Tyrant toddlers: We’re raising a generation of entitled children and it needs to stop

May 08, 2018 Written by Alexander Chan Follow

Last weekend at a local heartland mall, my girlfriend and I saw something that deeply furrowed our brows. This little girl who couldn’t be any more than six years old was standing in front of a mirror ordering her helper around.

“Take the soap for me. Wash my hands,” she demanded sternly. “If you don’t, I tell mommy, ah!” she threatened the helper, who duly completed each of her orders.

This prompted my girlfriend and me to discuss: Are children today more entitled than ever before? Given what we had just witnessed, we felt that children today are entitled, but neither of us have children or have worked with children to state that with real authority. Which is why The Pride approached professionals whose work it is to deal with children.

“Yes,” said one principal of a local early childhood school unequivocally. Jennifer Lim* said that the classroom – where the children are between the ages of two and six – is the scene of a power struggle between teachers and tyrant toddlers, with the latter usually relying on their parents to back them up.

Lim, 27, has been in the industry for nine years after diving straight into the working world after her first diploma. Over the past few years, as the millennial generation have started to build families at the ages of 24 to 35, she noticed a difference in how her students behaved.

“Children are getting smarter, more intelligent, and developing a voice at a much earlier age, even at two or three, in some cases,”

The shift in parenting styles from our grandparents to the current generation of parents may also factor into the reasons why more children are entitled.

“Children don’t listen to their parents anymore; parents listen to their children,” added Ong Ping, a former childcare centre principal who now owns an early childhood centre.

Ong, 41, who has spent a combined 15 years in the early childhood profession in the US and in Singapore, notes that entitled children are a symptom of the affluence that countries like Singapore have come to enjoy.

Ong explained that when she was growing up, the generation before had gone through much more hardship, so there wasn’t much opportunity for kids to act entitled because the parents understood the struggle. But now, with more opportunity and wealth, parents feel it is a duty to provide only the best for their children.

Related article: Are Singapore workplaces really family friendly?

However, just because the parent can provide all the child’s material needs does not necessarily mean they are providing the best for the child’s development.

“There is a difference between giving your best and over-providing. If you’re giving in to all your child’s whims and fancies, you are doing more harm than good,” Ong explains.

She warns that giving in to the child all the time could lead to problems down the road.

One possible scenario is when educators may try to encourage healthy eating or social activities at school, and parents request that their children be allowed to sit out if they do not wish to participate. As a consequence, these children miss out on the opportunity to pick up social skills and may even become more prone to developing poor eyesight from being cooped up indoors for too long.

The shift in parenting styles from our grandparents to the current generation of parents may also factor into the reasons why more children are entitled.

“Children don’t listen to their parents anymore; parents listen to their children,” added Ong Ping, a former childcare centre principal who now owns an early childhood centre.

Ong, 41, who has spent a combined 15 years in the early childhood profession in the US and in Singapore, notes that entitled children are a symptom of the affluence that countries like Singapore have come to enjoy.

Ong explained that when she was growing up, the generation before had gone through much more hardship, so there wasn’t much opportunity for kids to act entitled because the parents understood the struggle. But now, with more opportunity and wealth, parents feel it is a duty to provide only the best for their children.

Related article: Are Singapore workplaces really family friendly?

However, just because the parent can provide all the child’s material needs does not necessarily mean they are providing the best for the child’s development.

“There is a difference between giving your best and over-providing. If you’re giving in to all your child’s whims and fancies, you are doing more harm than good,” Ong explains.

She warns that giving in to the child all the time could lead to problems down the road.

One possible scenario is when educators may try to encourage healthy eating or social activities at school, and parents request that their children be allowed to sit out if they do not wish to participate. As a consequence, these children miss out on the opportunity to pick up social skills and may even become more prone to developing poor eyesight from being cooped up indoors for too long.

Another factor that contributes to toddlers becoming tyrants is the tendency of parents to depend too much on foreign domestic workers.

