“Monster Kids” refers to a group of children who are spoiled by their parents, resulting in lack of basic self-care ability.
Characteristics of Monster Kids in Hong Kong
- “Princess / Prince Disease” – they are unable to brush their teeth, to eat, to get dress and even to go to the toilet. They need a maid or their parents to do it for them.
- Bossy – they will do whatever they want to without considering the consequence; low emotional control
- Impulsive – they will threaten their parents in order to achieve their goal; materialism
- Addict to video games and TV; irresponsible; unwilling to go outside
- A common answer “I don’t know” for everything
- “5 NOs” – no reaction, irresponsible, no self-care ability, no curiosity, no desire
- “3 LOWs” – low self-care ability, low emotional quotient, low resilience
- Don’t want to work hard.
A real life observation
Case 1: A big group of kids sitting outside of the school office to clip their fingernails every morning. It is because their parents or a maid is too busy to help them and they don’t know how to clip them by themselves.
Case 2: A fourth grade students brings along a pair of scissors to cut the food into small pieces to eat.
Case 3: A third grade student doesn’t know how to eat. He puts a small piece of food into his mouth every time but he doesn’t know how to chew and swallow. After a 45-minute lunch break, his lunch box is still filled.
Case 4: A first grade school boy doesn’t know where to pee. He just pees on the floor.
Case 5: A primary school boy drops his both underwear and pants on the floor when he is using the urinal.
Case 6: A grade 2 boy doesn’t know how to clean after poo. He uses his hand and then clean his hand with the wall.
The above excerpt is only part of the observations.
Reflection 1: Parents, would you please give your kid a chance to learn and grow?
According to Erikson’s stage of development, the pre-school stage (aged 2-6) is the time to learn the basic survival skills, including eating, toilet training, basic language skills and basic moral concept. All these skills are essential for them to go to school. The children in this stage have a strong sense of curiosity. They are eager to learn and to build their sense of competency. However, if parents do everything for their kids and are not letting them to try, they not only take away their learning opportunities, but also make their children loss the sense of competency. In turn, their kids will develop a sense of impotence. They then loss the confidence to learn new things and to face challenges. Eventually they will give up all kinds of learning opportunities and loss their interest in learning in their primary school stage.
Reflection 2: Who should be responsible for raising kids?
The kids in Hong Kong usually spend all day out. They stay at school from 8am to 3pm. Then they join a number of after school activities until around 5 pm. They will then go to the tutorial centre to finish their homework and study. They will be home around 8 pm. After dinner, they may probably have an hour to relax and then time to go to bed. In this case, I don’t see there is any difference to send the kids to boarding school!!!!
I can understand that the duel-working parents are very common in Hong Kong. I can also understand that they want to relax after a long day work. However, what is the reason for being parents? Why child rearing has become the responsibilities of domestic helpers or tutorial centre or schools or television or a few million dollar English learning material, but not parents????