Get real, parents.

Friday evening at the restaurant. A woman in her early thirties approaches the server area with the condiment tray from her table. "Do you mind if I leave this her? My kids will destroy it." We turn to look at her table where there are two children, a girl about five and a boy maybe three or four. Dad is there, also. Apparently neither parent has any control over the children's behavior or the condiment tray wouldn't have been at risk of destruction.

Why would two adults want to let children control their space? Why would two adults want to have a meal in the chaos that these children created? Why would they think the others around them want to listen to squabbling during what should have been an enjoyable meal?

We tend to think of spoiling children as giving them too much stuff or too many things. Dictionary.com includes this in it's definition of spoil: to impair, damage, or harm the character or nature of (someone) by unwise treatment, excessive indulgence, etc.: to spoil a child by pampering him.

The real world is out there and one day children who have been allowed to control their parents will step out and find that life doesn't work that way. The real world has rules. We may not like them but still we abide by them. School, work, society, relationships, and social situations all have rules of behavior.