Richard Hogan: Parents are getting pulled into competitive parties and gift-giving

Richard Hogan: The important lesson for children is how you resolve conflict. Picture: Moya Nolan

The modern parent has a lot to contend with; both parents generally need to work to meet the financial demands of modern life, while also desperately trying to manage the myriad problems the arrival of smartphones and endless internet access has placed between parent and child. Parents also need to have the skills to support children experiencing; exclusion, bullying, diet restriction, anxiety and many other negative psychological phenomenon. So, as I said, it’s difficult to be a parent in the modern world.

There are so many influencers out there telling parents how to be the perfect parent. It seems like you need a psychology degree and masters in family therapy to successfully manage it all. Something I tell parents is that, ‘it’s okay at times to only be okay as a parent’. It’s good for children to see you when you are not at your best. You come home from a long day, the house is a mess, they have not tided up, you are hangry (tired/hungry), you raise your voice, you overreact to something that irks you. Have you damaged your child for life? Absolutely not. You have shown them how people really are. Parenting is not a game of perfect. It’s a game of life. Sometimes we can be a little less than perfect.

The important lesson for children is how you resolve conflict. But if you are motivated to be the perfect parent and let’s say by some miracle you achieve nirvana in your house, what sort of child will you be sending out into the world? They will never have experienced a hard ‘no’, they will never have dealt with conflict, they will never have learned to compromise or how to manage a difference of opinion.

They will experience a harsh reality when they go into the world. There is no such thing as the perfect parent, and there is certainly no need for parents to try and outdo each other when it comes to organising parties and presents for their children.

A recent phenomenon that has spread among parents is that of competitive parenting. We’re all on parenting WhatsApp groups - some we could bloody well do without - but you can’t just up and leave. That would provoke the wrath of a parents group, and hell hath no fury like a scorned WhatsApp group. You can’t leave a group and expect to rock up to the school gates and have a chat like nothing has happened; you have rejected at least 30 people with one brave click. But you’re now a social pariah. Tip: put it on silent, and move on with your life. You will still see the stream of messages coming in; how the flowers in the local area need to be watered and clips of Jane’s recent recital, and also the lavish party about to be thrown by one parent, prone to such gestures.

All of this has started to cause pressure among parents to outdo each other. I have had many parents contact me in recent times, some even from America, asking advice on how to stop getting pulled into competition about parties and presents. As if things weren’t difficult enough, we now must try to outperform each other in lavishness.

Think about the message it gives to your child. They are always watching us, and we are the template for their understanding of how to be in the world. If we are consumed with celebrating how big the occasion is and not the occasion itself, we set our children up for an adulthood of misery. Nothing will be good enough for them. Nothing will ever bring them joy. I have been saying this for so many years; the child who gets everything, enjoys nothing. Developing gratitude in your child is such an important thing to give them. You can see it at parties, a child joylessly unwrapping gift after gift. That type of experience metastasizes and envelopes perception, nothing brings joy because nothing is good enough.

Parents are competitive for all sorts of reasons. Parents of the 1980s didn’t have much material things, and maybe in some way by giving your child the biggest or the most expensive phone or gift you are fixing that earlier childhood experience, but you are potentially depriving your child of future happiness. I call this the paradox of parenting.

The thing you are trying to fix is exactly the thing you bring into life. You want to fix an early childhood experience of not having much, but by giving you child everything they come to expect it and therefore not appreciate it when they get it.

Think about the child who gets everything as an adult? What will life be like for them? It’s the only time I disagree with Roald Dahl. At the end of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Wonka says to Charlie, ‘you know what happened to the boy, who suddenly got everything he ever wanted? He lived happily ever after.’ Well, I would say the correct answer is, ‘he struggled to enjoy anything in his life, and had very few friends because he couldn’t compromise, and was without joy’.

Children don’t need the biggest party or the latest expensive phone. They will remember how you were with them, the connection you had, the love you shared not the size of the gift you gave them.