Just Say No

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Richard Bromfield, a psychologist and faculty member at Harvard Medical Center specializing in child and adolescent psychotherapy, recently felt compelled to write the matter-of-fact parenting manual, “How to Unspoil Your Child Fast.” Over the course of his work, Dr. Bromfield has seen his fair share of self-entitled youngsters—and, most of all, the negative paths their lives can take into adulthood. Here, he shares why he believes overindulged kids are disadvantaged, the telltale signs you may be spoiling your child, and how parents can undo the damage.

What made you decide to write a parenting book on unspoiling kids?

Of all the patients I’ve seen, whatever the recurring problem, it always seemed that indulgence played some sort of a role. In a sense, I think it’s a problem of the times. My parents raised me in the ’50s and ’60s, when all the parents were saying, “You want stuff? Get a job.” Today, even people with very limited incomes do more, say more, and spend more on kids than they can afford to, forgetting whether it’s good for the kids or not.

What are some signs that parents might be overindulging their kids?

Signs that your child is overindulged include when you have to pay them, or beg them, or go through such lengths just to get one ounce of reasonable cooperation. When you find yourself not liking the children you’ve raised because of their behavior. When you’re embarrassed about the way they treat you or other people in public. When they’re unable to share, when they are unable to express or even experience gratitude. It isn’t just that they lack the etiquette of saying things like “thank you” and “you’re welcome,” but they don’t experience thankfulness of what’s being done for them and what they have.

Does spoiling start at a specific age?

It’s a slope. You never want parents to be worried about spoiling a baby because babies need to be loved, held, fed, have their needs met and to have their discomforts eased. But a toddler doesn’t need to have every whine responded to. When you do that, you’re really not responding to every need, because what the child needs at those moments is to soothe herself, or learn how to play by herself. It doesn’t make a toddler feel better to boss around his mother. Being a little empress or king is really not a pleasant place for a kid to be.

Is spoiling your child simply a case of not enforcing enough discipline or boundaries?

It’s all part of the same package. Oftentimes, parents aren’t even aware of how much they indulge their kids until they almost do a type of bookkeeping—sort of the way you’d look at a budget. When parents sit back and look at what they spent on their kids, sometimes they’re amazed. They’ll say, “I didn’t spend money on anything big yesterday,” but meanwhile they bought them a big hot chocolate, snacks, books, and clothes. When I was a kid, you had to earn these things. But nowadays a lot of contemporary parents put it into a category of necessity.

What are some things parents can do right away to jumpstart unspoiling their kids?

The first thing you can do is sit down with a notebook and write down everything you did with your child this week—all of the time you spent, the driving you did, all the money you spent. The second

thing would be to stop
negotiating for everything you want or everything your child wants.
You’re not settling a case with Microsoft. You’re just trying to get a
kid to brush his teeth. A third thing would be to re-think your
priorities for what you want for your child in terms of his development
and character. See if in fact your parenting is heading in that
direction.

In
the book you mention it takes two parents to spoil a child. What if it
seems like one parent is more of a culprit than the other?

That’s
a tough one. It’s very common for one parent to blame another. But one
parent will indulge this thing, and another parent will indulge in a
different thing. What’s not very helpful is when parents blame each
other for indulging. It works best when you can fix your own indulging,
and your spouse or partner fixes his own indulging.

What are some negative effects of having an overindulged child?

On
sort of a day-to-day basis, they can be tiring, frustrating, annoying.
You have children who are unhappy, whose selfabsorption gets in the way
of a connection with other people. Really overindulged children, over a
long period of time, can lag behind in work ethic and not be able to
assume the responsibilities of kids their age.

In
a city like New York where you have a lot of affluent families, how can
parents navigate wanting to provide their children with the best
without spoiling them?

Money
can buy anything, but oddly enough af fluence can rob children of what
they need: learning to be grateful for what happens in life, learning
to be content. It’s hard to learn to appreciate if you never go
without. It’s hard to learn patience if you never have to wait. It’s
hard to learn to work for something if you’ve never had to work. I’m
not saying “poor affluent parents,” but it’s tough for them to set up
the conditions to teach kids the things they need to learn to succeed
as grown-ups.

How long does it take to unspoil your child? Is it ever too late?

The
enemy, so to speak, is in our life every morning. You almost have to
declare a war on indulgence because it’s so pervasive and so subtle.
Although [unspoiling] doesn’t require perfection, it requires
conviction because if you do it half-heartedly, it doesn’t work. But if
you start doing it today, you’re going to start seeing results today.
The secret of unspoiling is there is no such thing as unspoiling. All
it means is no longer spoiling. And I think you can start doing that at
any age—it’s never too late.