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The Price Of Spoiling A Child
By Ignatius Stephen

Bandar Seri Begawan - One tale that always made a deep and strong impression on me was a bed time story my mother read to me when I was little. The terrifying prospect of it still comes back now and then.

It is the deeply shocking and moving portrayal of a very, young man who eventually ended up in the gallows.

But just before he was hanged for gang robbery and murder his executioner asked him: "Have you anything to say?"

The unfortunate man looked around. He then happened to spot his mother cringing in a far corner. She was a weeping mass of sheer misery.

"Yes," said the man who was going to say his last words: "I want to speak to my mother."

"Come forward, my lady," cried the hangman. The heartbroken woman slowly crept forward.

"Closer, my dear mother, come closer. I want to whisper something into your ear," urged the young man who was about to die. "Put your ear close to me. Closer, closer, closer, my dearest mother."

The trembling woman drew nearer. The young man then planted a kiss on his mother's cheek. "I love you so much, mom," he declared.

The woman wept even more.

"Now mother I want to tell you something. Put your ear close to my lips so that you may hear every word because I want you to remember as long as you live," declared the man who already had the hangman's noose round his neck.

The pitiful woman whimpering softly put her ear close. Then a terrifying scream pierced the air.

There was blood everywhere. Everyone present looked at the young man. He had torn off his mother's ear with his bare teeth. The elderly woman had collapsed writhing on the floor meanwhile.

And from where she lay she moaned through excruciating pain, "Why, why my son, have you done this to me? I have always given you everything you asked because I loved you so much as my only son!" "Ah, that is the reason why I am being hanged today. You gave me everything. I just had to ask. When shopping I only had to point at something and you would give it me. You spoiled me thoroughly by the time I became a teenager.

"When I grew up you sold your land to buy me a car. You never taught me the value of things. When I failed get something I wanted I went into a tantrum and you gave in. You always did that.

"As I became a young man I craved for a lot of things. Lots of money, gold, diamonds. But you could not afford these. So I became a robber. So you see where you had sent me to in the end.

"But if you had said `no' to me and reasoned with me I would have grown up to be a different person.

"You could have taught me things. But you took the --easy way out. You tried to buy me happiness and your happiness as well. But that never works.

"You could have taken time and patience to explain to me, for example, that a toy gun was too expensive. Or you could have promise it as a reward for achieving some beneficial goal. Good marks for my arithmetic end of term, for example. But you did not do any of that. Happiness was something reachable on the supermarket shelf. That is what you always thought. Goodbye mother. I still love you a lot," said the young man, indicating to the waiting hangman that he was done.

I think of this story whenever I see a parent extravagantly buying toys and such which they could hardly afford each time at a supermarket or department store. And no questions asked, most of the time.

I see children rolling on the floor kicking and screaming. And most of the time the parents surrender.

What will happen to these kids when they grow up and when their demands get more exorbitant? You wonder.

Of course we Bruneians love our kids to bits. But think again. Love has many faces.

It is, after all, our duty to instil into our children proper values and foster self-control and discipline.

If not, all will be lost.

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