Bad parenting – the human gene pool is at risk

If you think that this generation of kids are spoilt, self-centred and self-indulgent, worry. Because the next generation after Y is going to get worse.

If today’s kids under 12 are any indication at all, the human gene pool is in danger of turning into a whole mass of brawny, cry-to-get-your-way kids and ignorant, full-of-themselves adults.

*Korine is one such example. Currently in Primary 5, she has much more money in her wallet than most working adults.

For her, one monopoly set is never enough. If she sees fit, she buys a second one, a third one. Well-meaning strangers offer her words of advice, “Little girl, don’t waste your parents’ hard-earned money, think carefully before you spent, it’s better to save up for a rainy day” falls upon deaf, reluctant ears.

She throws tantrums and gets into bad fits whenever things doesn’t go her way or people refuse to act as instructed.

Once, she rang me up at 9pm, asking me if I wanted to meet up. When I rang her up again at 10.30pm, I fully expected her to be at home.

“I’m having supper with my auntie at Jack’s Place.”

“What?!! Eh..do you know what is the time now? So, after supper, you going home?”

“No..I’m going bowling later.”

“Huh? Your parents never ask you to go home meh?”

“Oh, my mother won’t be coming home tonight because she has work to do. So, I’ll be going home around 3am in the morning.”

What, you ask, is a 10-year-old kid doing out so late at night?

Korine is the perfect example of parents today who simply do not have time to spare for their kids, so they end up pampering them with cash. What they do not understand is that cash cannot make up for parental love, care, concern and time.

Her mother works in the governmental sector and her brother is paid approximately S$7K a month. They are her immediate ATMs, and both see more withdrawals than the average working adult.

It seems she has a vengeance to match her spending power. Once, she said to me:

“I wish all the people in this world will die! Except you.”

Taken aback by the graveness in her words, my immediate reaction was to ask, “Why?”

“Because they are all bad eggs!”

Boy, was she wrong! It was very well, bad parenting! Imagine what kind of environment she must have grew up in, to cause her to say those words so early in life. It was ignorance at its best and negligent at its worst.

Ok, let’s take another example.

*Alice is 2 years old. Her mother doesn’t really care much about her, and she’s usually being dumped at Granny’s house. Which led someone to ask: If she doesn’t even bother about the kid, why does she even bother giving birth in the first place?

It’s true, why for that one moment of pleasure, or for that desire to fulfil your maternal instincts, bring an innocent child on the path to destruction?

Alice is very, very spoilt. She usually cries to get her way, and as time goes by, it’s become her lethal weapon when things don’t go her way.

When she cries, her mother is more likely to blame the culprit, then the child herself for her stubbornness, never mind whose fault it is.

Unfortunately, Korine and Alice are just two examples of a growing problem of kids who are spoilt brats. This behaviour can go way beyond adulthood, thus affecting the quality of integrity that one should hold in life.

I dread to think about the terror that is going to wreck havoc on the future. No, not terrorists, but definitely a force to be reckoned with. Kids!

Imagine this: The world is going to be more globalized and the physical (I stress) distance among human beings is going to get shorter. Maybe, in the future, long-distance relationships may even pose little problem.

So, when technology advances, the diameter of the pile of workload on any average working adult’s desk is going to get higher. And, when it does, the time they reach home is going to get later. And, when that happens, they have less or no time for the kids.

And, if that occurs, they are going to use money to cover that gaping emotional hole. But, this is a very special hole. The more you feel it up, the more empty it becomes, the voider it is, the more meaningless it grows.

Why feed that hole?

That hole can only be filled up with parental love!

Anything else, and it is just a temporary solution to a growing social problem. If the tap leaks, you jolly well get it fixed by calling in a plumber. Scotch tape is never a permanent solution. And, when that tape bursts, the amount of water coming out of the tap is going to flood your house.

Similarly, you choose the easy option by feeding your kid with cash to make up for the lack of time spent with them. Like with all things material, the obsession just grows bigger and bigger. And, when their desire grows, their appetite can never be satisfied.

(By the way, this is also why Singaporeans emerge among the last in the running of the world’s happiest people, because they associate happiness with material satisfaction. The former is long-term, the latter, just the exact opposite. And, feeding the latter is like feeding bananas to the monkeys at the zoo, their appetite and reliance just grows into horrifying proportions.)

Today, it is the iPod.

Tomorrow, it is the Xbox 360.

At the end of it all, the child comes out of the whole material affair empty. Because, in his hasten, he forgot to feed his inner soul, but instead glossed the surface of it. All it creates is a thin lining or veneer, which evaporates with time.

Haiya, an affair with material goods is akin to having an affair with a mistress. At the end of the day, she will leave you. So, it’s better to nurture your relationship with your wife, because in the end, that’s all you have.

In the end, your soul and integrity is what you have to co-habit with.

Ironically, you see grown-ups complaining about the deterioration of the moral fabric of teenagers today. Aren’t the adults to be blame? Most often, the kids do not stray on their own, it’s the adults that set the moral standards and learning example for their kids.

A local columnist once grunted about how whenever he gives up his seat to a parent, more often than not, they are most likely to let their kid’s butt warm the seat instead. “What kind of values are these adults imparting to the young?” he laments.

Most adults are oblivious (intentionally or unintentionally) that their actions speak volumes that go way beyond their language. A mother is probably going to tell her kids not to lie, because lying is bad. And, if you lie Santa Claus is going to know about it, and during Christmas you are not going to get that Ultraman plastic figurine you’ve been salivating over.

And, then, he hears his mother telling the maid, “If you answer the phone, and it’s for me, say I’m not around.”

So, he grows up thinking that if Mummy does it, it must be the correct way.

Other times, such values are injected into a child’s moral system unknowingly.

So, he steals his classmate’s Ultraman plastic figurine and when the teacher asks if it was him, he denies it, emphasizing his innocence with a fierce vehemence.

So, the teacher searches his bag and finds Ultraman squashed in the right-hand pocket of his school bag, and immediately, the child who is at a loss for words, starts to cry for his Mummy.

So, Mummy comes into the office, and asks where the child learnt his bad behaviour from.

In this instance, who is to blame? Parents are surely going to deny full responsibility for the involvement they have in shaping a child’s values. If the kid were to say anything that vaguely hints that the parent was responsible for the child’s bad behaviour, the parent would probably go, “Rubbish!” or “Nonsense!”

No parent wants to be associated with a bad kid, because it says so much about them. Their kid is like a mirror, a reflection of the parent’s fruits of labour at parenting.

And, when their method of parenting is a failure and it shows, some then sink into a state of self-denial (or self-assurance).

They are probably going to point fingers at other external factors (i.e. beyond their control) such as the kid’s school, teachers, classmates, friends or the drinks stall vendor at the school canteen.

But, more often than not, the culprit is the parents.

And, the child?

The victim of bad parenting!

*Names have been changed to protect the privacies of the very innocent.