Spoiled

No one wants a spoiled kid.  Spoiled kids are rotten, no fun, miserable creatures to be around.  They have a sense of entitlement toward receiving everything they want, and every demand is a life-or-death situation.  “No daddy!  I NEED THAT NEW MY LITTLE PONY!!!”  Tears, screaming, tantrums, threats, punishments.  A spoiled kid will pull out everything from their playbook of terror.  As they age, they just add new tricks and deceptions to manipulate their parents into getting whatever they want.  Or, I suppose some parents are such willing parties that the children don’t have to resort to much to get what they want.

I don’t know what the “definition” of a spoiled kid is.  It’s probably one of those “I know it when I see it” sort of things.  But whatever “it” is, you don’t want it for a child.  To be clear here, I’m not talking about my kids.  They’re obviously perfect beyond description.  But for all those other children, how do you stop a kid from being spoiled?  My own kids ask for things occasionally, and sometimes they get what they want, and sometimes they don’t.  Our decisions as parents are based around some sort of gut feeling towards what they “need”.  Now, strictly speaking, we can probably argue that my girls don’t need a single Lalaloopsy.  But they do want them, and occasionally we acquiesce to their requests.  Probably less than some parents, and more than others.  But what factors go in to that calculus?  It’s often done quickly as we’re walking through Target, and revolves around some of these factors: price, my perception of the “quality” of the item, the number of similar items we already have, the likelihood that they will enjoy it, the appropriateness for my daughters, recent behavior of my daughters.  Have I missed any?  But you get the idea.  These are vaguely defined quantities, and we make a quick gut decision (usually ‘no’) and off we go.

There is one interesting item that was not in my list, which was my ability to afford the item in question.  You’d think that ‘price’ covered that, but that’s really just evidence of my own tight-wadery.  My girls aren’t getting any American Girl Dolls because I find them to be ridiculously overpriced, not because I couldn’t afford them.  (Though, honestly, I couldn’t afford very many of those dolls.)  Over the years, we’ve gone through various degrees of poverty and wealth, but never have we been in a situation where there was a real choice between Lalaloopsies and food.  (For the record, Loopsies are wonderful with gravy.)

So why don’t my girls get what they want more often?  At least part of the answer is that I want them to learn that you can’t always get what you want.  I want them to learn some frugality, and to learn to be happy with what they have rather than fixate on what they don’t.  I want them to learn that just because you can buy something, doesn’t mean you should.  I want them to learn that happiness is not derived from collecting stuff.  (Also, I’m tired of picking up the Loopsies we already have!)

Now that I’ve got you nodding your head in agreement with me, I spring my trap!  Who teaches these things to the adults?  Or, rather, did we successfully learn these things when our parents tried to teach us?  Yes, I’ve cleverly lured you into my thoughts on materialism and American wealth.  We seem to live in a culture of “more”.  More horsepower, more bandwidth, more resolution, more pixels, more square footage, more buttery flavor, more shoes, more channels, more crafts, more mani/pedis, more cruises, more trips to Hawaii, and more Loopsies.

Now, who am I to tell people that they’re spoiled?  No one, I suppose.  If you’ve earned the money, is it wrong to spend it on whatever new trinket you’ve got your eye on?  I don’t know that I’d say it’s wrong, but I’m not convinced it’s right, either.  Why do we buy ourselves things as adults?  “Because I want it and I can”?  I don’t know what the “right” number of horsepower, square footage or mani/pedis is, and maybe I’m bent out of shape feeling like the last person in the country that hasn’t been on a cruise, but I look around and I see so much wealth spent on more toys.  (Don't worry, I'm not going to go all Bruno Hautenfaust on you and take a vow of poverty and go off to live in the forest as a hermit.)  So, I’d be curious to hear thoughts on the subject, provided we can all agree not to get grumpy at each other.  Do we have too much stuff?  Is our prosperity good for us?  Are we spoiled with all the smart phones and cruises we want? Is any of this a bad thing?  Why can't Clark just be happy that people can have nice things? Does anyone want to take Clark on a cruise to see if he'll chill out?