A: Nothing, really.
I picked up this book on Netgalley because, as a former Kindergarten teacher, I’m well aware of Alfie Kohn and his research into areas of child development, and I’m also incredibly interested in the topic, in this whole idea that children can be ‘spoiled’. The book was fascinating and had some great in-depth analysis of lots of studies surrounding how children grow, different styles of parenting, how those styles are perceived, and how they impact children over the long-term. Really, there was so much here that was important to talk about, a lot of stuff that I feel gets overlooked in terms of child psychology or becoming a parent and understanding exactly how important you are in your child’s life. And what role the larger culture we are living in has in shaping what kind of parent you turn out to be.
And I could wander off on that tangent, but I’m going to stay on topic here and talk about the myth of spoiled children, and how it has grown into this cultural compulsion to scapegoat and villainize teenagers and children, to stereotype and dismiss an entire generation of young people (unfairly and incorrectly) and to overly emphasize the supposed benefits of older generations, to the detriment of today’s younger people.
This kind of “aggressive nostalgia” (as Kohn calls it) is not a new trend: the author recounts various periods in time when pundits, politicians and parents all thought the world was quickly going to hell in a handbasket via the undisciplined, unruly next generation. Every fifteen years or so since the 1860s, at the very least, the newspapers and magazines were discussing some new sort of demise sure to be brought about by the current crop of ‘spoiled’ children. And yet: here we are. Maybe a tad bit closer to the apocalypse than we’d all like, but certainly not because the youth of each generation has consistently been downgraded.
In media, today’s youth get a bad rap – Labeling a group the ‘Me’ Generation has happened a few times now, but seems to be sticking rather well to the current group of youngsters, and today’s teenagers especially are often portrayed as vapid and selfish, constantly texting to the exclusion of all human contact, posting selfies 24/7, knowing nothing about modesty or privacy, and caring little about other people or their boundaries. (In reality, teenagers today volunteer in their communities in great numbers; they’re concerned and active with social issues that they’re interested in; they’re getting pregnant at lower rates, and finishing high school and entering college at higher rates than past generations.) In truth, there is no monolith of young people waiting to take over the world, just as there was no monolith of Millenials or Generation X-ers, just like the Boomers weren’t some united hoard either ~ Surprise! Each group of age cohorts is actually a diverse and multi-experiential collection of individuals, with their own wants and needs, shortcomings and skill sets. There is no way to group them all together and say “Yes, but they’re all spoiled. They’re certainly worse than we were.” And yet, our culture can not refrain from doing so, repeatedly and without evidence.
Another current example of this is how people think texting and abbreviating and LOL speak is somehow ruining language skills in kids – Please see this very excellent XKCD strip for example – when in fact studies show improvement in both reading and writing skills for just about everybody since texting and 24/7 written communication became a thing. It’s one of those “Back when I was a kid, and I had to spell everything correctly or write it out 500 times” appeals to yesterday’s ‘better days and better ways’: We selectively recall our own upbringings as better, and place an intrinsic value on the things we were taught and the ways we were taught them. This does not – factually and intellectually – mean they are any better, we just have JUDGED them to be so, and use that as our rubric.
Kohn argues that the discussions around spoiling children are contradictory at best (parents are simultaneously accused of doing too much and too little for their children – overscheduling them, but then doing their homework for them, for example), and poisonous at worst – That we, as a culture, are so afraid of spoiling our children that we do exactly the wrong things out of fear, and wind up hurting both our children and ourselves in the process. That recognizing the myth for its falsity is an important first step in becoming a better parent.
“Parenting at its core – or at least at its best – is a process of caring, supporting, listening, guiding, reconsidering, teaching, and negotiating,” Kohn writes. And one of the things that parents often forget is that ‘reconsidering’ part has to do with their own biases and limitations, has to do with trying to look past all the bs that our culture tries to tell us about what kids are and how kids act and how we should react to them. That instead we should use our common sense. Our hearts. Our intimate knowledge of our own children to provide the tools they need to grow, regardless of the ridiculous judgements that others might make.
Some parent at school might roll her eyes and think you’re a pushover if you give in to some demand your child has, might think you’re spoiling her, but you know she’s fighting off a cold, or that she and her best friend have been fighting and she just needs a little extra care today. That’s not spoiling: that’s knowing your kid, being a good parent. And yet, we’d hesitate, maybe, to give in to her needs, because of how others might perceive it. I know I might.
Or – even – how it might feel: like ‘giving in’ instead of ‘negotiating and supporting’. Kohn’s suggestions do require a bit of a mind reset – taking a giant step back from a whole set of cultural assumptions that you might not even know you had. (I really didn’t think I had as many of them as I turn out to have, things like “giving in” , or my automatic rejection to the idea that my 8-year-old niece “needs” an I-pad, which brought up all sorts of grumbly “In my day we had an Apple IIe computer: Just one! for the whole class, and we had to share it! And we were happy to have it!” rants in my brain.)
It’s challenging, certainly, to have part of your worldview questioned in such a way – I’m sure that some people reading it will not be swayed by the studies and numbers and still be spouting all their “but these young whippersnappers” ideals at the end. However, if you’re wondering just how much of the stuff the media is telling us about kids is make-believe, this might be the book for you.