Is it right to fulfill a child’s every wish? It is a pertinent question that every caring parent often asks himself. If you don’t, you should because the answer is neither clear-cut, still less straightforward.
Fulfilling children’s wishes is a hugely popular topic among professionals and the general public, which is unsurprising given that every parent is confronted with this issue, except those who know everything anyway.
The video story (if you prefer to read the story, please continue below the video):
Half a century ago, when I was a child, the world seemed more straightforward. Children were perceived as spoilt or well-mannered. The spoilt got and did what they wanted, whereas the well-mannered were more or less strictly brought up and knew their place. I felt most parents did not bother much with these issues, but they were what they were and rarely worked on themselves. My parents haven’t changed much their views over time; they only have accepted that children sometimes have different opinions.
Today, in the digital age, the world is different and open. Information is available to everyone, and moulding children in your image is increasingly difficult; therefore, children often challenge their parents. This may be more tiring, but it offers growth opportunities because we are forced to face our educational principles and adapt them, which is, of course, a good thing.
Return to the initial question: ‘Is it right to fulfill a child’s every wish?’ It is the wrong question; we should ask it differently: ‘How is it right to fulfill a child’s wish?’. The point is the relationship, not the wish itself; the point is to be in touch with the child. If there is genuine contact between parent and child, the child’s wishes will only be part of the relationship, and it will matter much less whether the wish is fulfilled or not. But when we fulfill every wish to reduce interaction with the child, fulfilling or not fulfilling a wish will have a more significant emotional impact on a child, given that fulfilling a wish is all he can get.
In my childhood, it was a family custom for my parents to bring me a present from business trips. So, when I was a small child, my father often brought me airplane kits, which he would assemble and give me. He was extraordinarily meticulous and put them together really perfectly. Of course, according to my father’s logic, these were decorative models, not toys, but I played with them – I was a kid. Of course, I broke them here and there. Once, I even took a seaplane model into the bath. My father was not impressed, of course, and I remember the looks he gave me and the guilt that I felt. When I was a few years older, my father still bought me the kits, but I assembled them myself. Not as nicely as he did, of course, and I had a new reason for the guilty conscience.
Our contact through the model kits was like the joint sets touching each other at one point. In my younger years, this touch-point was the handing over of an assembled model and later the handing over of an unassembled kit.
But the set never turned into a joint set, into a relationship in which we would jointly assemble the kits or even play with the airplanes. Apart from the love for the kits, I carried with me into adulthood also the feelings of guilt.
I meant this when I said the relationship is more important than the wish. The connection does not end with fulfilling the child’s desire, but the wish is only a common point around which the parent and the child build moments together.