Children and Spoilage

 When a child is shown love only through material gifts, the result is that it feels amazing to get material gifts. The child doesn't know any other form of love, and confuses the gifts for all kinds of love. 

 It also makes the child materialistic. This kind of "affection" is never sufficient. The child is always trying to get enough love. The child thinks they'll feel connected and fulfilled if only mommy and daddy will spend enough money on them. Whoops. 

 Though it can also happen that the child learns their parents do not love them, and give up entirely. On the plus side, this child learns that material gifts aren't love. They're just stuff.
 There's a residual enjoyment to gifts, but it's like this: "I hope mommy and daddy will pretend to love me again this Christmas." On Christmas morning, they can delude themselves for a while. Apart from gifttime, the child expects nothing from the parents. 

 This is part of a pattern: children are spoiled not from excess love, but from lack of love. Children wilt when nobody waters them. Ultimately they die and start to rot; they are [spoiled]. 

 Check: if children were spoiled by too much affection, monkey-see monkey-do would make them too affectionate. They would be too nice &c. This is not the problem "spoiled" children exhibit. That is not why they're intolerable. They're intolerable because they are starving. 

 A healthy child will very suddenly become full of attention and almost violently wander off. Jarring: "I'm good, byeeee." Getting too much love makes even less sense than getting too much sleep or breathing too much. 

 If a child is receiving love-like love (e.g. not material gifts) and can't get enough, it's because it's not real love. They're asking for love again in the hopes that you achieve enlightenment and don't fuck it up this time. You're supposed to notice it's not working and start paying attention. The child's only hope is that the parents can make up for the kid's inability to communicate. The kid's fucked if the parents also can't communicate. They will become [spoiled]. 

 Then, naturally, journalism. Wet streets cause rain: the kid must be [spoiled] due to all the attention they demand, right? Naturally, the parents agree.