iT N Gife,
Enough Already!
With the holidays just around the corner, psychologists and counselors give
tips on how to teach your children the true spirit of giving and receiving.
LYNN WILLIAMS
Special to The Jewish News
;=.7
ounselor Kevin O'Connor
remembers the parents of a
fifth-grade girl arranging a
spectacular 10th birthday
party that included tickets for her and
her friends to attend a rock concert,
with dinner along the way. And the
transportation was the kicker — a
white stretch limo pulled into the
school parking lot late that Friday
afternoon to whisk the kids away.
You probably know a few parents
like these. "Nothing is too good for my
child" is their credo, and they spare
no expense to make certain their off-
spring have all the advantages, oppor-
tunities and really cool stuff they
themselves may have missed.
"The problem is, what happens at
age 11, age 12, and God forbid at 16
when nothing less than a BMW will
do?" says O'Connor, a counselor at a
private school in Baltimore. "Lots of us
are struggling with it," he continues.
"-What are the norms?"
Psychologist Bruce A. Baldwin,
Ph.D., who identified the phenome-
non in the '80s, coined a term for the
recipients of all this parental largesse:
"cornucopia kids." They have only to
state a wish; and their parents, like the
mythical horn of plenty, are ever-ready
to provide.
And what, one might ask, is wrong
with that? What instinct could be
more laudable than wanting your chil-
dren to have it better than you did?
The immigrant, the factory worker
and the tenant farmer who sacrificed
so that their sons and daughters could
attend college — these archetypes nes-
tle at the very heart of the American
Dream.
Taken to extremes, though, such an
ethos can be ruinous — not only to a
family's pocketbook, but to a child's
developing psyche.
"There are two danger signs,"
according to Baldwin, author of Beyond
the Cornucopia Kids, published by his
company, Direction Dynamics in
Wilmington, N.C. "One when a child
is learning to get what he wants
through manipulation and pulling a
parent's emotional strings. The other is
when there is giving, but no expecta-
tion that the child give anything back.
The child grows up with the expecta-
tion that everything comes easily. That
becomes a very destructive mode for
learning. The real world doesn't operate
on those expectations."
Adds Diane Blau, a consulting psy-
chologist in Farmington Hills, "When
giving to your child, there are some
basic questions to ask yourself: Am I
giving to or giving in? Who am I doing
this for? How will this benefit my
child? What lessons am I teaching my
child?'"
Fred Gosman, founder of the center
for Common Sense Parenting in
Milwaukee, says, "We want our chil-
dren to have everything. But that's the
greatest irony: For many of us, it's
because we didn't have everything that
we developed a work ethic and had a
burning desire to achieve."
Gosman, author of Spoiled Rotten
and How to Be a Happy Parent In Spite
of Your Children, two volumes of
advice, anecdoteS and coping strategies
for parents (both published by Villard,
a division of Random House), is not a
professional educator or psychologist;
he gives as his credentials CFRH, a
Concerned Father with a Receding
Hairline. His motto is "parenting is not
brain surgery." But he admits that it
can be a delicate balancing act. Parents
must be able to distinguish between
the real opportunities that will increase
their children's chances of success and
the indulgences that can sap their abili-
ty to succeed on their own.
A cornucopia problem almost
always begins in the nursery, says
Washington-based financial writer
Janet Bodnar, author of Mom, Can I
Have That? (Kiplinger). Tiny tots who
would be happy with a birthday treat
of cake and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey
will, after few years of magic shows
and chartered buses to the Ice Capades,
expect such lavish entertainments as a
matter of course. They will develop
into teens who demand the latest
designer clothes and gadgetry, and, all
too often, into adults who still need
their parents to bail them out of debt
when they max out on their credit
cards.
All of this naturally comes as a
shock to the parents who, whether they
are affluent professionals or working-
class strivers, have one thing in com-
mon: good intentions.
"I haven't met the parents yet who
have made a conscious choice to screw
up their kids," offers O'Connor.
"Everybody's out there trying to do the
best they can."
What's missing, he says, is the sup-
port network that used to keep parents
on course; most '90s moms and dads
not only don't have the proverbial "vil-
lage" to help raise their children, they
don't even have the extended families -
that used to provide advice and feed-
back.
The vacuum is being filled by the
influences of modern society: con-
sumerism ("my kid deserves the best
stuff"), yuppie competitiveness ("my
kid has better stuff than your kid"),
financial insecurity ("if my kid doesn't
have better stuff than your kid, he'll
never get a decent job").
Changing patterns of marriage,
11/28
1997
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