Parents often give children everything they ask for and do what they like

Parents often give children everything they ask for and do what they like. Is it good for children? What are the consequences when they grow up?

Band 9 Sample

Indulging children has become a common parenting problem in many modern families. From my perspective, this practice may create some immediate adverse impacts on children and also results in long-term consequences for them.

In the short term, over-indulgence may cause some delay in the process of children learning important life skills. We can see this in a variety of age groups, ranging from toddlers to teenagers. For example, many over-caring parents spoon-feed their children until they are five or six, the developmental stage in which they should have already been able to eat independently. Also, there is a common practice in our country that parents assist their preadolescent children in taking a bath or a shower. As a result, children may fail to acquire basic personal hygiene skills at the right time.

In the long run, the consequences are even direr as over-indulged children grow up. If parents unconditionally satisfy all their children’s needs, they may inadvertently make their children over-reliant on other people. When these children enter adulthood, the inability to live independently can cause some difficulties for them to maintain their overall well-being; for instance, they may be unaware of what to do when they catch a fever. Furthermore, it is a norm that over-indulgent parents are lenient and do not require children to face the consequences of their misbehavior. In general, this deprives children of the opportunities to learn from mistakes, which may cause their problem-solving skills to be severely lacking in the future.

From the issues outlined above, one can conclude that over-indulgence may produce a number of unfavourable effects on children, including the delay in gaining crucial life skills such as self-feeding and the long-term consequence of lacking the ability to cope with problems as adults in the future.