The Daily Dad

They Don’t Want This

Feb 15, 2024

02:30

Snipd AI

The podcast explores the negative consequences of spoiling children and how it can affect their perception of reality, entitlement, and ability to find pleasure.

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Quick takeaways

Spoiling children by giving them everything they want and making them the center of attention can have negative consequences, warping their sense of reality and stripping away their ability to find pleasure.

Bruce Springsteen's childhood experience serves as an example of the negative effects of excessive attention and celebration, highlighting the importance of avoiding spoiling children and instead focusing on providing them with necessary skills, confidence, and character.

Deep dives

The Consequences of Spoiling Children

Spoiling children by giving them everything they want and making them the center of attention can have negative consequences. It warps their sense of reality, making them entitled and stripping away their ability to find pleasure. The constant attention and celebration suffocate and isolate them, depriving them of the skills and character development they need.

The Problem with Spoiling Children

2min

Bruce Springsteen’s childhood was a strange one. His mother worked to support their family. His father was distant and harsh. He spent a lot of time with his grandparents, who spoiled him, in part because they were grieving the loss of their own daughter years earlier.

“His Majesty, the Baby,” is how his childhood is described in the fascinating book Deliver Me From Nowhere (incredible book, by the way). Springsteen would admit that this kind of attention and celebration “seems to a kid like a great thing, but it’s exactly what a kid doesn’t want. Very problematic, it caused me a lot of trouble. To this day. It destroyed me and it made me. At the same time.”

As we said before, nobody likes a spoiled child…especially the spoiled children. It warps their sense of reality. It makes them both entitled and strips them of pleasure—because they come to take it for granted. The attention ceases to have meaning because it feels like a birthright. It suffocates and isolates. They are deprived of skills they need, confidence and character they need.

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