Irresponsible Parents

When we hear the term irresponsible parenting, 9 times out of 10 we will imagine parents who neglect their children, that fail to encourage them or that don’t cater to the basic needs of a safe and peaceful home life. But that is only one side of the story. Irresponsible parenting comes in many forms and the one I see more and more these days is parents who spoil their children. It guess you may think it only a natural progression, given the general rise in affluence among families all across the globe. But that doens’t mean that it isn’t incredibly dangerous. Many parents who spoil their children don’t seem to see this danger because they are ignorant of basic child psychology and probably need to go and take a course, or read some books on the matter to fix this ignorance.

In the formative years of a child, behavior patterns can get easily ingrained and can be very hard to fix later on. Often it is impossible.

There is a thing called the incentive reward system, and this maps what a child needs to do to get a reward. If the child behaves and tries hard to fix their negative behavior, they will get rewarded by the parents. This relationship between improvement and reward gets subconsciously embedded into the psyche of a child. When a child misbehaves, they learn the consequences of such behavior and will not expect a reward.

Now when you have parents that are constantly rewarding a child, often for doing nothing except for breathing, the child subconsciously begins to expect reward for nothing. Their brain is expecting reward, and one doesn’t come, it disregulates their emotions, making them experience, yes you guessed it, negative emotion. To coutneract this, the child will manipulate the parents, first pleading, making them feel guilty and then throwing a tantrum for not having provided the reward. And no matter how cute you might think your child is, a child throwing a tantrum, especially in a public place is a bloody ugly scene. Parents hate this, society hates this, and that’s why parents will threaten to leave their child by walking off.

Now this is only the start of the problem. If the parents do not sufficiently notice this and take measures to stop spoiling their kids, the children will only continue to have bigger expectations when they grow older. And it won’t just end with you. The child will then have to enter social situations with other kids, and will have the same demans on them. Then when they enter society, they will place this expectaion on the people that they meet.

The person that usually suffers the most, is their future partner, if they ever manage to maintain a long term relationship. They will place unreasonable expectations on them, and make their lives a living hell. If that’s what you want for your future child, by all means keep spoiling them, and watch the nightmare you have created unfold in reality.

You will then have to take responsibility for the role you played as an irresponsible parent.