There is a type of learner described as "spoiled," and according to my experience in the field of education, pampering is one of the fiercest enemies of the learner. It often becomes an obstacle for the new learner—particularly the one entering the first year of primary school—in their integration into the educational field. This creates difficulty in accepting the teacher's authority in the school, as the child has become accustomed to not submitting to any authority, regardless of its nature or severity.
A spoiled child is a learner who faces issues with interactions, primarily due to the excessive and unrestrained fulfillment of their needs and desires. These could be biological needs like food and drink or other pleasures, to the point of complete indulgence. This results in an obsession with greatness, inflated narcissism, and extreme selfishness.
Such children are not born spoiled, but rather become so due to the parenting methods their parents employ, as they wish to raise their children in the best possible way. They end up constantly fulfilling the child's desires, often unknowingly turning them into "rights" that the child expects the environment to meet without objection.
Psychological education identifies certain behaviors related to these cases. A spoiled child is typically polite only with others whom they consider strangers. They avoid any responsibilities assigned to them because they recognize only their own comfort. They do not understand the meaning of work or responsibility and are not compatible with their peers except by imposing dominance over them. If their peers rebel or avoid them due to their mistreatment, they may have hysterical outbursts of anger without reason. They despise competition of any kind, fail to respect anyone they are directly involved with—especially their parents—due to a terrifying lack of self-esteem, which leads them to want everyone within their own sphere. Most dangerously, they lose the sense of value in their lives and fail to understand the importance of money or respect.
I often encounter this type of learner in the first-year primary school class, which leads to clashes with their parents. Most of the spoiled children in my class come from parents who lack proper upbringing themselves. Instead of encouraging me to maintain authority over these spoiled learners, the parents use every possible method to create "social" pressure on me, attempting to force me to drop my authority and treat their children as they do—spoiling them even in class. However, this does not happen with me, no matter the consequences.
There are two clear models I often see, and they repeat frequently. The first is the spoiled child because they are the child of a teacher within the education sector, and they consider themselves superior to their peers. With the support of their teacher parent—whether father or mother—this is the case of one learner in my class whose mother is a French teacher. She wanted me to maintain that spoiling for her son, and when I resisted her pressure, she argued that her son could not understand the lessons because the teacher spoke in standard Arabic in class. One day, I asked her son, "Do you watch cartoons, son?" He replied, "Yes." I asked again, "And in what language do your favorite cartoons speak?" He answered, "In standard Arabic." I then asked, "So how can you not understand the lessons while you understand the cartoons, you fool?"
Verbal and physical discipline—"light spanking"—done regularly and systematically is what turns a spoiled child into a regular learner. However, a spoiled child in the first-year primary school class is a challenge that extends to their parents, and this is what the teacher must deal with. As I will explain with the second model, which was more complicated, both with the child and with the mother, unfortunately.