Who's King Of Your Castle?

Always putting your kids first can lead to them having a sense of entitlement and cause parental stress

- Lindsay De Freitas

AS WE sat around the dinner table one night, I asked my friends – a married couple in their early thirties – whether they considered themselves or their children to be the most important people in their home. The couple answered in unison and without hesitation: their children, of course.

The question had intrigued me after reading it recently in an article by US based family psychologist and parenting expert John Rosemond. I asked the same question of other friends who are also parents and received the same response each time – the kids.

And judging by the response we got when we posed the question on YOU’s Facebook page, parents these days all seem to hold their offspring in high regard, unequivocally declaring their children to be the most important people in their home.

In his article published earlier this year, Rosemond recalls his response to a couple who said their three kids were the most important people in their home. He asked them why, and when all they could come up with were appeals to emotion, he told them there was “no reasonable thing” that gave their kids that status.

“I went on to point out that many, if not most, of the problems they’re having with their kids are the result of treating children as if they [mom and dad], their marriage and their family exist because of the child when it is, in fact, the other way around,” Rosemond writes.

His view is that idolising your children, and making them feel as though the family revolves around them and their needs, can lead to kids who grow up with a sense of entitlement. An entitled child, he says, believes that a relationship is a one-way street that travels in his direction. “It’s a child who fails to learn that satisfying relationships are about people serving one another.”