Pampered Children And Their Teachers: the power of one

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Adapted from The Pampered Child Syndrome: How to Recognize It, How to Manage It and How to Avoid It. A Guide for Parents and Professionals.

Jesse, 5, is hitting and biting other children in his Kindergarten class whenever he doesn’t get his own way, or whenever he wants something that one of the other children is already playing with. His mother says that she simply doesn’t know what to do when he shows the same behaviours at home towards her and his younger sister.

Tonia, 8, becomes extremely distressed when she isn’t first in line and when she has to wait her turn. Her parents believe that the competitive atmosphere of school is damaging their daughter’s self-esteem.

Sean, 13, is bored in school and is not completing either his classroom work or his homework. His parents say he is gifted and that his teachers are simply not providing enough stimulation for him.

Jesse, Tonia and Sean are all pampered children. They are growing up with a huge sense of self-importance and entitlement, a lack of respect for authority or boundaries, low thresholds for discomfort or unhappiness, trouble tackling challenging situations, and a dearth of problem-solving skills. Quite apart from their behaviour being unacceptable in many social contexts, they expect to graduate high school without studying, and to live at the same status as their parents without working their way up through the ranks. When they realize that the world outside the family does not see them as special, they react—often by withdrawing into anxiety or depression, by acting out and developing behaviour disorders, by becoming suicidal, by abusing substances—while an alarming and increasing number are being diagnosed with significant psychiatric disorders.

Their well-intentioned parents have been persuaded to espouse child-driven parenting philosophies, and have been won over by media and marketers who see children as a powerful demographic and who create “needs” that must be met. These parents are hypersensitive to their children’s happiness, and are reluctant to impose any limits that will result in discomfort. They are frightened by their children’s anger. They try to reason, persuade, cajole and negotiate. They want their children stimulated and enriched, never bored. They give all their time, effort and energies until they are drained, and they expect others to do the same.

Teachers are in a unique position to observe pampered children in the context of the broader environment in which they need to function, and often are the first to call parents’ attention to the fact that their child is not adapting well to the world outside the family.
Even though they themselves may be disturbed by such behaviours at home, parents are frequently dismayed that others are judging their child and, by extension, their parenting. For better or for worse, they leap to their own and their child’s defence. Since the best defence is a good offence, they often attack the hole for being the wrong shape for their little square peg to fit. The daycare provider is too strict; the nursery school is too regimented; the school environment stifles the child’s creativity; the other children are being unreasonable; adults are being too rigid. Essentially, parents will strive to change the shape of that hole so that their child does not need to face the potential discomfort of having to adjust his or her behaviour to fit the expectations of the situation.

As teachers, we need to be aware that we can fall into the same well-intentioned trap. Even if we have confidence in our own abilities, it is easy to be ensnared in self-doubt when our teaching philosophies and/or strategies are challenged, let alone when we are personally attacked. Such challenges may well precipitate a healthy re-evaluation of what we are doing and why, potentially generating change that is based on sound judgment and is for the benefit of all our students. If we already have low confidence in our teaching abilities or in ourselves, or our competence is fragile, conflict may precipitate a major personal life-crisis. We may even back down from our considered educational philosophies in order to try to appease one particular child and his or her family, thus reinforcing some of the same messages that the pampered child has been receiving from the world, notably that “I should never be unhappy, uncomfortable or bored,” and that “it is up to everyone else to make sure that something is done about that.” When parents go over our heads, as they often do, and we are not supported by our administration, morale tanks, and even those of us who are confident, competent teachers may give up in the face of continually swimming upstream. It is at this point that we need more than ever to recognize our own individual power in the lives of the youngsters we teach.

We can structure our classrooms as benevolent dictatorships, where authority can be trusted to act fairly, even if not always equally. We can teach our students that there is a difference between rights and privileges, and that both carry responsibilities. We can have the confidence to set limits and standards that we expect and uphold within our classrooms, even when we know we have no control over what happens once the children leave. We can insist that there be times when children are seen, but not heard, and times when their opinions are valued. We can let them know that there are things that have to be done, whether they want to do them or not, and we can commiserate when they do not want to. We can ensure that we provide them with informed choices, and permit them to experience the consequences that these choices bring. We can treat ourselves and others with dignity and respect so that we show our students how to do that.

Above all, we should not lose sight of the fact that we have tremendous potential to be a significant influence in shaping some of these important messages that will help balance the life of the pampered child. We must have faith in the power of one, and always remember that whether we think we can, or whether we think we cannot, we are right!

Dr. Maggie Mamen is a clinical psychologist and the author of The Pampered Child Syndrome.