Are You a Victim of Six Pocket Syndrome?

Six Pocket Syndrome has always been predominant with Indian families, the term that has its origin from China, and children with six pocket syndrome have been evidenced to be dependent upon the adults (2 parents and 4 grandparents). This terminology has been gaining attention in the media due to latest happenings related to overconfident children and over pampering with toys, sweets, food and praise.

What Is Six Pocket Syndrome?

Six Pocket Syndrome clearly refers to a trend among young people who rely financially on multiple family members typically parents and grandparents, symbolized by the “six pockets” (four from parents, two from grandparents).

How Did the Term Originate and Why Is It Trending?

The term emerged in China from 1979 to 2015, where the country policy resulted in each child of the family being the sole focus of their parents and all four grandparents (two parents' and two parents' parents), the policy was developed to give an positive impact on the child but due to overindulgence of the family members it resulted in over pampered child and over confident children. These six adults are the considered as "pockets" pouring their financial resources, affection, materialistic pleasures and attention into the child.

The term gathered traction due to social media platforms and a recent child contestant being trolled on the social media due to his overconfident behavior, the cultural shifts and high leveraged exposure to tantalizing lifestyles and social media pressures.

“The Six Pocket Syndrome is a psychological pattern where a child is pampered fully by all the members of the family,” says Riddhi Doshi Patel, a renowned Child Psychologist & Parenting Counsellor from Mumbai. Riddhi explains that while parents and grandparents provide for the child out of love and affection. Such patterns quite often lead to a dependence on materialistic benefits and excessive gratification in the child.

Understanding the Modern Youth Mindset

The modern youth has been supremely confident, with logical mindset for every situation they face, this has both pros and cons, however the positive side to it is that they attempt to balance the situations at large, whereas on the other side they are getting lured for the branded products, trendy gadgets, status symbols tech products and pinch theirs and their parent’s pockets with financial headwinds. The Modern Youth Mindset is trending in every aspect of the life as they are the next gen citizens ready to take over the world.

Parents play a crucial role in developing the mindset of the modern youth, which is directly proportional to the environ the child is nurtured into. However, the changing patterns of parenting and financial scaffolding carves the mindset of the child at a large extent.

Signs You Might Be Experiencing Six Pocket Syndrome

Signs of six pocket syndrome inhabits a strong sense of overconfidence, challenging to compromise or delayed gratification with peers and relatives, excessive dependence on adults, and emotional immaturity. Once denied on anything the child becomes frustrated or annoyed with hyper active behaviour. This happens as the child is habituated to receive the ask with immediate effect.

Potential Signs of Six Pocket Syndrome

• Reward demanding behaviour- The hunger to expect rewards always for each small act or achievement is a potential sign of six pocket syndrome, the expectation comes high from the child for reward and awards at all times.
• Lack of emotional resilience- with every availability of things and every full filling demands the child loses emptions to the peers or others leading to gap in emotional feelings.
• Poor money management – Again with easy availability of money resources, the child gets in sensitized to the money and its value, leads to over spending of money to full fill his desires.
• Overconfidence or Arrogance- Displaying over confidence due to over self assurance and assurance from the six pocket at home leads to arrogant behavior.

Why Six Pocket Syndrome Can Be Harmful

Six pocket syndrome can be much harmful as it leads to imbalanced individual and poor social skills, poor financial skills and handling of finances. The child may get psychological imbalance and might not accept the failures due to getting habituated to be rewarded as always.

The child may have poor self-esteem and may get withdrawn into shell or from the society leading to challenges to both child and the parents.

What Experts Say About Six Pocket Syndrome

The Six Pocket Syndrome is a psychological pattern where a child is pampered fully by all the members of the family,” says Riddhi Doshi Patel, a renowned Child Psychologist & Parenting Counsellor from Mumbai. Riddhi explains that while parents and grandparents provide for the child out of love and affection.

Dr. Harish Shetty has explained that "Six Pocket Syndrome" is a colloquial term for the effects of overindulgence by multiple adults, typically parents and four grandparents, which can lead to entitlement and emotional dependency in children. He noted that while a child's perception of a formal show can be influenced by a friendly adult, the underlying parenting style of excessive pampering can be a factor.

How to Break Free from Six Pocket Syndrome

Offer actionable, practical advice. Include tips such as:

• Setting personal financial goals
• Learning basic budgeting and saving
• Taking part-time jobs or freelancing to earn independently
• Reducing social media comparison and focusing on real priorities
• Talking to parents about financial independence

Parents by setting personal and financial goals for the children can create a lot of space for the children to balance and create sense of budgeting and analytical thinking to spend and save. Parents can encourage the children to lead to design a budget for themselves and save in small amount, these acts shall inculcate the sense of saving and reduce the over confidence or instant ask for money. Parents of teens can motivate and encourage their children to take up part time jobs to full fill their demands and needs, this will teach them the value of hard-earned money.

The Bigger Picture: Consumerism and Youth Culture

Juliet Schor (2004), a researcher in the field of consumerism, responded to the question regarding the negative effect of consumerism on a child’s physical as well as mental wellbeing.

Four measures used as indicators of mental health; those are feeling of anxiety and depression, declining self-esteem and psychosomatic behavior. It is fair to accept from the finding that cultures of consumerism make a mentally healthy child emotionally unstable even end up making them miserable Schor (2004). The study also found that several media encouraging consumer culture-making children more exposed and vulnerable to the harmful impact of omnipresent seductive attraction to consume more. The finding may be critical due to the fact that the ubiquitous power of media induces dissatisfaction with what one has, with more importance in materialism; it causes children to surrender themselves blindly to the endless attraction to possess luxury brands and products with greater consumer value. Also this study reveals, a higher degree of consumer involvement results in conflict with parents and poor interpersonal relationships. Children with poor interpersonal skills, conflicting relationships with parents and close reference group ultimately experiencing disturbed mental health. Children and adolescents are equally exposed to the endless bombardment of consumer-oriented messages encouraging irrational mindless purchasing and consuming that affects self-identity and self- image. Girls especially are being targeted by enormous no of marketers with their vast array of consumer products to satisfy all girly fetish and fantasies to emulate their feminine icon. Post globalization corporate giants and worldwide distributed marketers find youth as a potentially prospective avenue to generate current and future profit. So corporations, media and marketers infiltrate beyond the boundaries of class, gender, ethnicity and all other demographic parameters to a great extent and childhood is not outside anyway from the realm of transformation in consumption pattern. Certainly, it is the pervasive power of media and its associated consumerism that has blowout across regions and humanities alike, penetrating childhood too with each instance.

Conclusion

Positive socialization and sensitizing the students to the over indulgence and over expenditures with regular counselling sessions can curb the six pocket syndrome.

At the end would like to conclude and leave you all with a thought-provoking question that it’s not how much money you make that defines your financial well-being and balance of your life, it’s how intentionally you choose to spend it.

“Are your daily purchases bringing you closer to your goals, or just feeding the cycle of instant gratification?”

Let us choose our choices wisely !!!!!