Spoilt little Buddhas! Doting parents turn out children who just can't behave, says teachers' leader

 Parents are raising a  generation of ‘little Buddhas’ who never lift a finger around the house, a teachers’ leader declared yesterday.Children are growing up constantly demanding their own way because they are ‘waited  on hand and foot’ by over- indulgent parents, said Dr  Mary Bousted.


They arrive at school with an ‘I’m important’ attitude and struggle to abide by rules and timetables.And they lash out at classmates because they fail to understand they have responsibilities towards others.‘How many parents ask their children regularly to contribute to the running of the household, doing jobs?’ she asked. ‘It seems to me that far too many children are waited on, hand and foot. 


Dr Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said schools are forced to deal with the consequences of parents’ failure to lay down clear boundaries.'They don’t do the washing up, they don’t do the hoovering, they don’t make their own beds. 'We’re not doing our children any favours if we make them little Buddhas at home, and it certainly doesn’t do them any favours in school.’ Dr Bousted told the ATL’s annual conference in Manchester that children too often treated teachers like ‘servants’ and squabbled with fellow pupils. ‘They expect to get what they want immediately and do not understand that there are other children in the class and the school who need the attention.’

Middle-class parents who fail to impose clear boundaries simply ‘buy off their children…expensively’ – with the latest computer games, smartphones and other gadgets.But Dr Bousted added: ‘Bad behaviour isn’t just the preserve  of poor children and parents. It occurs among all classes of society.’ She said parents needed to be more confident in laying down reasonable expectations of children – including completing basic household chores.‘In my view a child or adolescent who doesn’t understand proper boundaries is very unhappy.

‘We need to be more confident as a society in saying, “No, you can go so far but no further”.’ Without this discipline, children grow up with an attitude to life which says: ‘I’m important,  am an island to myself’, said Dr Bousted.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2125059/Spoilt-little-Buddhas-Doting-middle-class-parents-turn-children-just-behave.html#ixzz1rBUSOBxC