This series of articles from Boomer Yearbook explores the fascinating and varied behavioral patterns that occur when families are affected by outside events, or by the impact of second and third marriages; the dangers and coaching solutions concerned with ‘spoiled’ children and the hurdles that must be addressed for family newcomers: Boomer Yearbook’s Guide and Coaching Strategy for the baby boomer generation.
Psychological Articles and Coaching Tips for Baby Boomers to Avoid/ Alleviate Elderly Problems
Children who are born into relative comfort and security display a refreshing eagerness to please the adults that populate their small world. Parental influence has the greatest impact on the way children behave but all too often, the influence of an affectionate and over-indulgent grandmother can de-rail all attempts to achieve discipline and control for the parents. Baby boomers passionately attached to their grandchildren can sometimes cause a great deal of harm to children they spoil indiscriminately, undermining parental authority, causing resentment, discord and general havoc.
Older baby boomers remember all too well the disciplines of the forties and fifties and the constraints applied to children in the lean years following the war. Children who have a vivid recollection of a frugal or excessively disciplined lifestyle often grow into adults who have an over developed idea of their own entitlement to the good things in life. When grandchildren put in an appearance, baby boomers can ‘over compensate’ to attempt to guarantee in some way that grandchildren have a better experience of childhood than their own and that of their children.
Spoiling can present in many forms. Psychological articles from the schools of Attachment Object Relations and Positive Psychology look at a grandmother’s susceptibility to spoil a grandchild and suggest a variety of motives that range from being deprived in early childhood to ‘buying’ love from the child to help reinforce her own security. In the worst instances, a grandmother might ‘compete’ with her own daughter for the affections of a grandchild, causing extreme distress. In cases where the grandparents are financially better off than the parents, opportunities to over indulge and spoil are frequent and consequently lead to the child seeking the grandparent’s company in order to acquire gifts and treats, resulting in warped values.
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One of the more chilling aspects of the spoiling process is that all too often, the damage caused by such behavior might be well established before a counteractive process or remedy may be put into place. Children who have been subjected to over indulgence tend to feel ‘punished’ when deprived of the treatment they previously enjoyed in quantity, whether it was in the form of actual possessions or simply through emotional manipulation.
Punishment of any kind is often seen by grandparents to be a form of abuse. A mother who scolds her child for poor behavior might be ‘called out’ by her own mother, sometimes in front of the child, and told she is being unreasonable or unfair. This leads the child into manipulative behavior, as the mother is thereafter viewed by the child as being without authority; someone who may be ‘side-lined’ whenever good behavior is an issue. Baby boomer Grandma wins again!
Psychological articles advise early attention to such matters before they get out of hand but of course these are not easy problems to handle. Grandparents hold a certain affection and seniority within the family structure that is both assertive and difficult to challenge. Taking on Grandma in the popularity stakes is not always to be recommended!
The Psychological Article on Grandmother Spoiling and Over-indulging: The Cause and Effect is part of Boomer Yearbook’s continuing series of baby boomers psychological coaching tips and how to alleviate elderly problems. We believe knowledge is power. We’d love to hear what you think.
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