We’re living in an age of abundance. That can be a great thing, particularly for parents. Most of the time, living in an age of abundance means you can provide for your children and give them access to opportunities you may not have had as a child. However, there’s a fine line between opportunity and entitlement. Parents’ who aren’t purposeful in the ways they provide for their families often risk spoiling their children.
What do we mean by spoiled?
Pop culture presents a clear archetype for the spoiled child. Think Veruca Salt (from Willy Wonka), Dudley Dursley (from Harry Potter), even the ugly stepsisters from Cinderella.
But in reality, being spoiled is rarely so cut-and-dry. More often than not, behavior we refer to as spoiled comes down to mismatched expectations or a lack of resilience. Luckily, there are a few things parents can do to teach their children a realistic framework for money management while helping them to build the type of patience and resilience that will serve them well later in life.
(In truth, I think this approach offers helpful reminders for all of us, regardless of age.)
The pitfalls of instant gratification
For those of us who grew up in the pre-Netflix era—I think this encompasses Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials—delayed gratification was the norm. In the times before TiVo (remember TiVo!?), the only way to watch a show you enjoyed was to plan to be in front of your TV on the day and time it aired. We purchased paper TV guides to get strategic about our plans.
Even with a TV guide, however, the system was flawed. You could plan ahead, make popcorn, and sit down in front of the TV brimming with anticipation… only to discover a rerun episode.
This approach to watching television seems almost comical now. Today, the biggest challenge isn’t making sure you’re home to watch your favorite show, it’s knowing how to turn a program off after you’ve watched back-to-back episodes for four hours straight.
The fully-connected, everything-on-demand state of the world extends far beyond television. That’s not a bad thing. We can diagnose diseases within minutes, you can plan a dinner date and find someone to invite with just a few swipes of your phone, and you can buy a car online and have it delivered to your home.
But all of that convenience comes with a tradeoff: We’ve lost touch with the art of patience. Take a minute to reflect: When did you last wait in line? Purchase something—clothing, furniture, art—that was made to order from scratch?
How did you feel waiting for your turn, for your reward?
It might be my imagination, but I feel like I had an easier time waiting my turn when I was a kid because waiting was the expectation. Now, as an adult who knows better, who understands that waiting is necessary and patience is a virtue, I find waiting to be that much harder since I do it much less frequently.
Now think about how those same things may be impacting your child(ren).
How to teach patience
Many of us learned patience by default—we couldn’t speed up the clock on Saturday morning no matter how eager we were for cartoons to start. Our children don’t have the same organic methods for learning patience that we did. That means we need to be proactive about teaching that skill.
For better or worse, money can be an important part of this lesson. Consider the following:
Your child wants a new toy from Target. It’s available for instant pickup; the potential for delayed gratification is there. So why wouldn’t you simply buy the toy and get it right away?
- Money: Do we have the disposable income to spend money on this toy right now?
- Relative value: Does spending money on this toy mean we’ll have less money to spend on a toy next week, an extracurricular activity, or similar? Does your child want to prioritize the toy at the expense of other things?
- Time horizon: If you waited to buy the toy, setting aside a portion of your child’s allowance each week, would your child be able to comfortably afford the toy without having to sacrifice any other item or activity?
In other words, money can help you create a framework for patience that helps your child learn important lessons around value, prioritization, and the connection between time and money.
Similarly, conspicuous consumption has become just as prevalent as instant gratification, meaning you may need to proactively address the habits your child sees if you want them to have a more discerning approach to money, shopping, and material goods overall.
A purposeful approach
I could fill this article with various examples and opportunities to teach your child constructive money habits, but looking for individual opportunities is always going to feel like more effort than a cohesive approach.
That’s where purpose comes in. If you can create a family mission statement or high level purpose for the way you engage with the world, you’re creating a more foundational approach to critical thinking, patience, and all of the qualities that counteract being “spoiled.”
We talk about family mission statements as a way to provide a framework for life; the kind of thing that makes it easier to respond to day-to-day decisions and challenges because you don’t have to think through everything on an individual basis.
This same value applies to your children. Think about it: Would you rather teach your child a set of rules for 10 individual situations, or give them a framework that allows them to navigate any number of situations.
The bonus? Mission statements rarely tie directly to money. Instead, they connect to core values; money once again becomes a tool and teacher, in the same way that time and the TV guide taught us lessons all those decades ago.
If you’re curious how we incorporate mission statements into financial planning work, reach out—I’d love to connect.
Read more about family mission statements.
