Not long ago, I was posed four questions by a parenting magazine that I thought readers of Kids & Culture Alert! would find interesting.

I’m afraid that I’ve turned my kids into “reward junkies” by praising, rewarding, and buying them gift constantly. I thought this would show them how much I love them and help them feel good about themselves. But now they don’t seem to feel good about themselves if I don’t reward them all the time. How do I handle their current expectations while changing to the right approach?

The best, and most difficult, way is cold turkey, where you just stop rewarding them excessively and inappropriately. Before you start, you want to sit down and explain the changes you are going to make with them and why. Show empathy for how difficult it will be and make sure they understand why you are doing it (because it’s in their long-term best interests).  I should warn you that this can be really painful for anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. Kids can put up quite a fight for what they believe they deserve (i.e., what you’ve trained them to expect). Your kids have been spoiled and there is nothing more frustrating than losing something that they once had in abundance. In all cases, though, when parents followed through, the kids learned over time that the situation wasn’t going to change and they accepted it.

You must be truly resolute in your commitment to breaking their “addiction.” It is easy to give in to nagging and temper tantrums, but then they win the battle, but lose the war.

All four of my kids are in sports all year around, and this year, they’ve been getting more and more competitive. Usually I’d say that’s a good thing, but recently, the losses their teams have been experiencing have really been getting to them. They get really angry and upset, and they can sulk for days. How do I get them to appreciate winning and losing while not forgetting the “love of the game?”

It’s natural for kids to be disappointed when they don’t win, but it shouldn’t be devastating. When that happens, you must really examine why they are reacting so intensely. I start by asking parents what messages they are sending to their children. The reality is that kids typically learn about how to react to sports from their parents. Are you overly invested in your children’s sports? Do you care too much? Also, look at how the coaches react and what they emphasize in their coaching, for example, hard work and good sports or winning at all cost. Our culture also sends horrible messages to kids about competition, winning, and losing. The expectations that are placed on kids by parents, coaches, and society can be crushing. I encourage parents to go under the assumption that their children will never be very good at any sport (e.g., Division I college team, pros, Olympics); the statistics are 6 in 1,000,000 chances of making it to the pros. If parents have the right attitude about sports (e.g., it’s about fun, fitness, and life skills), the kids will most likely have the healthy attitude too. And with that healthy attitude, the bad feelings they experience following losses will not be that bad and will motivate them to work harder.

My 8-year-old girl is super-smart and takes initiative.  But she’s also bossy as hell and sometimes an annoying know-it-all.  How do I teach her a little humility so that she keeps wanting to learn and grow, and not be irritating to others?

Giftedness can be a burden as well as a gift for children. The problem is that giftedness only puts kids at the front of the line early on, but says little about what happens to them later in life. Yet success comes so easily to gifted children that they may not learn the essential life lessons for success, such as humility, later in life when giftedness becomes less important. The first thing you should do is ask how your daughter got to be so bossy and a know-it-all. In all likelihood, she got it from one of her parents or you encouraged her to be that way in some subtle way. Also, at age 8, she’s old enough for you to have a talk with her about how her behavior will hurt her in the long run and how humility and empathy can go a long way in life. You should “punish” her poor behavior with disapproval, so she can learn that it is not appreciated or acceptable. And you can offer her healthier ways of responding when she starts to “cop an attitude.” Ultimately though, she may have to be “hit over the head” (e.g., rejection by peers) by life to really learn that hard lesson.

I know I might sound a little old school as I say this but my wife and I believe that our culture really encourages girls to be overly concerned about appearances.  The onslaught of all kinds of media make it virtually impossible for my 2 daughters not to get caught up in it all.  What can I do to counteract this and help them find a deep-rooted healthy self-esteem that’s not driven by outward appearances?

As the father of two young girls, I am painfully aware of those awful messages from popular culture about appearance; it’s on TV and the Internet, in magazines, in the movies and music. In other words, it’s everywhere. Those messages directed to girls down into elementary school is that being beautiful, thin, and sexy (sassy is the codeword for sexy used by advertisers these days) should be their priorities. I see parents who allow their girls as young as five years old paint their finger- and toenails, play with make-up, have “spa dates,” and wear clothes that are, in my view, entirely inappropriate for that age (and I’m no prude).

The first thing to do is ask yourself what messages you’re communicating to your girls. Do you or your spouse read celebrity or fashion magazines? Do you tell your girls how pretty they look? Are you concerned with how they dress and what their hair looks like? If you have been seduced by those same messages, your girls are doomed.

My wife and I never discuss physical appearance or call our girls “cute” or “beautiful.” We avoid talk about our own appearances as well. We also discourage our extended family and friends from commenting on their appearance. People in the places like the supermarket make comments about our girls’ appearance, though well intended, they just don’t know the messages they are sending. When someone compliments our girls on their looks, we say “And they are good kids too.” If our girls ask how they look in an outfit, we ask them how they feel about it. The bottom line is that we avoid any discussion of appearance and focus on sending our girls value messages about the kind of people they are, for example, compassion, generosity, competence, hard work, etc.

There is no way to protect your girls from bad messages, but you can send messages to instill values that can reduce their impact. We believe that by ingraining healthy values in our girls, they won’t be as susceptible to the unhealthy messages from popular culture (they won’t care because we don’t care). It’s an uphill battle, but one that we as parents must win if we want our girls to come out relatively unscathed.