Parental Enabling Hurts Children’s Development-Try Earned Spoiling Instead

Your 27-year-old child is living at home, does not have a job and plays video games all day. You nag the adult child to do chores, get a job or go to school but nothing ever changes and your nagging only makes everyone frustrated. How did this happen? Parental enabling is often the root cause.

When parents fail to hold their children accountable for their actions, they never learn how to

accept responsibilities. They lack the life skills of goal setting and are unable to discover the

paths that led to life success and fulfillment. They never had to work hard when they were

younger so they have no idea how to work hard as a young adult. Mom and Dad did everything for them, never held the children accountable for doing chores or managing money. The children were raised to be entitled, expecting others to do everything for them. They have no idea how to be an adult and now sit around the house or go out partying with friends with no secure future ahead of them. When you buy the new car or daily Starbucks for your child without earning such privileges, the child learns to demand and expect others to provide for them. Parents deprive the children of learning how to be an adult by doing everything for them.

Earned spoiling is a concept that teaches children how to work hard, reinforced by positive

rewards. All children need age-appropriate chores and responsibilities, followed by positive

rewards; also known as privileges. Instead of giving your child a cell phone, or car or money to buy things, make them earn it by doing chores and responsibilities in the home and for the

family.

Parents need to stop enabling their children by giving them whatever they demand. Children

need to learn how to work for the rewards they seek. They will grow up to be successful,

independent adults and not unemployed adults living in your home with no future plans ahead of them.