Raise Your Kids Like Paupers

When I was a newly married woman, I heard an interview given by an older, experienced mom. At the time, her words mortified me. Asked to provide advice on raising children, she said, “Don’t put your children first when it comes to things (toys, technology, clothing, etc.) Put them after yourself.”

As I said, I was mortified. I thought, “This must be one of the meanest moms ever. Isn’t it only natural to want to give your kids everything…the best of everything even…before you think of yourself?” Seemed right to me. Oh how egotistical and naive I was.

I’d come to learn, both from personal experience and the experience of other parents raising kids alongside me, that that woman was correct. As moms and dads, there is no doubt that the caretakers in us want to give our children better lives than we had growing up. By doing so, however, we are raising children with skewed expectations that will eventually make it difficult for them to be happy when living on their own. Implementing norms throughout childhood that are impossible to continue by our kids when first out of the nest is a mistake. It can lead to increased struggled, resentment, spitefulness, and depression in general as well as directed towards you.

At the same time, it is important that we personally reap the rewards of our own hard work apart from our kids. And we shouldn’t feel guilty in doing so. For instance, if mom wants a $350 Dooney & Bourke handbag to carry to and from work, home, and the many errands she needs to do to keep her family going, she should have it. But that does not mean that her four daughters are owed expensive handbags of their choosing too simply because mom got one or they exist. And it certainly doesn’t mean that they are due theirs first, before mom.

Spoiling our kids with lavish gifts on occasion is fine but doing so to the point that they call this “life” will literally spoil them as adults. Just like my friend Tim who suffered his son’s wrath after the boy demanded the purchase of a $1200 suit a week after Tim paid for a $1300 car repair, treating our kids as kings regularly will only harm them and harm our relationship with them. We would be better off treating them like paupers, which will instill all kinds of beneficial ethics and traits in them that will help them make their own way in the world and appreciate their own hard work as well as us, parents, more.

If you want to raise grown-ups that are capable of being properly self-sufficient, grateful, responsible, industrious, happy and giving, stop giving your kids so much (and the ‘best’ of that much). As parents, the only things you should over-dose on with your kids is your time, your love, your wise guidance and your good example — the intangibles that lead to soundness. Forgo the expensive tangibles for these.

Doing so will truly make your children rich for a lifetime.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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