Spoil the kids at your peril

Psychologist Aric Sigman makes no apologies for telling today’s parents how it really is. He believes they need to learn how to say no to their children

IT’S PROBABLY not such a good tactic for an author on the promotional trail to have a pop at his target purchasers, but hey ho, Dr Aric Sigman has decided to dance to a different beat. The 55-year-old behavioural psychologist has had enough of keeping mum.

Originally from the US, but living in Brighton, home to a healthy swathe of England's liberal intelligentsia, Sigman is a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, associate fellow of the British Psychological Society, has written a number of books, writes a column for the Times Education Supplement, travels widely to countries including North Korea, Bhutan, Tonga, Iran, Vietnam, Siberia, Sumatra and, I kid you not, Timbuktu, is a "hands-on" dad of four children and cooks from scratch seven nights a week.

“Seriously?’’ I ask. “So what’s for tea tonight?” It seems that Sigman is not, in fact, the perfect male specimen, he’s stalling for time, explaining that he usually shops each day before he decides what to cook. “Tagine,” he ruminates. Damn him.

So, with a life that tasty, what could be getting Dr Sigman’s goat? Put bluntly, spoilt kids. Put even more bluntly, spoilt middle-class kids. Know any?

Although he does make a David Cameron-esque foray into bemoaning the breakdown of modern society, Sigman's latest book The Spoilt Generationis, he says, "not about chavs and feral children".

“There are lots of spoilt children in middle-class families. This book addresses middle-class parents. They are the ones who will read it and it is for them. I want to say: your kids might not be stabbing people on council estates . . . but they are still spoilt”.

Anyone who has just caved in to a demand for a lift or listened to a door slam, should look away now. A spoilt child is easy to identify, says Sigman. “We used to think of a spoilt child as a child with too many material possessions. It’s not. It’s a child with a sense of entitlement, who is totally self-centred. I see them everywhere.”

The ranks of spoilt “little emperors’’ have been swollen by the offspring of a new generation of middle-class parents, who are refusing to grow up and exercise authority, says Sigman. “Authoritative parents should not be best friends with their kids,” he says.

We discuss the modern tendency for parents to strap on a papoose, buy their daughter a sparkly fairy dress and head to Electric Picnic or Glastonbury with kids in tow.

“It’s not on,” says Sigman. “Don’t be their best mate. Give up your own childhood. It’s the ‘me, me, me’ generation, the generation who wants to be funky and not a boring parent.” So, Stradbally’s a non-runner next year, then.

Sigman makes no apologies for telling today’s parents how it really is. He believes mums and dads need to learn how to say no to their children.

“We have the oldest parents in history, the fewest children and an unprecedented level of both parents working,” he says.

“When parents are time poor, when they have only a few precious children, they can make poor decisions when dealing with a child’s challenging behaviour,” he says. In fact, they don’t deal with it. “No” has, he says, become a dirty word.

It doesn’t help – and this is where Sigman gets a little retro – that the State has gone overboard in its support of children’s rights, he says.

Remember the good old days when children were seen and not heard? Feeling nostalgic for this golden era? Well, so is Sigman. “We need to do something to help parents. Adult legal status has been eroded, so teachers, doctors, grandparents, the police and separated fathers are not seen as able to intervene with kids.”

He wants a return to the good old days when a slap on the legs was just “common sense” and when a teacher could remove a disruptive, abusive pupil from a classroom without fear of tit-for-tat disciplinary action. In a nutshell, says Sigman, children need fewer rights and more responsibilities.

So far, so 1950s. And yes, the children of the 1950s are exactly who today’s parents need to enlist to influence their brat pack. Grandparents, with their wisdom, patience and broader knowledge of previous styles of child-rearing, are your go-to guys for help and advice, he says.

Sigman is unafraid to embrace the unfashionable and the controversial. He acknowledges that the horrific physical and sexual abuse inflicted on children in Ireland by some adults in religious orders has thrown a spanner in the works when it comes to many of us feeling comfortable giving adults total authority over children, but he believes we have to strike a balance.

“In England, too, there have been lots of abuse cases, but there should be assumptions in society that adults know better. The fact that in the UK and US children’s rights have been upped and adult’s rights have been downgraded has not led to better behaved children. We have to send a message that adults are in charge, while still protecting children.”

While he’s delivering hard truths, Sigman has no qualms about adding his voice to the working versus stay-at-home mother debate. He says that it should be biology and not sexual equality that determines how we bring up our children – babies and young children are best cared for by their mother.

“I don’t believe in sexual equality, I believe in sexual equivalence. Most societies believe there are massive differences between men and women – and there are,” he says.

Not that keen on feminists then, Dr Sigman? Surely women have fought hard to carve themselves a destiny that lies beyond biological determinism?

Sigman thinks he’s changed enough nappies to comment. “I was a single father to a girl, so I’ve done it. I’ve got the cred and feminists should watch their mouths before saying I don’t know what it’s like.”

He says that he has great respect for the gains feminists made in the realms of equal pay, challenging violence against women, and so on, but adds the caveat: “The feelings of feminists should take second place to the wellbeing of children.”

He believes working mothers in the media impede the flow of scientific information that reflects badly on their own life choices. “Which studies are in the papers and on TV is very biased,” he says, mentioning recent research that recorded raised cortisol levels – a bad thing apparently – in infants in day care, but that got little exposure in the press.

However, Sigman says he has no desire to tell women what to do. “I think women should make informed decisions, but I think it would be better for children if they stayed home for the first few years.”

The state should incentivise this, instead of pushing mothers of small children back into the workplace, he says.

And so back to the “little emperors,” who might have been a bit nicer if mum had stayed home and looked after them instead of swanning off to the office in her power suit after dropping them at the creche.

One of the cardinal sins of the middle-class parent is to tell their child they are wonderful 24/7. Some children do just scribble, they can’t all be Picasso, and it’s time parents faced facts. Sigman says that “high self-esteem is not necessarily linked to nice behaviour. Praising a child is not necessarily a good thing.”

If we’re going to avert a tsunami of “spoilt children”, it’s time for a reality check, says Sigman. And the state should and could intervene. There should be a “Child Contact Agency” to enforce visitation rights for separated fathers and to support and enable fathers – the kingpins of child discipline, according to Sigman – to stay involved with their children.

Smacking should be allowed within reason. Authority figures such as the police and teachers should be able to use minimal force with young people. And mothers should be given incentives by the State to stay at home when their children are small.

And if you think Sigman’s observations don’t apply to your own “little emperors’’, think again. “This is about middle class families who think they have escaped all this bad behaviour. They haven’t.”

Now where did you put those car keys?

• The Spoilt Generation: Why Restoring Authority Will Make our Children and Society Happierby Dr Aric Sigman is published by Piatkus, £12.99.