The date on the milk says 9/4/12. Just two days past “good.” You sniff it to check it’s viability. It’s smells just a tiny bit funny, but you pour it on anyhow. Is it spoiled?

Milk metaphors aside, what does it mean for a child to be spoiled? Is it the age-old idea of giving them “too many” material things? Can it be something else? Is it something to be proud of? Is it something to dismiss? Is it an outdated term? Does it mostly happen for kids of wealthy parents? What is it? And if a child is conventionally spoiled, does that automatically mean that they’ll be a jerk as an adult? Once spoiled, are you spoiled forever? Does anyone believe that in the aftermath of Charlie & the Chocolate Factory that Veruca Salt grew up to be a nice person?

I don’t know the answers to all of the questions that I posed, but I have a few thoughts on spoiling and what it means today.

#1 Too many material things?

In our current American culture, acquiring things can seem like second nature to us. Even with economic troubles and worries, objects can “make us happier” and serve as status symbols. For many middle class parents, providing a rich and entertaining environment at home is a strategic goal of parenting. By flooding a kid with new and varied toys and objects, a child may come to expect that a) their wishes will be granted all the time and b) their toys should be entertaining them, with the real possibility of getting something new when they lose interest in something.

Besides giving kids an unrealistic view of the world (that material things are simply to be gotten, used, replaced and thrown away), providing them with too much doesn’t encourage long attention spans or imaginative play. It negates having a favorite object or toy, which can bring such comfort to kids. It also gives them very little sense of money. Kids don’t need to know all of the particular stresses and concerns that go along with money making and spending, but having an idea that it exists and that it’s not infinite will begin to give value to it.

Finally, buying buying buying simply makes more waste for the world. If we teach our kids that consumption is key, then the world of their adulthood will be littered with discarded and unwanted things.

#2 Spoiling in other ways

How do we spoil our kids without buying them things? And is this a real problem? I think that the overall idea of “spoiling” is that we are conditioning kids (or people) to expect immediate gratification and to expect that their environment will change to fit them rather than the other way around.

Parents contribute to these skewed ideas in a number of ways. First, by being too readily available to our kids, we give them the impression that being on the phone or talking to another adult is no reason for them not to have their wants attended to right away. Eh. Second, when parents work to control/change school or social environments for their kids when they meet an obstacle, kids are shown that if something is hard or unpleasant, they should simply give up or leave. If cries of “I’m hungry!” are immediately met with a snack, then we are teaching our kids that all they need to do is raise their pleading voices to get what they want. When parents create these expectations in their kids, they are setting themselves up to disappoint their youngsters when eventually they can’t control the environment or do need their kid to wait for something.

#3 Are you spoiled forever?

It seems to me that the answer to this is pretty straight forward: If you continue to expect the world to change for you, then you will continue to be “spoiled.” If you continue to expect attention to be paid to you on your terms, the same is true. The way to undo this is to come up against a real life situation when a teacher won’t let you do a make-up assignment or when you can’t continue to be the first in line. The world generally works to combat spoiling. It doesn’t work to change for us, it expects us to change for it.

So a little spoiling might not be the end of the world. It’s fun to break the rules sometimes or splurge on something at the toy store. But hopefully it’s not an everyday occurrence, else real spoiling could be the outcome. And once milk is on its way to being spoiled, it’s hard to stop it.

I want the world,
I want the whole world,
Give it to me now!