“Many parents in Singapore have domestic helpers who cook, clean, tie the child’s shoelaces, bring them water, and so on. This is a form of over-providing because the child doesn’t learn anything by being spoon-fed,” says Ong.

“The issue is top down,” she adds. “Children model their behaviour after their parents. From an early age they are watching and learning how their parents speak, behave, and react through verbal and non-verbal cues.

“When a parent speaks a certain way to, let’s say, a domestic helper, the child picks up on the behaviour and imitates it in the future. For example, that little girl you saw at the mall most likely thought she wasn’t being rude but simply behaving normally,” explains Ong.

Related article: The digital parent: When to let your child start using devices, and how much is too much?

Dr Foo Koong Hean, a senior consultant psychologist at the School of Positive Psychology and senior lecturer of psychology at James Cook University Singapore, told Channel NewsAsia that smaller families and shifting parenting styles have led to children having an entitled mentality.

Echoing his sentiment, Ong states that parents who mollycoddle their children are robbing them of important developmental lessons such as resilience, independence, responsibility, and a sense of achievement. Which may all lead to developmental problems further down the track if left unchecked.

But how, then, do we tame the entitled children of Singapore?

Ong recommends building a solid value and rewards system, remaining consistent, and for parents to examine their own biases and behaviours to be a steadfast example for the child.

“We should no longer be in a time where parents point at a garbage man saying, ‘If you don’t study hard, you’ll end up just like him’!” Ong says. Instead she suggests being open and honest with the child, explaining the role of a garbage man in a society, to provide context of the role, and not demean it as a pseudo scare tactic. With this, the child can learn to discern his own path and future.

Speaking as a mother of three herself, Ong explains: “Kids can start doing age-specific chores, like sorting between the coloured and white laundry at two years old, to carrying some light groceries and doing the dishes from four to six year old.” She notes that these chores establish a sense of pride and familial responsibility within them, and provide them a safe environment to act, make mistakes, and learn from simple real-life experiences.

In other words, love them, but don’t spoil them.

“Rewarding them can also be a time for strengthening the parental bond and building a better relationship with the child,” Ong says. For instance, instead of walking into a toy store and telling the child he or she can have whatever they want as a reward, you could tell the child they can have something within a specific budget, and if they wanted something more expensive, they would have to save for it.

“This develops their decision-making skills and teaches them the value of money. It may also be a learning experience for them in curbing impulsive behaviour,” adds Ong.

This may not be easy as it requires time and patience, and unfortunately, many families today may leave such parenting decisions to the helper, which is not ideal.

 

“You can’t outsource parenting to a helper,” says Lim.

And as many households have both parents who are working professionals, the importance of active parenting at the early childhood stage ends up taking a backseat. But is providing for the child’s future worth the risk of poor early child development?

Related article: Teen mums need your support, not shame

“There is no substitute for the time you spend with your child, loving, teaching, and growing alongside them,” declares Ong.

Perhaps, it’s time we re-evaluate the important roles that parents play in nurturing their children, taking into account the different hats they often have to wear, the challenges they face, and the sheer dedication it requires to run a household and raise sensible, well-mannered children.

And when we’re able to check our priorities this way, it may be that for every young child who doesn’t hesitate to lecture his or her maid, there will be a watchful mother or father by their side, ready to nip such a show of entitlement in the bud.

 

Attention, Students: Put Your Laptops Away

Education Attention, Students: Put Your Laptops Away
April 17, 20166:00 AM ET

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
When you take notes on the puzzle or maybe when you sit down in class, do you pull out your laptop, or do you pull out a piece of paper? A researcher at Princeton University says it matters which one you choose because you’ll learn more if you write your notes by hand – a lot more. Pam Mueller joins us now to explain why. Thanks so much for being with us.

PAM MUELLER: Thanks for having me.

MARTIN: Your study shows that writing notes by hand makes you focus your attention in some way that just typing it doesn’t.

MUELLER: So when people type their notes, they have this tendency to try to take verbatim notes and write down as much of the lecture as they can. The students who were taking longhand notes in our studies were forced to be more selective because you can’t write as fast as you can type. And that extra processing of the material that they were doing benefited them.

