Many kids (and adults) today are spoiled and entitled. And it’s often because of their parents.

Parents, the more your kids do for themselves, the more self-assured and confident they become. The older kids get, the more room they need for some independence from parents. Prepare your kids for life without you; don’t train them to depend on you indefinitely.

Sometimes parents confuse coddling with love.

Such parents do everything for their kids out of a desperate desire to show their love for the kids. They spoil their children and baby them well into adulthood, mistaking this pampering behavior for the “unconditional love” that every child needs.

Far from it.

This isn’t love. This is unhealthy coddling.

And it sets the child up for a lifetime of difficulty, disappointment, and depression.
Kids who grow up doing nothing for themselves or doing nothing hard or challenging don’t learn much.

They live life on artificial easy mode, because they sit like pampered kings while their parent scurries around working and over-working, giving and over-giving, providing and over-providing.

RELATED: How to Raise Muslim Children: Happiness Is NOT the Goal

Such kids never see the consequences of their own actions because the parents are always bailing them out. Such kids never learn the reality of the world because the parents always shield them from the natural results of their decisions. Such kids never develop any discipline because the parents never teach it, never put forth any punishment for misdeeds, never instill self-control in the child. Even Islam feels hard and burdensome to these people as adults, because the parents never woke them to pray fajr (“Oh, it’s way too early and my teenager needs sleep!”) or let them fast during Ramadan (“Oh no, my child needs to eat three meals a day and fasting is way too hard!!”).

So this child learns to expect instant gratification, expects that every whim and wish of theirs should be immediately granted, and becomes weak and whiny.

Having all difficulty erased from their life by the coddling parent, these kids stay as incompetent and as helpless as a baby because they’ve never had to do anything for themselves. They never learned how to do chores or how to take care of themselves or how to acquire basic life skills. This creates a generalized anxiety and a sense of uncertainty and insecurity in the child. The coddled child knows on some level that, if the lifesavers were ever removed, he would instantly drown.

Having everything handed to them on a silver platter makes these people entitled takers with little self-awareness or awareness of the rights of others.

Having never faced any consequences of their own actions, this person becomes insensitive and callous and somewhat delusional.

Normal people dislike being around this spoiled entitled taker, and this realization makes the spoiled child insecure, anxious, and riddled with self-doubt. Not everyone is like their parent who “loves” them by catering to their every whim. It comes as a shock.

Much to the chagrin and surprise of the spoiled child, the real world has demands, expectations, standards, and rules that cannot be broken. There are actual skills that must be acquired and lessons that must be learned. Competence in certain areas must be gained. Failure to achieve is swiftly punished with negative results. Actions have consequences. Life is about choices and tradeoffs, and you can’t have everything.

And all the skills the child never learned with the coddling parent (responsibility, discipline, self-control, empathy, resilience, hard work), the child now scrambles frantically to learn on the spot as an unprepared adult. It’s usually a nightmare. Things like holding down a job or staying married or being a parent become almost impossible.

So, parents, prepare your children from the beginning for real life. You are not doing your kids any favors by being too lenient, too soft, too easy. You’re not helping your kids by doing everything for them.

Here are 7 suggestions for solutions:

1. Chores and Work

Have your kids do age-appropriate chores around the house from a young age: pick up their toys, make their bed, wash dishes, clear the table, clean the living room, tidy their room, fold or hang up their clothes neatly. This is the beginning of personal responsibility and training in healthy obedience to parents. The more work your child does, the more skill and competence he gains, and the more self-confidence he naturally develops.

2. Life Skills

Teach your kids basic life skills: the basics of cooking, kitchen safety, basic cleaning so they are able to clean up after themselves, good hygiene, laundry, the basics of how real-life processes work, like car bare-bones maintenance, defensive driving, financial literacy and saving/ spending/ money management, taxes, jobs, etc. The older the kids get, the more they need to know and do. This will also differ by the gender of your child. But there are basic essentials that everyone must know.

3. Practice Islam

Enforce Islamic injunctions at the right time, as it teaches important skills: start training the children in salah at the age of seven, and by the age of ten, they should be praying all 5 prayers daily on time. This alone, the importance of salah, instills in children so many critical traits: consistency, discipline, respect, punctuality, awareness of time and time management, planning ahead (when and where will I pray dhuhr if I leave the house for this errand now?), self-control (I need to stop playing this fun game as soon as I hear the Adhan for salah), and delayed gratification (I must wait to do this thing I want to do because first I have to pray), etc.

RELATED: Between Overburdening Children and Being Overly Lax: The Healthy Balance

4. Have Consequences

Give appropriate consequences for actions. Natural consequences teach the child how life works. Removing reality doesn’t help your child. Giving punishments, allowing natural consequences, and setting limits doesn’t mean you don’t love your child. If your child misbehaves purposely or deliberately disobey the rules, there must be consequences. This instills a healthy understanding of hierarchy, obedience to legitimate authority, and a respect for authority. The child also learns responsibility, restraint, and self-control.

5. Relations with People

Teach your child about relationships and how to deal with people: a relationship is a set of rights and responsibilities. One person’s rights are the other person’s responsibilities and vice versa. Relationships are a two-way street and do not go only one way. You have to both give and take. You cannot only take without giving. Islam teaches us about manners and etiquette and social graces: greeting people with salam, smiling in the face of your brother as a charity, helping the needy, staying out of other people’s private business, knocking before you enter a room, not backbiting or gossiping, being truthful, gender roles, etc.

6. Allow Boredom

Let your kids be bored. Don’t constantly feel obliged to entertain your kids. Allowing them boredom gives them the opportunity for creativity and imagination and thinking outside the box.

7. Teach gratitude

Both gratitude to Allah and to people. Teach your kids to recognize every blessing as coming from Allah. Allah is the Source of all good. Saying “Alhamdulillah” is life-changing, and it even increases our blessings:

لَئِن شَكَرْتُمْ لَأَزِيدَنَّكُمْ

 

“If you are thankful, I will increase you.” (Surat Ibrahim, 7).

After we thank Allah, we also must thank people who help us, as the hadith teaches us:

يقول النبي ﷺ : من لا يشكر الناس لا يشكر الله

 

“He who doesn’t thank people doesn’t thank Allah.”

May Allah help us raise strong, capable, righteous believers for His sake, ameen!