child as an extension of themselves, as someone whose purpose is to fulfill what they could not. If we’re being honest, we all have to accept that some of our reasons for wanting to be good parents are selfish. Raising “good” children is part of the criteria we use to grade ourselves. If we’re successful, we increase our emotional net worth. But correctly performed parenting is an arduous discipline that involves learning to maintain love and vision while recognizing that reaching the summit is not  as important as the climb. Parents shouldn’t care what mountain their child is ascending; just that they learn to climb, fall, recover, and climb again. 

1. Delay Gratification

The process of teaching a child to tolerate frustration and delay gratification of a desire, either until appropriate time, or until the child has earned the desired object, takes constant effort. Giving in to your kids early in life starts the trickle that can become a roaring waterfall as they reach teenage years. Know that laziness around this battle when your kids are young will eventually cause you great frustration. As time goes on, when you have less energy, you will find it harder and harder to deny your children what they want each time they face a struggle or disappointment. The best way to help your children learn to delay gratification is to model self-denial yourself. Here’s an exercise. Select something you really want and can afford to purchase, or make payments on...and then don’t let yourself have it. Instead of trying to ignore your desire to have that thing, talk about it often. And don’t give in. This is excellent modeling.

1. Let your kids struggle

Allow your children to suffer when there is a lesson to be learned or personal growth to be had. If they haven’t earned it, they won’t learn it. Welcome their pain of life and witness them as they react and grow. Encourage them. Assure them they will survive, like you did. It will not be fun. But who said every step of the journey was supposed to be fun? The best way to set your kids up for success is to support them, not to save them, in overcoming their struggles. One way to help children become more comfortable with challenges is to share your own. We tend to hide our weaknesses and failures from our children. When time is right, it is helpful for your kids to hear that mom and dad didn’t get it right. 

1. Give memories instead of things

When we think of giving something to a child, we tend to think in terms of money or things money can buy. We rarely think about time. One of the best gifts we can give our children, however, are good experiences that are so memorable they’ll last a lifetime. Think of an experience you imagine your son or daughter would enjoy. Keep it secret. Then consider how, given your means, you can make it happen. These experiences, particularly the ones that don’t cost much but require a proactive effort to plan and execute, are possibly life’s greatest wealth. And the chances of experiences carrying negative effects for your children are minimal. 

1. Partner with your parents

If you’re lucky enough to have good parents who are still alive, look for them for more than babysitting. Let them provide your children with two essentials you may be hard pressed to give: unlimited time and unconditional love. Parents are uber focused on the success of their children. As a result, their children only know hurry. Grandparents can teach them slow. They can show them what it means to just sit with them on the porch and talk. The wisdom of later age can be a calming, credible, and secure resource for grandchildren.

1. Teach them faith

Giving your children grounding in a spiritual or faith tradition - if you have one - can provide you with another parenting tool. Spirituality teaches self-sacrifice, humility, and care for others. No matter your faith, these traits pull directly against the entitlement of your child. An enduring tradition that promotes timeless values can provide children with a system of internal guidance on how to manage life. But like anything else, kids must see their parents applying the teachings and modeling the resulting behavior.

Next are 3 more tips for a few more years down the road. It might be far too early for you to implement them , nevertheless the information is good to have.

1. Don’t sentence your children to the family business

The arena in which children’s entitlement is most concentrated is the family business. Nothing entitles a child like skipping the interviews for a regular job and being paid a regular salary, and instead taking the elevator through the organizational chart in the family business.  The owner’s kids always have a tough ride in their parents’ company. Other employees don’t like them, and having a parent for a boss usually creates conflicts. Let your kids find their own passion and career elsewhere. They will thank you for it. If afterward they elect to work for you, and you allow them the control and position others say they have earned, it just might work. 

1. Don’t share your estate plan

Discussing your plans of passing on the wealth you have upon your death can give children a sense of entitlement to involve themselves in your life and in your affairs based on the desire that you not frivolously endanger their inheritance with bad investments. You may not believe this happens, but it often does with aging parents.  At some point the children may be more interested in the estate of their parents rather than the state of their health. So wealth, of any portion, must be managed for the most part by the parent, and they must leave plans in place that help manage the money even after they have passed. 

1. Don’t hand down too much

The secret to preventing a sense of entitlement in your children after you die is to avoid changing their lifestyle. Let your son or daughter’s family live at the financial level they have acquired and earned. Money can be a comfort if it acts as a safety net and is not used to increase your child’s station in life. Think security blanket, not windfall. The rest of the inheritance you can invest in the form of a nonprofit family entity and allow your adult children to discover good causes and give away money on behalf of your family.  

The book ends with a reminder : for everything you give your child, you take something away. Before you “take away the pain” of your children’s struggle or misfortune, consider what benefit they might receive from your willingness to listen, love, discuss, and console in lieu of handing over your wallet for the solution. It’s ironic how we hope to help our children avoid the same toil that gives us so much satisfaction to overcome. We endured...and so will they… IF we let them. 

I hope you find my short summary helpful. If you are inspired to listen to the whole book I have left a link in the show notes where you can listen for free.