Spoiled Children

The TAGMAX list has dis­cussed “spoiled chil­dren” and whether they exist late­ly. I think I’m very much in the minor­i­ty. It seems to me that most of the par­ents there want to excuse damn near any­thing their kids do with “well, he/she’s gift­ed.” GAH!

Any­way, this just came in a Web­MD newslet­ter, and I thought it timely.

Is Your Child Spoiled Rot­ten? Experts tell par­ents how to decode the spoiled child.

One def­i­n­i­tion giv­en is “they lack dis­ci­pline, are manip­u­la­tive, and are gen­er­al­ly bothersome.”

Anoth­er pas­sage says:

What­ev­er one’s pri­ma­ry def­i­n­i­tion of spoiled is, arguably, there are chil­dren who could use a bit more dis­ci­pline. They usu­al­ly find it hard to share, wait their turn, appre­ci­ate what they have, and accept that they can­not always get their way.

Life, for these kids, is often dif­fi­cult, says Schmitt. “They are con­stant­ly in a tug of war with their envi­ron­ment,” he explains. “They keep smash­ing into walls because they are liv­ing in a world that’s dif­fer­ent from the real world.”