We lavish our children with too many material things

FRIDAY, JAN. 13: I asked a group of middle school students to tell me what they think young people really want and they began to list a number of material things such as an amusement park and lots of clothes.

Is this typical of young people or is it normal thinking as it pertains to adults as well?

Our desire to have material possessions in abundance seems to have trickled down to our young people. 

After all, children live what they learn.

What do young people really want? In my experience, they want the very things that they rarely verbalize yet crave — love, support, guidance and validation — and if we do not provide those things for our youth, in consistent abundance, they will inevitably seek it elsewhere. 

Parenting does not come with a step-by-step manual and granted, the manner of parenting for most is purely trial and error. Yet it seems that parents cannot gauge when their child has been the recipient of far too many things that they don’t need.

Rewards

For example, a cellphone with all the latest features; the latest in fashion wear — usually with a price tag that could easily equal a week’s worth of groceries; a trip to Disneyworld as a reward for doing what they ought to be doing in the first place.

Simply put, children today don’t value much because too much is given to them far too easily — and for reasons our forefathers would have never supported.

Imagine; a 13-year-old is rewarded with a pair of $175 sneakers for washing the dishes for a week. The things our children get today — if they whine for it long enough — were luxuries back in the day and what’s even more important was that we had to work for what our parents gave to us and prove our worthiness of those things over a long period of time.

When we shower our youth with things, we inevitably teach them lessons that they will have difficulty understanding and fulfilling for themselves when they are older.

In the real world, things do not come to us so readily.

At some point, when the showering of material things does not come in the timely manner in which the youth have become accustomed, that same young person embarks on a quest to maintain that lifestyle somehow, someway. Now let down by the very parents who propelled them into an undeserved and unearned lavish lifestyle in the first place, others will now start to fulfill that material satisfaction and with their young impressionable minds it is extremely easy for them to be swayed toward anyone who offers for them the very things that were lacking from the parent: the consistent abundance of love, support, guidance and validation.

Young people, tell us what you really want. Parents, do you know what your son or daughter really wants? This will be the topic of the very first Generations radio show which starts on January 16.

Shawnette Somner is the host of Generations, which airs on DeFontes Broadcasting Company’s AM1450 Gold, 7.30pm to 9pm every Monday evening. E-mail [email protected]. Names will not be publicized. Call in live during the show on 295-1450.