I saw first hand, at length one of the major downfalls of the one child policy this week

[HEyHEY]

Had to go down to my Wife's hometown so that she could BE my wife. Her sister came and brought her four-year-old son. Holy shit, what a little terrorist. This "little emperor" syndrome you hear about was in full effect.

First, on our actual wedding day we were walking into the government office to register and as we go through the door the kid was saying "I want to go first, I want to go first!" and just throwing an instant tantrum before a response was given. His mom actually tried to STOP the rest of us so he could go in first, "Nuts to that," sez I, and walked in.

Then at lunch my parents were jonesing for some western food, so we found a pizza hut and all went in to wait. After stealing and drinking my half of my friend's strawberry drink, the kid decided he didn't want pizza hut so the Mom actually left with him to go to another restaurant. THIS KID IS FOUR! At that age food I refused to eat was forcibly injected into my stomach through my asshole, and I damn well didn't complain about it.

Then, later on that day, me and Hong were doing the last of the paperwork and my friends had bought some roses for her and were waiting for us at the hotel. The kid decided HE wanted the roses and his Mom said, "No those are for Auntie Hong, she's the most important person today." The kid instantly flipped HIT his mother and started ranting "I'm the most important person today!" Until his mother finally AGREED WITH HIM!! Then he broke a flower and two beer bottles..... nothing happened to him. If I did that when I was a kid I would have DIED.

The mom told my Mom, "he just doesn't listen to me." So, a bunch of this stuff kept happening. Then, finally, the day of the wedding lunch the kid was fucking around with everyone's cups of tea. His Mom told him not too cause we were all looking unamused, and the kid wouldn't listen to her. She snaps, hauls him outside behind the bamboo trees and gives him the first spanking of his life, he was terrified and screaming until her brother in law (Who's kids were very well-behaved BTW) pleaded with her to stop. Now, what good does that do anyone now? Building up then exploding and basically assaulting your child? that said, he didn't make a peep the rest of the trip after that.

I know kids act up, but it was the lack of action by the mom that got me. In ten years, when China has a country full of these brats, there's gonna be massive problems.

[tabatha]

1. You cannot extrapolate the behavior

of one single child to all others. Painting with a broad brush is always wrong.

I know many people with one child, and all of them are just great!

[HEyHEY]

4. This is a well documented issue, it's not jsut me saying it.

Plus, you may know people with one child, but that's a different situation if they are in the USA

[tabatha]

9. One child, two children, three children

I do not believe that it is the number of children that counts.

It is how the child is raised.

I have also known families of 3+ children where the youngest was spoiled and a brat.

And as for the spanking, I do not believe in that either. It is as violent as the child's behavior, and I wonder if the one did not result in the other.

[HEyHEY]

16. That's the point though. The one child policy is creating bad parenting

Not the amount of kids in the family
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Emperor_Syndrome

[Here4DaLinks]

19. "Attributed most frequently to increased spending power within the family unit and..." from ur link

""Little Emperors" is a name that refers to only children in the People's Republic of China after the one-child policy was implemented. Attributed most frequently to increased spending power within the family unit and the parents' desire for their child to experience the benefits they were denied, the syndrome results from the children's sole command of the attention of their parents and grandparents. "

The entire world will need a one-child-policy soon enough.


Edit:
But '+1' for introducing me to a new phrase!
:)

[TheMadMonk]

27. More than one child becomes self policing. Usually with a certain amount...

...of tears, snot, blood, and bark shed.

[WCGreen]

43. I have a friends with a kid just like that...

[MH1]

58. If it's so well documented, then maybe you could have provided some links

[NBachers]

25. Yes, all generalities are wrong

[HEyHEY]

48. Yeah, even when there are well-known social isses involved.

[Whisp]

2. eh?

oiy.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. I'm sorry you had to witness that.

I hope that mom comes to her senses, but it may already be too late.

Children are born basically uncivilized, and it's up to the parents to help them become fit to live in a civilized society.

Neither spoiling nor abusive punishment are good ideas.

I hope he didn't totally ruin your wedding.

[HEyHEY]

6. Nah, didn't ruin it. I felt bad for the mom though, but it's her and her husband's fault

For raising a child without any discipline.

