The Pampered Child Syndrome

Lately, I have become quite interested in this book by Dr. Maggie Mamen called The Pampered Child Syndrome which is all about that one kid that takes over your entire family's priority. In fact these kids can take over everything including family harmony, financial considerations, respect for others and even common sense. In fact the other day I was in a restaurant just because of such a brat. I was just sitting down to a wonderful meal with my friend, who was a new mother in forties when suddenly her darling new child started bawling. She looked at me, and said, 'I'm sorry. We can't have this dinner. Little Delilah June wants to go!' The other lady I was with looked at her in shock and said, 'But we just got here…the child does not control how long we stay here for dinner.' The mother, a slightly insecure hysterical type kept talking about how we all had to do what Delilah wanted or Delilah would hate her. She had no idea that she should control the situation and seemed afraid of losing the approval of a two year old child.

This type of syndrome where innocent little kids push you around and cause havoc in everyone's lives is called Pampered Child syndrome. Don't think this can't be a problem because this same woman let her child take control of her entire social life for the next few years to the extent that she never got to date anyone and she lost all of her friends because she could never leave the kid with a babysitter. At age five little Delilah June was still nursing because even though she had sharp teeth, her mother did not have a strong enough will to tell her that it was time to stop.

If you do have this type of problem or know someone then Dr. Maggie Manen's The Pampered Child Syndrome: How to Recognize It and How to Avoid It might help. She has also written other books about boundaries, tough love about raising kids including Who's In Charge?, Laughter and Love and Limits.

It's a good thing to take away power from a little kid who has too much power. For one thing, children know it is wrong for them to have authority and power that they are ill equipped to handle. As they grow older they become control freaks and develop serious social and psychological difficulties.

Parenting Tips
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How to Raise Emotionally Intelligent Kids

Intelligent kids are one thing but they will not get anywhere in life if they are not emotionally intelligent as well. There are four criterions for measuring the emotional intelligence of any child.
• Criteria number one is the ability to identify emotions. This means that you are able to identify how others around you must feel.

• The second criterion knows how to generate an emotion and also reason with emotions that come up.

• The third criteria are to know how to understand complex emotions and how they transform from one stage another.

• The fourth is the skill of manning one's emotions so that decisions and behaviors are not based on them. These are social skills that no child should be without.
Part of this is establishing emotional security in the child when it is very young. You need to nurture the baby when he or she is very young. The first two years have to do with language development and this is the time to develop positive self-talk and also a time to instill how to talk kindly to others. This is the time to make the child feel secure, to relate to him and to nurture positive thoughts and emotions.

The more social interaction your child has the more able he or she will be able to intermingle successfully with others. Emotional well-being is also the ability to get things off the chest. If your child does have a problem let him or her know it is okay and also that it is okay to express their feelings as well. Stuffing feelings down leads to insecure kids, mentally ill kids and kids with anger problems. Many children who are shamed for expressing their feelings tend to be angry, controlling and shame others. They have no idea how to make others feel loved and therefore never get the love they need.

The child learns emotional skills from birth to four years old and after that their emotional make-up may be difficult to develop further. This is why any type of emotional abuse is so hard on a kid. Be aware that if you are not there for your child and communicating in loving way you may be setting up your child for real disaster. If you are a mother with normal instincts then teaching your child to relate to others should be simple; it really is a thing that most emotionally healthy mothers have a gut instinct to do.

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