Lesson Five Are you Giving Your Kids Too Much? 1 While traveling for various speaking engagements, I frequently stay overnight in the home of a family and am assigned to one of the children's bedrooms. In it, I often find so many playthings that there's almost no room - for my small toilet kit. And the closet is usually so tightly packed with clothes that I can barely squeeze in my jacket. 2 I'm not complaining, only making a point. I think that the tendency to give children an overabundance of toys and clothes is quite common in American families, and I think that in far too many families not only do children come to take their parents' generosity for granted, but also the effects of this can actually be somewhat harmful to children. 3 Of course, I'm not only thinking of the material possessions children are given. Children can also be overindulged with too many privileges - for example, when parents send a child to an expensive summer camp that the parents can't really afford. 4 Why parents give their children too much, or give things they can't afford? I believe there are several reasons. 5 One fairly common reason is that parents overindulge their children out of a sense of guilt. Parents who both hold down full-time jobs may feel guilty about the amount of time they spend away from their children[0804:64] and may attempt to compensate by showering them with material possessions. 6 Other parents overindulge because they want their children to have everything they had while growing up, along with those things the parents yearned for but didn't get. Still others are afraid to say no to their children's endless requests for toys for fear that their children will feel un...
