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So, what does "spoiled" mean to you these days? In the context of children, that is.
Growing up, I always heard it in the sense of a child who was given too many things they didn't need, mostly to include being given their own way when it wasn't good for them (because their parents were wusses).
On the other hand, grandparents seem to think that it's good to "spoil" their grandchildren, but that's another meaning. In their case, it generally seems to mean an ideal of giving the kid things that their parents don't have the money or patience to give them-- wants, rather than needs. However, while it's okay to "spoil your grandchild," it's still not okay for your "grandchild to be spoiled." (Or "spoilt" as we say here.)
I guess my interesting question is this. Is spoiling a sort of "trial" for children, where the object for the spoiling adult is to see how much stuff/attention/whatever they can give the child before the child gets jaded, and the object for the child is to continue being grateful and happy so they can get more stuff/attention/whatever? This seems like a game doomed to fail, as either the child fails to be sufficiently grateful for a warm but dorky coat, or the knock-off of the status symbol toy, or the child gets a rep for being "spoiled" because of the sheer amount of stuff they have-- whether they asked for it or not, or whatever other inter-family politics apply.
To be honest, I say this because Small Child has just brought out the Legos I got her for Christmas-- one of her *two* presents from her immediate family-- and said that they are too hard to clean up and she doesn't want them anymore. I'm starting to wonder how much of the "spoil game" is really on the parents and grandparents, not the kid at all.
For the record, I'm surprised (I would have loved the toy at her age) but pleased that she's mature enough to be happy getting rid of things that make her more miserable in the cleanup than happy in the playtime.
In this thread on the Straight Dope boards, user FaerieBeth, who works at an elementary school (note for non-USA types: ages 6-11ish), talks about how parents have been telling her that the song "Soulja Boy Superman" is appropriate for their school dance.
She goes on to say that many parents either don't hear, or don't understand, the phrases "Superman that ho," and "supersoak that ho," both of which refer to sexual acts, and appear in the song. (Link to complete lyrics here; I didn't get any popups going to this site. Warning for egregious misspellings.)
I had a non-fortuitous second encounter with this lovely tune today while playing WoW; one of my more immature guildies decided to "parody" the song by replacing the words "soulja boy" with "World of Warcraft"-- leaving the sexual references in place for one line, and replacing them with "stab that ho" for a second. How lovely! (Said guildie had a customized rank created for him-- "Time Out." And got busted down to it.)
Anyways, the general consensus on that thread, and I about agree with it, was twofold:
a) Kids don't really know what all those things mean. They may have at best an intellectual understanding, but they won't have the grownup emotional reaction to the words.
b) The reason it's not acceptable for kids is, thus, not so much because it's bad for the kids right then, but because it's uncomfortable for the grownups who have to listen/watch, and the kids are generally shocked later.
I should probably end this story by saying that I was grown and married before it occurred to me that "Let's Get Physical" by Olivia Newton-John (lyrics here) was NOT ABOUT AEROBICS, marking a memorization-to-realization timespan of some 13-14 years. Anyone got me beat on that?
