Victims of vanity
While her revelation elicited the expected exclamations of disbelief, another mom just smiled, a sign that she knew more than she was letting on.
When prodded, she said she recently paid 5,000 yuan for a program that trained her three-year-old son to construct buildings out of Lego toy bricks, which she said would unleash his architectural genius.
Honestly, I cannot but feel pity for their children.
At a time when so-called early childhood education - nonsense in my view - is hyped as crucial to developing intelligence and character, as well as giving children a boost in future competition, toddlers are just the victims of their parents' gullibility and vanity.
All young parents dote on their children, to be sure, and I have no doubt that one day I might as well. But the state of today's overly pampered generation of children is deeply worrying.
Because of the family planning policy, Chinese newborns are raised mostly as "one versus six," meaning for one infant there are six adults, parents and grandparents, tending to his or her needs.
Ever since birth, before they know what need is, they are prisoners of need, more their parents' needs than their own.
Indulging little emperors' or princesses' every need has a corrosive effect on their ego. Uncontrollable ego is sometimes a giveaway of corruption on their fathers' part.
On the eve of International Children's Day, the Nanjing-based Modern Express newspaper published a revealing story about the tainted innocence of children.
In the report, published on May 26, a primary school teacher described a pupils' conversation that she overheard. It was about Children's Day gifts.
One pupil's father is a deputy director of a government office. The boy proudly declared that a subordinate of his official dad gave him a pocket study kit, a digital device children often use to learn English.
This was described by a pal as a "miserly" gift and laughed off as a sign of the father's low rank.
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