Are Our Kids Today Spoilt?

In a conversation with close friend recently, he lemented about how his 19-year old son ask his mum to buy lunch for him despite the fact that he has his own car, he had not been home since the previous day. To make things worse, my friend and his wife were busy that morning. In respose to the ninteen year old's request the mother began to dash off to get lunch while the father felt that the young could and should go get his own food. As simple as this incident may be it triggered an arguement between the couple.

My friend further lemented that despite having bought his son a car. The son complain - to the mother - that the car is no good and he wished to have another better one. The car he has is an older Wira. A couple of days ago I visied my sister and spotted that her 15 year old daughter had a new hair do. She calls it rebonding (something that no matter how hard I try, I can never understand what it is). It was done at a hhigh-end salon and costed RM 360 to the shock of her mother and I. Again the father thinks it's just a few ringgit hair do at the neighbour salon. These events prompts us to think about the past and of "those days" back then when things were different. My friend with the 19 year old son, recalled his childhood days where he had to help his father work just to earn every meal each day. Life was tough. When he managed to get into university, his father only provided him with RM 450 year for fees and he had to work is way through and support himself on all other necessary expenses. I am sure most of us have such stories to tell. Some will argue that we live in different times from our parents and their parents as well. Perhaps they are right. As a parent I am of the opinion that our children do not necessarily need to endure the same kind of hardship we or our own parents have endured because times are different. So, how do we draw the line. Should our kids do laundry? We did it. Only now, there is the washing machine. Should we have our kids involved in housework and chores? Then again there are maids. Some parents have argued with me that the kids can make better use of their time to do and learn things, etc, etc. But how many children do we know turn off the television when they have free time? How should we give them pocket money and help them realize the value of money?

The real challenge will really be how are we encupsulate these experiences from ourselves and our fore-fathers, transforming them to values so as our children can appreciate and they themselves can internalize, integrate with their own experiences, moulding them to be better people.

Something to think about.

KV