MARTIN: That’s so interesting. So you’re saying that if you’re typing notes, you’re really, like, taking dictation, whereas if you’re doing it by longhand, there’s no way you can keep up that way. And so you’re inevitably synthesizing information and that’s a kind of learning?

MUELLER: Exactly, particularly when you’re asked a question that involves conceptual understanding of the material. We found that on factual questions, the students did approximately equivalently. But when it came to the deeper understanding of material, that’s where the longhand note takers really shown.

MARTIN: Do you want to out yourself? Are you a longhand note taker or were you, in college, a computer note taker?

MUELLER: So when I was in college, nobody really had a laptop.
(LAUGHTER)

MARTIN: (Imitating whispers) Me either. But we won’t tell.

MUELLER: (Laughter) When I was in law school, it was a huge debate about laptop versus longhand. And I wished maybe that I’d taken longhand notes there.

MARTIN: But what about for all the college students out there in the throes of exams, probably right now, who are frantically taking notes? Is it just unrealistic to think that people would switch it up and go old school?

MUELLER: I think it is a hard sell to get people to go back to pen and paper. But they are developing lots of technologies now like Livescribe and various stylus-and-tablet technologies that are getting better and better. And I think that could be sort of an easier sell to college students and people of that generation. I think that these results resonate a lot with people who are a little older. But as we showed in our studies, even when we told people they shouldn’t be taking these verbatim notes, they were not able to overcome that instinct. So that frantic note taking you were talking about is actually really, really bad.

MARTIN: Pam Mueller is lead author of a study about note taking. Pam, I’ve been listening carefully and writing things down, all in longhand of course. Now this means I need to work on my penmanship, by the way.

MUELLER: Yeah, it helps if the notes are comprehensible later. But even if they’re not, the content is in your brain better than it would be otherwise.

MARTIN: Oh, good. Wait, before I let you go, do you know who we’re talking to next on the show?

MUELLER: I heard that Alex Trebek is on this week.

MARTIN: Alex Trebek is on. And I hear that this matters to you. You were on “Jeopardy!”?

MUELLER: Yeah. So I was on the college tournament a long while ago and then on the “Tournament Of Champions” and then the “Ultimate Tournament Of Champions.” And then two years ago, they had a 30th anniversary tournament where they brought a bunch of us back. Yeah.

MARTIN: Was he nice to you, Pam?

MUELLER: Oh, yeah. He’s a big fan of mine.

MARTIN: Pam Mueller, also known as Dr. Mueller, thanks so much.

MUELLER: Good to talk with you.

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How to end screen time without a struggle

Do you ever struggle with getting your kids off the screen? Does it often end in tears (both theirs and yours)? Like so many other parents, I used to give my children warning.

“Five more minutes, then it’s dinner!” I’d yell from the kitchen.

This statement would either be ignored or grunted at.

Five minutes later, I’d march into the living room and turn the TV/tablet/gadget off, expecting them to silently accept and for us all to have a lovely, quiet dinner together.

Cue screams. Cue tantrums. Cue cold dinner. Cue grey hairs.

I realized something was wrong. Something was wrong in the way I was approaching the issue. My children aren’t naturally prone to tantrums, so I was thrown by this. I couldn’t work out what I could do to stop the sudden screaming at the end of every screen-time.

I realized something was wrong. Something was wrong in the way I was approaching the issue. My children aren’t naturally prone to tantrums, so I was thrown by this. I couldn’t work out what I could do to stop the sudden screaming at the end of every screen-time.

I wanted to find a way of gently disconnecting my children from the screen, of bringing them back into the real world without continual bumps and bruises along the way (because this happened almost every night), but I didn’t know how. Then a friend introduced me to a little trick by Isabelle Filliozat.

Isabelle Filliozat is a clinical psychologist specializing in positive parenting. She is the author of many books about children’s education, and an authority on gentle parenting in the French speaking world. From one day to the next, my world changed. I suddenly knew how to handle the end of screen-time without the screams, the tantrums, the cold dinner, or the grey hairs.

