How to Not Spoil a Child: One Year Later

How do you avoid raising a spoiled child? Interventions attempted and lessons learned, one year later

A year ago, I wrote about my fear that we’re raising a spoiled child by providing her with an environment of too much. I didn’t want to raise a child who is ungrateful, entitled, and lacking in motivation. Checking in a year later, I wanted to share learnings on how it’s gone.

Define Spoiled

First, a quick refresher on what spoiled means. In Ron Lieber’s The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous and Smart, spoiled was defined by these 4 attributes (though not all need be present):

1. Living a life with few chores and responsibilities

2. There aren’t many rules to govern their behaviors and schedules

3. Parents and others lavish them with time and assistance

4. They have a lot of material possessions and extravagant experiences

My critical self-evaluation at the time was that we were failing: she had very few responsibilities, she gets ample time and assistance, and she’s not lacking for stuff.

By every definition, she’s the fully provisioned child, who receives everything they could ask for within their parents’ power: the full kit of toys, enrichment, experiences, and clothes.

So we resolved to change that. Here’s what I learned a year later.

What We Tried (And What Worked)

Lieber’s book gave me specific systems to implement—allowances, chores, boundaries. I thought if I could just get the mechanics right, everything would fall into place. The reality turned out to be more nuanced.

Allowance System: $1 Per Year of Life

Starting at 4.5 years old, we introduced a $4 weekly allowance which increases each birthday. The allowance is not tied to chores. Purchasing a spend and save container, we loaded up at the bank with crisp dollar bills and set a Sunday calendar reminder to give it to her.

Overall this has been a real win with a few mixed results:

Impulse buys at zero: We rarely impulse-buy items at the store now. She doesn’t even ask. If she does, she can either take a photo for her Christmas or birthday list, or purchase it with her allowance.

Pride of ownership: She is more appreciative of the things she buys. A recent acquisition was a shimmery mermaid rainbow tutu. Compared to items that simply appear, she’s far more appreciative and engaged with it.

Stinginess: An unexpected downside of the allowance is that she’s turned out to be quite stingy about buying things! The allowance piles up and many items are examined and left unpurchased. I think we may have also lucked out with a child who isn’t particularly materialistic—stuff doesn’t seem like a big motivator.

The extravagant experience problem: While items are one vector of provisioning, experiences are another. Over the course of the last year, we’ve taken some incredible adventures like traveling to Japan and India. While they’re very special experiences to us, I imagine they feel pretty normal to her. Is that spoiled?

Chores: The Humbling Reality

The second major announcement, alongside allowance, was that new chores would be included with each year. I went in starry-eyed and optimistic about teaching responsibilities and chores, and it didn’t really work for us.

What we planned: A nightly chore to clean up and put away toys each night.

What happened: We’ve utterly failed at holding to this.

Looking back, the last thing we want to do at the end of the day is pick a fight with a strong-willed child to clean up their toys. We were set up for failure.

We’ve tried pivoting to smaller chores like feeding the fish tank in the morning, sorting laundry, or putting on her own clothes. But I’ll be honest: we haven’t been consistent here either. The systems alone weren’t enough because it requires a certain diligent reinforcement that we didn’t have.

Pivots: Other Changes We’ve Made

We made some changes in the past year outside of the initial plan. As the chores failed and allowance showed early results, I wanted to double down on the insights from the book and find a way to execute in our way.

Stepping Back on Assistance

If you’re trying to avoid fully provisioned, what does it look like to de-provision a child? Rather than giving her everything in our power, what about drawing the line at “good enough”?

Pulling back on support

As an only child, she doesn’t get the natural transition into independence larger families have. When families scale, they naturally pull back on supports to take care of the new, younger babies that need it more. We have to make these moments intentional for her and that realization has become one of my most important lessons.

As she’s gotten old enough to complete tasks on her own, we’ve become intentional about where we draw the line.

• Self care: “You’re big enough to get dressed.”

• Removing supports: “When you turn 6, you’ll be too big for the stroller hike. The stroller is going away.”

This has been working very well. Sometimes I still need a nudge to draw the boundary, but I’ve noticed her independence increasing.

Creating gratitude through scarcity

It’s unrealistic to try to recreate the immigrant scarcity of my childhood, but is it possible to teach similar lessons?

While my daughter isn’t really into stuff, she’s into experiences. Rather than giving unlimited access to experiences, having conversations about tradeoffs is useful.

• Teaching tradeoffs: “We only have enough time and money to do gymnastics or ballet. You’re already doing swim. Which would you like to do?”

• Educating about differences: “Some kids only get to do one activity. Some kids get to do four. Which one would you like?”

It’s early, but I’ve seen her become more aware that some kids and families do things differently. Awareness is a start.

What Actually Changed is Mindset

The appeal of Lieber’s book was that raising a grateful, contributing human is all a matter of setting up specific systems with chores, boundaries, and allowance. As we’ve put it into practice, I’ve realized it’s much bigger than that.

Initially, the book was an antidote, giving me specific ideas for systems to incorporate. But over this year, I’ve come to understand that I needed to consider the broader context of what “spoiled” actually means. And that’s when things started to shift.

It’s okay if she has things. What matters more is how she understands and thinks about those things.

If I ask myself now, What makes a child spoiled? here’s what I would answer:

• Doesn’t lift a finger to help the community or family

• Ungrateful for what they have

• Unwilling to work hard

• Dependent on others for direction

• Poor at coping with failure or setbacks

Only some of these challenges can be addressed by an allowance or other specific rules. Instead, what’s required is a shift in mindset, mine as much as hers. We are teaching a concept, not just a set of actions. Gratitude is not parroting ‘thank you’ but a deeply conceptual understanding of the world. Fostering that takes conversations and persistence, not just systems.

I notice the most gains in her maturity as we set a high expectation for her to be a contributing member of the family. I’ve noticed when she makes a mess, she cleans up. When a guest is coming over, she helps prepare the house.

I’ll know that she’s not spoiled when she’s working hard to pursue something she wants to do, and grateful for the opportunity—not when she has the perfect chore chart on the wall.

This is essay #6 in my series to conquer my fear of writing.