[XemaSab]

5. Congratulations on the wedding!

:D

(I hate to quote crazy fundies ESPECIALLY when it comes to child rearing, but I was listening to a sermon a few weeks ago where the dude said that kids who are seriously abused generally aren't spanked ENOUGH. Now I think that's 8 kinds of BS, but in there I see some truth: in general, parents who are pro-active with discipline don't have kids who get SO out of control that the parents snap and beat the snot out of the kid.)

[HEyHEY]

7. Yeah, that was the biggest thing.... nothing, nothing, nothing then SNAP

As if the kid will learn limits and respect by his mother randomly deciding when she's had enough.

[dkf]

8. I saw something about the divorce rates of the one child policy types...

They don't know how to work together as a couple because it's all about them.

[Incitatus]

10. I don't see what that has to do with being a single child. It looks more like a parenting issue.

[HEyHEY]

11. Because the Chinese are only allowed one child, they tend to spoil them rotten

And it creates what's called "little emperor syndrome" which essentially means the kids run the house.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Emperor_Syndrome

[Incitatus]

14. Are you in China?

[HEyHEY]

15. Yarp

[marions ghost]

29. right

The problem stems from the Chinese one-child policy, but the parents' response is the actual problem. The kid doesn't need siblings so much as he needs real parenting--ie. tuff luv at times.

I'm afraid we have this problem in this country too--spoiled children, no many how many in the pod. You only have to watch "The Nanny" a couple of times. Some parents have to be taught how to do it.
Which is not a bad thing.

Indulgence is so rampant here that out in public I have had to just tell somebody else's kid to "stop that." (Usually they are so surprised they stop the obnoxious behavior). I once had the experience of sitting in a restaurant booth adjacent to a family. The whole family watched as the holy terror kid kicked the mutual booth seat so hard the whole thing rocked (over & over). Finally I turned around and said "STOP IT!" loudly to the kid, not the parents. Everyone around heard it. He behaved but the parents were annoyed.

Parents will pay for not teaching their children any boundaries.

[Darth_Kitten]

40. Exactly.

:)

[Dappleganger]

12. Just an FYI, there are brats and clueless parents in large families, too.

IMO it has nothing to do with how many kids there are in the family.

[HEyHEY]

13. Yes, but I'm talking about a well-known issue in China

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Emperor_Syndrome

It's cultrally different than one child families in the USA

[wickerwoman]

30. It's not just the parents, it's the grandparents too.

Now that the one-child policy is going into the third generation you get a lot of kids with four grandparents who have no other grandchildren.

It always made me wince when I was in Shanghai and students would invite me out to dinner or their homes and bring their rotten little kid. Most of the parents worked 80 hours a week from the time the kid was three months old so he'd be sent off to live with one of the grandmothers until he was old enough for kindergarten and the parents would only see him on holidays a few times a year. Anyway, the kid would be a complete screaming terror, the mom would throw up her hands and say "he just doesn't listen to me" and I'd be thinking "of course he doesn't... he's six years old and you haven't spent six months with him in his entire life."

Really pretty sad at the end of the day.

[hfojvt]

24. it does to a degree

the first child is the center of the parent's universe, and may be spoiled for a while, but then, as my older sister can tell you, a younger sibling comes along and ruins their life. Suddenly a noisy little poop machine has replaced them as the center of the universe. Except that second one can never really stay in the center, because the older one is always there to whale on them and otherwise demand attention.

Besides that, often a third child comes along and displaces them both. Next thing you know, you have to share things

[tabatha]

17. Well, I did a bit of reading.

Some of the spoiling is highly unusual - I would say aberrations. The following are amazing, and are not because of "one child" - but because of poor parenting.

DINNER TIME FOR ONE 5-year-old girl consists of granddad chasing her through the house, bowl and spoon in hand, barking like a dog or mewing like a cat. If he performs authentically enough, she rewards him by accepting a mouthful of food. No problem, insists granddad, "it's good exercise for her."

An 11-year-old boy never gets up to go to the toilet during the night. That's because his mother, summoned by a shout, gets up instead and positions a bottle under the covers for him. "We wouldn't want him to have to get up in the night," his mother says.

