The problem with good, bad or spoiled children, is these labels are judgments that deny the innate capacity of the human being to learn, to grow and to change. Whenever we apply them to a young child, an evolving human being, we limit both the child and our ability to meet the child’s needs. They create a deadening of possibility. Consider the impact of these terms on a child’s potential.
Start with the moniker “good child”; that is a child who does what he or she is told and makes the adults happy. Of course, compliance in children is a good thing, labels aside. Children want to know how to get along in life and so it is up to the adults to teach them. The necessary skills include self-care, basic housekeeping, the ability to prioritize and complete tasks, and how to get along in a group.
In early childhood, these lessons are learned through imitation but each child is unique. Basically, a “good child” learns the lessons with ease. There is a risk in calling a child good for having learned lessons. The good child may become attached to pleasing others and suppress thoughts or feelings not identified as “good” triggering nervousness and perfectionism. Better for children to be free to engage in harmless naughtiness so to explore the edges of goodness, becoming courageous and confident in the process.
Outside the parameters of goodness, there is also a wide range of feelings; humans feel bad sometimes. Children need to learn how to move through joy, sorrow, fear, disappointment, exhilaration and all the emotions that go with being human. They need to be able to accept emotion without getting stuck, to be able to wander away from and then return to center, a place of inner satisfaction. That’s the innate power of the human being, to experience and to create.
A “bad child” is one who has not yet learned what is needed to succeed. There are lessons to be learned. When an adult calls a child bad, those lessons are less apt to be taught and subsequently learned; the potential becomes fixed rather than fluid. I’ve noticed labels applied at an early age, even infancy. The child who sleeps well is good; the one who does not yet have this skill, is considered not good or in other words bad. Fortunately, babies are endearing so hard to see as bad, but inquiries about whether a baby is good suggest a classification system in place and classifications are limiting.
That brings me to the idea of the “spoiled” child. Everything the young child experiences leaves an impression, a form of conditioning for what to anticipate and how to respond. If it is the caregivers’ intention to give the child a picture of a world that is good and teach the child to inhabit their bodies and that world, that’s enough. No need to fret about spoiling a child, but rather model mature acceptance of life and avoid conditioning that leads to an untrue picture of life. Human beings are made up of more than the physical; they cannot spoil. Even if conditioned to respond in unproductive ways, those learned behaviors can be unlearned and new ones learned. The important question is always: what skill does this child need to learn and how can I teach it?
I suggest that instead of classifying an evolving child, create a picture of the child learning and growing and consider this truth: we are all a little good and a little bad but always salvageable, never spoiled like leftovers left in the refrigerator too long. That’s my gripe about labels; they don’t help matters or acknowledge the truth. Life all around and within us is much more elegant, vast and full of magic!