Are your kids spoiled?

Last week when I was at the beach, my mom shared a fascinating article entitled "Spoiled Rotten," initially published in The New Yorker. Read (or quickly skim during naptime) the full article here.

The basic premise of the article (and forgive me, as I am not an English major so this is my best attempt at a summary) is that American kids, by and large, are spoiled and entitled simply because we, as parents, do too much for them. Yet at the same time, we tend to think very highly of our children. A few excerpts that resonated with me...

"So little is expected of kids that even adolescents may not know how to operate the many labor-saving devices their homes are filled with. Their incompetence begets exasperation, which results in still less being asked of them (which leaves them more time for video games). Referring to the Los Angeles families, Ochs and Izquierdo wrote, “Many parents remarked that it takes more effort to get children to collaborate than to do the tasks themselves.”"

"Children, according to “Life at Home,” are disproportionate generators of clutter: “Each new child in a household leads to a 30 percent increase in a family’s inventory of possessions during the preschool years alone.” Many of the kids’ rooms pictured are so crowded with clothes and toys, so many of which have been tossed on the floor, that there is no path to the bed. (One little girl’s room contains, by the authors’ count, two hundred and forty-eight dolls, including a hundred and sixty-five Beanie Babies.) The kids’ possessions, not to mention their dioramas and their T-ball trophies, spill out into other rooms, giving the houses what the authors call “a very child-centered look.”"

I am sure that many of you agree with me that the last thing we're trying to do is raise spoiled children. That said, the article really got me thinking about some of the things that the husband and I do to inadvertently create spoiled children. I am pretty guilty of giving in to whining for juice, and just last week I totally bought Thatcher "la la" (aka Elmo) stickers to avoid a tantrum in Rite Aid. And Lord knows I am Queen of "Thatcher prefers to eat grapes cut this way" and other such nonsense. Did I just admit that? Moving on...

So the husband and I talked about it, and we're making a conscious effort to ask more of Thatcher, especially while he is young and thrives on the idea of helping. I also talked about it with several friends, many of whom shared interesting ideas for how they're expecting more of their children. It seems like so much of our tendencies as parents to just do things for our kids is tied up in our own sense of urgency around the task (the toys need to be picked up, and they needed to be picked up YESTERDAY) or our own expectations (the toddler is never going to put the toys away how I'd like them, so I should just do it myself). Some of the ideas I've come up with...

• Asking Thatcher to throw things away in the trash, particularly his own trash (he loves this!)
• Having him bring me his high chair tray to clean after meals
• Asking kids to pick up their dirty clothes after bath time and bring them to the hamper
• Asking for assistance with toy pick up routinely (life WILL go on if the pieces and parts aren't exactly where they have to go!)
• Not always giving in just to avoid the public meltdown (what message am I sending when I buy the stickers "just because?")
• Having children bring their plates/cups to the sink after dinner even if it means some is spilled on the floor
• Asking for help during meal prep (bringing items from pantry, putting items back, etc) ... (Side note: it dawned on me that perhaps kids tantrum while we are trying to get things done because they want attention and perhaps we should be involving them more instead?)
• Letting toddlers get the mail or bring in the newspaper

How does this play out in your house? Are you intentionally asking your children for help around the house, or do you have other creative ideas of how to get toddlers involved? Do you agree that Americans in general are creating a culture of spoiled children?

The other thing that is interesting to me is that I don't necessarily believe in "chores." In other words, if your parents ask you to do something, you should just do it (or at least that was how I was raised). I don't necessarily have an interest in creating a chore chart and rewarding my kids for things that really should be done just because they're part of life (no one at college is going to give you a gold star for brushing your teeth, you know?) Thoughts on this?