*Growing up as a child I was fortunate (even though I didn't know the
benefit of it) to have plenty of Vitamin N. I did not even ask for it; was
available whether I wanted it or not. Vitamin N was withdrawn only if
required by law .. i.e. school fees, school uniform. Even then, there was
still room for parents to wiggle themselves out of the obligation by
reaching out to a sister, uncle or grandparent.*

*Unfortunately, now that I have my own, it seems the guilt of having had
too much Vitamin N in child hood has made me to give less and less of
Vitamin N.*

*Are we as parents helping our children with their fair share of Vitamin N?
Or, like many, we are guilty of withholding Vitamin N?*

*When it comes to education though, I believe it should be a criminal
offence for any parent(s) who are oversupplying Vitamin N to their children
in the 21 century!!*

---------------------------------------------------------------

I want to tell you about an essential vitamin you’ve probably never heard
of.

*By: **John Rosemond. "Is Your Child Getting Enough Vitamin N?" Prager
University (November 14, 2016). *

If you're a parent, or plan to be one, it might be more important to your
child's growth than all other vitamins combined. And only you, a parent,
can provide it.

I call it Vitamin N. The word "No."

More and more children, I find, are suffering from Vitamin N deficiency.
And they, their parents, and our entire culture are paying the price.

Let me illustrate my point with a story that's quite typical. A father,
I'll call him Bill, gave his son, age five, pretty much everything the
little boy asked for.  Like most parents, Bill wanted more than anything
for his son to be happy.  But he wasn't.  Instead he was petulant, moody,
and often sullen.  He was also having problems getting along with other
children.  In addition, he was very demanding and rarely if ever expressed
any appreciation, let alone gratitude, for all the things Bill and his wife
were giving him.  Was his son depressed, Bill wanted to know?  Did he need
therapy?  His son, I told him, was suffering the predictable ill effects of
being over-indulged.  What he needed was a healthy and steady dose of
Vitamin N.

Over-indulgence–a deficiency of Vitamin N—leads to its own form of
addiction.  When the point of diminishing returns is passed (and it's
passed fairly early on), the receiving of things begins to generate nothing
but want for more things.  One terrible effect of this is that our children
are becoming accustomed to a material standard that's out of kilter with
what they can ever hope to achieve as adults.  Consider also that many, if
not most, children attain this level of affluence not by working,
sacrificing, or doing their best, but by whining, demanding, and
manipulating.  So in the process of inflating their material expectations,
we also teach children that something can be had for next to nothing.  Not
only is that a falsehood, it's also one of the most dangerous, destructive
attitudes a person can acquire.

This may go a long way toward explaining why the mental health of children
in the 1950s — when kids got a lot less — was significantly better than the
mental health of today's kids.  Since the '50s, and especially in the last
few decades, as indulgence has become the parenting norm, the rates of
child and teen depression have skyrocketed.

Children who grow up believing in the something-for-nothing fairy tale are
likely to become emotionally stunted, self-centered adults.  Then, when
they themselves become parents, they're likely to overdose their children
with material things – the piles of toys, plushies, and gadgets one finds
scattered around most households.  In that way, over indulgence — a
deficiency of Vitamin N — becomes an inherited disease, an addiction passed
from one generation to the next.

This also explains why children who get too much of what they want rarely
take proper care of anything they have.  Why should they?  After all,
experience tells them that more is always on the way.
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