Here is Isabelle Filliozat’s very simple method to end screen-time without the screams.

The science behind screen-time

Have you ever had the electricity cut off just as the football game reached its most nerve-wracking stage?

Or your toddler pressed the “off” switch just as the protagonists in the deeply engrossing romantic comedy were finally going to kiss?

Or you ran out of power just as you were going to kill that alien and move up a level?

It’s hard to come out of the state of pleasure, which is what screen-time creates in our brains. It’s hard for adults. For a child, it can be terrible. Literally. Here, according to Isabelle Filliozat, is why.

When we human beings (not only children!) are absorbed in a film or playing a computer game, we are, mentally, in another world. Screens are hypnotic to our brains. The light, the sounds, the rhythm of the images puts the brain into a state of flow. We feel good, and don’t want to do anything else. We certainly don’t want the situation to change.

During these moments, our brains produce dopamine, a neurotransmitter which relieves stress-and pain. All is well – that is, until the screen is turned off. The dopamine levels in the body drop fast and without warning, which can, literally, create a sensation of pain in the body. This drop in hormones, this physical shock, is where children’s scream-time begins.

t doesn’t matter that we parents are quite clear that now is the end of screen-time. After all, we’d discussed and arranged it beforehand (“20 minutes!”), and/or given them warning (“Five more minutes!”). To us, it’s clear and fair enough, but to the child, it isn’t. When in front of a screen, she isn’t in a state to think that way or to take that information in. Her brain is awash with dopamine, remember? To turn the “off” switch on the television can, for the child, feel like a shock of physical pain. You’re not exactly slapping her in the face, but this is, neurologically speaking, how it might feel to her.

Cutting her off forcefully is hurtful. So instead of simply switching the “off” button, the trick is not to cut her off, but to instead enter her zone.

The trick? Build a bridge

Whenever you decide that screen-time should come to an end, take a moment to sit down next to your child and enter his world. Watch TV with him, or sit with him while he plays his game massacring aliens on the screen. This doesn’t have to be long, half a minute is enough. Just share his experience. Then, ask him a question about it.

“What are you watching?” might work for some kids.

Others might need more specific questions. “So what level are you on now?” or “That’s a funny figure there in the background. Who’s he?”

Generally, children love it when their parents take an interest in their world. If they are too absorbed still and don’t engage, don’t give up. Just sit with them a moment longer, then ask another question.

Once the child starts answering your questions or tells you something she has seen or done on screen, it means that she is coming out of the “cut-off” zone and back into the real world. She’s coming out of the state of flow and back into a zone where she is aware of your existence—but slowly. The dopamine doesn’t drop abruptly, because you’ve built a bridge—a bridge between where she is and where you are. You can start to communicate, and this is where the magic happens.

You can choose to start discussing with your child that it’s time to eat, to go have his bath or simply that screen-time is over now. Because of the minute of easing-in, your child will be in a space where he can listen and react to your request. He might even have been smoothed back into the real world gently enough, and is so happy about the parental attention that he wants turn off the TV/tablet/computer himself. (I’ve experienced my children do this, hand to heart.)

To me, simply the awareness of what’s going on in my children’s minds helps me handle end-of-screen-time much better than before. It isn’t always as smooth as I want it to be, but we haven’t had a scream-time incident since I discovered Isabelle Filliozat’s little trick.

Don’t take my word for it, go and try it yourself

Next time your child is sitting in front of a screen, and you want to end it, try this:

·         Sit with her for 30 seconds, a minute, or longer, and simply watch whatever she is watching or doing.

·         Ask an innocent question about what’s happening on screen. Most children love their parent’s attention, and will provide answers.

·         Once you’ve created a dialogue, you’ve created a bridge—a bridge that will allow your child to, in his mind and body, step from screen back into the real world, without hormones in free-fall, and therefore without crisis.

·         Enjoy the rest of your day together.