Black Voice News Online - Spoiled Children Make Rotten Adults

When I was a single father of four daughters during the 1980s & early 90s, my biggest challenge was outside interference from female friends and relatives. Many considered me coldhearted because I didn't rush to their aid each time they scraped a knee or pricked a finger; nor did spoil them with the expectation of presents for every birthday and holiday that came around. I bought them presents and special treats but my sporadic gifts were never predicated by the calendar on the wall. During Christmas or Thanksgiving seasons we occasionally volunteered at homeless shelters or churches. The girls served food while I helped setup tables and/or performed poetry for the indigent guests. I heard rumors of cruelty from family members.

Richard O. Jones

It was my parental duty not only to nurture and protect my girls while they were minors but to also prepare them for a world without my protection in the event of my untimely demise. I trained them to ride the bus alone. First I would escort them on a bus ride, pointing out landmarks along the route. After two training rides, it would be their turn to board and exit the bus at prearranged locations. I would follow the bus in my car. If I was delayed for any reason, they had a telephone number to call in case of an emergency. I had friends with children five years older than mine who had never caught a bus alone. These friends were usually, but not always, single mothers who thought I was the most awful father for making my girls catch a bus when a car was available.

I would take my daughters to the grocery store and teach them to stretch a dollar by shopping for sale items and avoid the sugary lures. I was told that I was making them think like poor people. By eight years old each girl was responsible to shop for the week's grocery, with only thirty dollars maybe thirty-five, while I sat in the car. They were trained to check the receipt and count their change. My sisters and mother were ready to turn me in to Child Protective Service for cruelty. My younger sister had two teenage boys who had never been shopping alone without a grocery list written by their mother.

Each of my daughters, while still in elementary school, had an official California ID from the Department of Motor Vehicles and their own savings account at the bank. Each had certain duties in the house in which they received an allowance to do; none received money simply because they were cute. They also received money for each grade on their monthly progress report card that I requested from the school. My friends and relatives opposed this because they considered it bribing my daughters to do well. I considered it incentive.

Before they were ten years old, each were purchasing and filling out money orders and sending them in to pay various utility bills, with my money of course. Once a week we would go out to eat, each girl would be given a turn to choose the restaurant of the week. The younger girls were partial to hamburgers but the older two often chose real diners such as Denny's, Marie Calendar's, or Coco's, etc. The complaints from my team of outside critics was that I was giving them too much freedom.

My daughters are now very well adjusted adults. Neither daughter measures love by material means or feels morally obligated to buy me or anybody else presents on certain days; however they show their love in godly ways. In closing, don't surrender to the critics if you're not pampering your children but raising them to be responsible.

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October 2008

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