Unlike most freshmen spending the summer of senior year relaxing in anticipation for the school year, I worked frantic shifts at the most infamous of entry-level jobs: McDonald’s. Like the majority of us working the front counter, I loathed having to make special orders for people. No mustard, no ketchup—those requests I could deal with. Extra mayo, fresh off the grill with toasted buns and grilled onions, on the other hand, were a major headache to punch in and ring up. The worst, however, was when children would incessantly beg their parents for a specific toy, only to have their parents ask me to dig behind the tower of happy meal bags looking for the spy radio gadget, while the line got increasingly longer.

The root of my frustration, however, stemmed not from the labor involved in retrieving the toy but the mentality that these children had. Whatever they demanded, they got, regardless of the inconvenience and frustration involved. When I was growing up, if I ever asked for a specific toy, my dad would simply respond, “Oh, you want that toy? How about NOTHING?” That shut me up quickly.

Does that mean I had a deprived childhood? Of course not. In fact, I probably had much less of a deprived childhood than the children growing up have right now. When I was a little kid, I ran around in the woods, rode my bike without a helmet and became scratched, scraped and bruised. I had fun, and more importantly, I built character. I never succumbed to the wussification of America, with its helmets, customized fast food and constant attention.

We’re raising a society of wimps, and the more we coddle them, the weaker they become and the more we feel the coddling is necessary—it’s a vicious cycle. This compounding of limited freedom and instant gratification leads to the all-too-common problem of the child whining in the grocery store, throwing a tantrum until the parents, too embarrassed to let this fiasco continue, assuage the child’s desires. How, or, more importantly, why, do we tolerate this? The child should never be in a position to demand anything, and the parents ought to be the ones in control, not the other way around. If I ever have kids, they’re going to have pizza with toppings, burgers with condiments and whatever random toy that gets thrown into the bag with the food.

Who knows, maybe the kid will actually find that vegetables are good for him and that there are several things worse in life than having two of the same toy.