Another mother wanted her 16-year-old to eat some fruit, but the teen-ager was engrossed in a video game. Not wanting him to get his fingers sticky or daring to interrupt, she peeled several grapes and popped one after another into his mouth. "Not so fast," he snapped. "Can't you see I have to spit out the seeds?"

These do not seem like actions of parents who are worried about losing an only child. Why would they not do the same if they had two children? Anyway, seems one cannot extrapolate behaviors here with those in China. My bad.

[HEyHEY]

18. The cases of spoiling are not rare by any means

Do a little more reading. You'll see what I mean. It's becoming a real issue. And again, it is the parents, not the kids, but it's the kind of kids the parents are creating.

[phleshdef]

20. "At that age food I refused to eat was forcibly injected into my stomach through my asshole,"

"and I damn well didn't complain about it."

:rofl:

[canetoad]

21. I am so sorry you had to witness this

No I'm not. Go looking for trivial shit to fill you life and you will find it.

[HEyHEY]

22. Speaking of trivial.... this response comes to mind.

[sudopod]

23. "Nuts to that," sez I, and walked in.

*INTERNET HIGH FIVE*

[NBachers]

26. It's a Good Life

and Today is a Very, Very Good Day

[Iris]

28. My god. This kid is like Helen Keller before Annie Sullivan intervened.

What the hell is wrong with people?

Congrats to you and Mrs. HeyHey, btw! :toast:

[madrchsod]

31. congrats to you and your wife....

i remember when you were having problems....:rofl:

dam, we`ve been here that long?

[HEyHEY]

35. VERY LONG

I still can't believe I was wrapping up college when I found this place, now I'm 32

[Pacifist Patriot]

47. Your post made me think about how much has changed in my life since I found DU.

Major wow.

[Rhiannon12866]

32. My Dad went to China over 20 years ago and told me much the same thing.

He was with a tour group and they visited a school (Western visitors weren't that common, back then) where they each were assigned a child to dance with. My Dad was assigned a child who sounds like the kind of little terror you describe. He said that the boy was wearing lipstick and rouge, that it was common to put makeup on the children to make them feel better, if they started the day in a bad mood... :shrug: :hi:

[lunatica]

33. China has had the one child per family rule since the 1970s

One of the well known outcomes was that parents killed their first born girls because everyone knows boys are far superior in every possible way. Now there aren't enough women to go around.

And being a single child doesn't automatically make him/her a monster. In most cases bad parenting does.

[HEyHEY]

34. Yes, but now they have money to spend on the kids

And we're not complaining about single children, we're complaining about lousy parenting.

[Pacifist Patriot]

36. I've heard about the problem from my husband's co-workers who

travel there frequently for work.

The only Chinese child I've had contact with was a little girl who came over for a business conference with her parents. She wasn't overtly bratty like the little boy, but the fawning from the parents was almost nauseating and I really wondered how she was going to react when she found out the rest of the world wasn't going to treat her that way.

Unfortunately, I agree this is a consequence of a single child policy. This is NOT to say that single children are treated this way all over the world. My own nephew is not -- in fact, I think his dad is too strict but that's another story. But when a society is comprised of single-child families I can see where this would come from.

But most importantly,


CONGRATULATIONS!

[Darth_Kitten]

39. Oh, please, look at large families....

no control, older children and other family members stepping in because Mom and Dad can hardly be bothered at times to mind the brood they just HAD to have.

No, nothing wrong with single child families.

[HEyHEY]

42. Again, though, the issue isn't the amount of kids

It's the one child policy's effect on HOW people raise that one kid in a certain culture.

[Pacifist Patriot]

45. I hate to say it, but as I read your OP I pretty much expected the...

types of responses you got. I understand you're addressing a cultural phenomenon, but people get instantly defensive when it comes to parenting choices. I wondered if the whole China, cultural milieu, social engineering aspect was going to get lost in the shuffle.

[Darth_Kitten]

57. Yes, it actually is the amount of kids...

lots of people seem to think that having just one child is bad. :hi:

[Pacifist Patriot]

44. You didn't read either the OP or my response very carefully.

[Dorian Gray]

37. My brother's kids

are just as obnoxious. And there are three of them here, in the good old US of A.

