It is becoming increasingly common to see young children arguing, challenging and mocking their parents or other authority figures, the problem is that these attitudes seem to increase to the point where parents are abused by their children. We’re talking about the syndrome of the emperor, the tyrant son or the king son.
Both in my professional practice and in my daily life, I observe that the usual tendency is to see children beat their parents, insult them, have tantrums, to get what they want capriciously at some point.
- Most strikingly.
- The more malicious attitudes the child manifests.
- The greater the effort of the adult reference to please him.
- An adult overwhelmed by his or her son’s demands ends up feeling guilty for not fulfilling his wishes.
To know exactly the characteristics of Emperor’s syndrome we will interpret a real situation that I witnessed a few weeks ago. Let’s take a closer look.
A family made up of a father, a mother and a child in their 5s eats in a restaurant with lots of people, the mother, almost sudada, tries to feed her son, which he knows how to do independently, but for now, refuses to do so.
The heart of the problem is not that the child doesn’t want to eat, but in this situation he just wants to drink from the glass of Coca Cola that his mom asked him to eat. The child won’t let go of the glass. At that moment, the mother thinks it’s better to negotiate with the child and says “you’ll only drink Coca-Cola if you eat the steak. “
The child’s bad gestures and derogatory comments towards his mother multiply, among them: ‘Am I not going to eat this disgusting thing because you send me?Yes? I said I won’t eat, don’t you understand when I talk to you?Meanwhile, the father is only a spectator of the conflict he looks at with an impassive face.
After struggling with the glass of coke, the mother finds no way to satisfy her son and gives up. The boy ends up drinking what he wants, while taunting his mother with a beautiful kick directly under the table.
The finishing touch is a rebuke from the mother who, of course, the child will not take seriously: “You see, today you will run out of a pool. “First, the little emperor already has enough resources to emerge victorious. The situation. For the future, we already know that it takes a little more effort with the Coca-Cola glass.
Following the situation described above, we can highlight some of the characteristics of emperor syndrome or “king son”:
As we mentioned at the beginning, it is becoming increasingly common to find children like this, but what is the reason for the increase in this phenomenon?
Apart from the existence of a genetic predisposition, it seems that responsibility lies mainly in two aspects: a permissive educational style and the influence of today’s society.
The lack of clear boundaries makes children mistakenly believe that they have the right to do whatever they want whenever they want. Under this right, they are not aware that rewards require prior effort and must respect others.
On the other hand, we cannot ignore the influence of the consumerist and individualistic society in which we are currently immersed; nor the rigid working hours of most parents, which affects the quality of time they can offer their children.
If we combine all these factors, we can consider the chances that the little ones will get used to not valuing things and prioritizing their immediate desires above all else. Parents are also frustrated. Anyway, your child won’t be satisfied with the attention.
To educate strong, healthy, and emotionally intelligent children, clear boundaries are needed from the start. It is essential that children experience a degree of frustration so that they can understand that the world requires effort and respect for others.
Letting the world revolve around them is not a service for them, because a child who does not feel frustration is a child with a certain weakness, in the future he will have many difficulties to face new situations and solve problems, because he discovers that life is not for her and that not everything is as she would like.