Wanting the True Good of Your Child

13 November, 2026

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24 October, 2025

4 min

Wanting the True Good of Your Child

Family education, limits for children, responsible parenting, authentic love, avoiding spoiling, child development, values and discipline, children and self-esteem, family and education

The real good of the child:
not just the apparent good
nor our good,
“disguised” as his.

Pampering and spoiling them: only apparent good (not the real good of the child)

Within the family

A child is spoiled :

With disproportionate, undue or very frequent praise.
With indulgence and condescension regarding their whims.
With concessions that contradict household rules or a clear prior instruction.

I know, bad manners too:

Often making it the center of everyone’s interest.
And letting him be the one who makes family decisions.

A common confusion

Although it may not be easy to understand at first glance, we are mistaken about what true love is:

In all these cases, we forget the true good of the child, what helps him grow and perfect himself, that is, to be more concerned about others than about himself.
And we let ourselves be carried away by the attraction of apparent, immediate but false goods :
- making him feel good (giving in to a very current form of narcissism), instead of trying to make him a good person;
- feel good about ourselves, for not contradicting him, even though that would be the best thing for him;
- allowing ourselves to be overcome by comfort and calmly continuing with our tasks, instead of taking care of the real well-being of the child.

A child is spoiled when
his or her good is confused with his or her desires
or when the child’s real good is substituted with our good.

When you “go outside”

Furthermore, a child surrounded by excessive attention and unwelcome concessions, once outside the family environment, will become:

If you have a weak temperament, you are a shy person who is unable to manage on his own.
If, on the other hand, he has a strong temperament, he will become selfish, capable of serving and taking advantage of others… or of running them over (again, narcissism, so common today).

A misguided love leads to spoiling children.
Hence, the need to learn to love them,
striving to effectively desire the child’s true good.

A little tyrant

The real good of the child = that of the whole family

Furthermore, even within the family, the child can become a kind of tyrant, making other people, especially the mother and father, revolve around him.

We shouldn’t allow our children to manipulate us.

Obviously, for their own good, since it is contrary to the dignity of the person.
Although they are not fully aware of what they are doing, we do have a duty to warn them and prevent it.

For the real good of the child, of each one of them,
we should never allow
a child to manipulate us.

Setting limits on your ego, seeking the real good of the child

However difficult it may be, we must prevent them from entering into a spiral of absolute and indiscriminate self-affirmation, which becomes more difficult to correct the longer we have allowed it to continue.

Education is composed above all the affirmations: fostering qualities, discovering new avenues for development, real opportunities to give one’s best, looks, gestures, and words of approval and encouragement…
♦ But that doesn’t mean that we sometimes have to stand up and say “no”: without drama, without fuss, without losing control, but with firmness, as kind and even tender, if necessary, as decisive.

A “no,” as kind as it is, unwavering
is sometimes
the greatest manifestation of love.

Be careful with whims!

When faced with children’s whims, one should not give in:

we’ll have to wait for the tantrum to pass,
without nervousness,
maintaining a serene attitude, almost one of inattention,
and, at the same time, firm.

Also, and above all, when they “put us in a bad light” and “make us look bad” in front of other people (something that, without being fully aware of it, our children frequently use against us when they notice that we give in to blackmail).

We don’t count, we shouldn’t count.
The real good of the child must always come before our own.
In the face of the real good of the child, “what others think” is completely irrelevant.

As I have already pointed out, attention to others, forgetting oneself (in this case, focusing all our interest on the real good of the child, without caring about whether we look good or bad), is the rule par excellence of education and of all human life.

Giving to others, while forgetting oneself,
is the key to education,
happiness,
and all human life.

(To be continued)

Tomás Melendo,
President of Edufamilia
http://www.edufamilia.com
[email protected]

EduFamilia

Edufamilia es una asociación sin ánimo de lucro, nacida en el año 2005. Su fundador, Tomás Melendo, advirtió que una mejora en la calidad de las familias facilitaría la resolución de bastantes de los problemas que aquejan a la sociedad de hoy. Y, apoyado siempre por su mujer, decidió lanzarse a esta aventura que cuenta con casi veinte años de vida y con múltiples ediciones de los distintos cursos formativos: Másteres y Maestrías, Expertos, cursos más breves, conferencias, ciclos culturales, seminarios y otros programas educativos. Aunque las primeras ediciones tuvieron carácter presencial, actualmente se ha hecho un gran esfuerzo por promover la infraestructura virtual para adaptarse a los nuevos tiempos y que la formación en torno a la familia alcance al mundo entero.