It's about parenting, not about how many of them there are.

[Pacifist Patriot]

46. It is about parenting, but it's also about what creates a culture that results....

in a specific type of parenting. Authoritarian parenting has given way to authoritative parenting in most western democracies. This is not to say every family engages in the same parenting style, but what is seen as normative by the majority.

By mandating a single child per family, the Chinese government has created a social climate in which children are indulged because of their unique status within the family. Totally understandable from a psychological standpoint, but a recipe for behavioral disaster.

[PVnRT]

38. I would chalk that up more to over-indulgent parenting

[HEyHEY]

41. Yeah, but the reason for such parenting is the issue.

[lumberjack_jeff]

49. Recently, I heard someone make the distinction between "problems" and "stresses"

The population of China is a problem. The solution to it was population control (i.e. one child).

This solution causes stresses, and the fact that parenting skills that were culturally adapted to large families don't translate to small ones is one of those stresses.

The kid's mom doesn't have a bunch of small family experience to draw from.

The next generation will be better equipped to parent small families by knowing how to do it wrong.

[Snoutport]

50. Similar events occur at 18 when these emporers come to America for college

OMG... some of these guys come to America for college and they have no skills to take care of themselves.

[HEyHEY]

54. I see that all the time.... 20-year-old men who can't even make their own lunch

[LiberalEsto]

51. One of my daughters is a nanny

and has also taught a pre-school class at a pricey Montessori school outside Washington DC.

She has seen MANY kids who are not toilet trained at age 4 and 5. It happens because the yuppie parents are too busy with their jobs and social lives, and can't be bothered with trivia like potty-training. The kids have no manners, no boundaries, no discipline. When home, their parents park them in front of the tv, give them video games and buy them more toys than they could ever want.

These parents will NOT read to them, play with them, talk with them, take them on calm outings, etc. When a parent of one of these kids is out with the kid, the parent talks on his or her cellphone incessantly and ignored the child. The child is never corrected, taught manners, encouraged to be polite, share, etc. It doesn't matter if it's an only child, or a child with siblings.

When my daughter was in high school, she met kids from private schools who deliberately got drunk and threw up in their parents' Mercedes just to get some kind of attention, even if it was negative. I feel sorry for the kids who grow up like this; they are destined to become sociopaths.

[XemaSab]

52. Upon further reflection

It's interesting how Chinese-American families in the US are often the exact opposite: authoritarian parents and meek children. :shrug:

[HEyHEY]

53. I think it's cause many of them aren't noveau riche

The problem with my sister in law is that she grew up poor. So, when she was a child they went without because they had to. I don't think the idea of purposely denying things really makes sense to them.

[Canuckistanian]

55. This surely can't be a new phenomenon

After all, the "one child policy" is over 30 years old.

Has this become a problem lately?

[HEyHEY]

56. Yes, cause the parents now have money to spoil them, they didn't before

[Modern_Matthew]

59. Ah, the unintended consequences of authoritarian policies. nt

[FLPanhandle]

60. On the plus side, the human population is slightly reduced

That's never a bad thing.

[alphafemale]

61. Bad Parenting happens everywhere.

I witnessed this first hand.

Four year old first born.

It is his one year olds brother's first birthday.

The four year old actually had a larger by far pile of present than the actual birthday boy.

But...

He was screaming "I NEED MORE PRESENTS!!! I NEED MORE PRESENTS!!! I NEED MORE PRESENTS!!!" He was actually just ripping the paper off the presents and tossing the toys aside without even looking at them.

He was actually a very loving intelligent boy for the most part though. Despite all the indulgences he was given. I did "babysit" for him a few times. He clung to my neck several times.

He ended up maturing well and going to a great college on scholarship. He did grow up in a trailer.

Practically every kid has at least one melt down from hell.

You may find this out one day.

[CreekDog]

62. I can't believe a post that chronicles a bratty kid into a conclusion netted 15 recs

Such a grandiose conclusion off such a flimsy reed of a premise.


What do people see in such a post, do they think 'only' children will be China's and possibly our own downfall?