KEY POINTS:
Forget the Love Generation. Forget the X, Y and I Generation. My tweenagers belong to the Spoilt Generation.
And it's hardly their fault. But I'm finding it difficult to blame myself.
This generation, in the precious few years between being a child and becoming a teenager, want for
nothing. What's more, they want for nothing as soon as they ask for it.
What tweens need is more than most parents are willing to give. They need to go without so they can appreciate the prize when they finally get it.
Are my kids great kids? They sure are. Do they show kindness, use manners, are they trustworthy where it counts?
They do and they are. And most of their friends are the same.
Like all children, they deserve the best. However, in giving them what we think is the best, and that usually means whatever they ask for, in an instant, we deprive them of learning what it takes to set goals and the immense satisfaction that comes from reaching them.
I often hear people of my grandparents' generation lament the fact that young people have little motivation and inclination to work hard.
But who can blame them when what they want, from elaborate and expensive birthday parties to constant upgrades in wardrobe and techno toys, has been given to them on a plate with little more than a please or thank you?
To be truly grateful, you have to know what it's like to go without. Or at least work hard to get what you need.
Try desperately wanting something, going without and then getting it. Better (or maybe worse) still, try desperately needing something, having to cope without it then being given it. What a gift that feels like.
I know that lesson well because I grew up poor, needing far more than my single mother, in the throes of alcoholism, was able to give. Nothing came my way easily. Just about everything was second-hand and hard fought. Out of that childhood, and into my adulthood, I took a strong sense of gratefulness.
That gratefulness is still as strong as it was 20 years ago, even though most things come my way a lot more easily now.
As parents, we naturally want better for our children today than we had yesterday. We would never want them to go through extreme circumstances to learn values like gratefulness.
We can do the little things. In our home, it is ensuring everyone thanks the cook each night, it is giving in a meaningful way to charity, it is remembering to appreciate the work other family members do to keep our home running.
It is teaching our girls to say please and thank you, to think about why they are saying it and mean it.
It seems awfully cruel that in wanting the best for our children, in giving them a better life than I had, I can end up spoiling them and sending them out into the world with too much "give me coz I deserve" attitude.
The key, for me, lies not in giving them more stuff than my own yesterday, but bigger and brighter opportunities today. If we can embrace all the great things the world has to offer, then present our kids with those bright opportunities, and inspire them to work for it, we are giving them far more than we ever had.
A child who is taught to toil for their own spoils is not spoilt. Anything hard won is more precious, right?
* Jennifer Watts of Napier has two tweenage daughters. She is a former journalist.
