A recent report says the mother of a 26-year-old married woman not only helps put on her socks, but also walks her to the bus stop every morning. This is a typical example of Chinese-style overindulgence.

Apart from teaching their children the basic lessons of life, parents should also teach them the necessary skills to survive. Parents can make their children over-dependent on them if they help them with all their everyday work. By doing so, they can also make their children feel helpless in their future life.

Excessive parental indulgence can leave children without the ability to survive and take care of themselves as independent adults. Overindulgence is not love but a disservice to children, which will harm their healthy growth.

Parents should guide their children to become independent. For example, parents should give their children some sort of material incentive to encourage them to help with housework. And schoolteachers should cooperate with parents by assigning children housework-related homework during the summer and winter vacations to cultivate good living habits among them.

(China Daily 02/21/2014 page9)