A child's intuition

Mum coaxed:

• Eat up, darling, and tomorrow Mum will buy you a dinosaur to play with.
  The baby fussed again and pushed the bowl of rice away. Mum coaxed again:
• Be a good boy, eat up, and if anyone bullies you Mum will hit them right away.
  Dad put down his newspaper and sighed:
• I really regret it.
  Mum glared:
• What do you regret? Marrying me, I suppose?
• I don't regret marrying you, because all things considered nobody is better than you. But I regret having taught you to indulge too much and spoiling you.
  Mum threw the bowl of rice into the corner of the room, scattering it everywhere, and wailed:
• Boo hoo... So now I'm spoiled and not worth having as a wife, boo hoo...
  Dad said:
• You're exactly like the 14-month-old.
  Dad went in, put on a shirt and went out for a walk.
  After walking a while he stopped at a café and ordered a drink. The idle owner sat down and struck up a conversation:
• You look tired.
• Work isn't tiring. It's coming home that's tiring.
• Your wife nags, right?
• If I could turn back time I probably wouldn't dare to marry. The psychological pressure is terrifying. Back then I fell in love out of nowhere, and once in love I got to know her, and once I knew her I had to prove my love with countless love letters, money, time and indulgence. By the time she gave in and agreed to marry me, her heart had already been spoiled and I didn't know it. I went home and went on indulging her even more, and so she was spoiled to the highest degree, incurably.
  The café owner seemed not to understand. Dad went on:
• When we kneel down to propose, we have promised that we worship our wife. Before that we have said so many winged words: without you walking beside me in life I see this life as falling withered flowers; do you know when I look at the stars I wish you could understand my love for you is as endless as the stars in the sky... I never dared spend a đồng, I starved myself to save up to take her out, for ice cream and bún chả. Seeing her enjoy her food, I would push all of mine over to her, then go home and dig out Mum's cold rice, splash soy sauce on it and eat it to make up.
  So she took it for granted that I couldn't live without her, and she lives up in the clouds and can't be called back down to earth. Why won't she understand that loving is one thing and being married is another?
• Please speak softly, or my wife will hear, and I won't be able to survive.
• Now she copies what I did to indulge that little rascal at home in exactly the same way, and he too is up in the clouds for good, incorrigible, beyond teaching 👻

Children have not yet formed language in the brain, but in compensation they have an intuition that understands the psychology of those close to them. As they grow and language forms, the intuition disappears. When a child realises that their parents love them to the utmost, a mentality of dependence and arrogance forms immediately. That is the principle, that is the formula, that is the natural course of events. We cannot blame the child. The child is spoiled, but the child is a victim of the message that comes from the parents.

Love makes people happy, but it also makes them dependent and arrogant. Once they are dependent and arrogant, their mind is already spoiled in all sorts of ways. But when we love someone, we often express it, and even express more than is true. It is that boundless romantic message of love that kills the person we love.
"... I promise to take you to the violet horizon
Gather all the clouds, and the two of us will build a castle of love
Let your hair never lack the golden moon
When starlight fills your lover's eyes...." ("Chân trời tím" [Violet horizon], Văn Quang)

Then we use that toxic love to go on killing our own children. We did not restrain ourselves, we did not hold anything back, we poured it all out and spoiled the children's minds. This psychological formula is absolutely right: once one knows one is loved, one at once becomes dependent and proud. Then that dependence and pride spoil everything afterward. When the dependent and proud attitude can no longer be borne, the marriage and family break apart. Husband and wife separate, and the children are unmanageable.

It is time for people to understand the toxicity of love: however much we love, we must restrain it somewhat and hide some of it, in order to help one another develop ethics. With ethics there will be happiness. Without ethics happiness is lost. To build a happy life in the future, we must cultivate ethics together, not indulge each other excessively.

The same holds for parents who love their children: they must both love and teach strictly. If children have ethics, they will succeed and be happy in future. But if a mentality of dependence and pride has appeared in them, their life will certainly end in suffering and failure. The most precious inheritance parents leave their children is ethics, not money. With ethics, children will study well, form good relationships and have opportunities to succeed. But leave them money and pride, and their lives will surely be shattered.
If parents want to teach their children ethics, they must first cultivate ethics themselves as an example. Parents must give up their own base wishes and pleasures and abandon bad friends, in order to cultivate ethics for their children's future. That is the truest love that parents can give their children.