The childhood stage, compared to adolescence, has always been calmer for educators, because children are more simple, stable and docile than adolescents. Today, however, many adolescents have exchanged rebelliousness for conformity, and many parents have replaced demandingness with tolerance. Apparently, at least, there are no longer generational conflicts. But lest parents become "bored," conflicts are now arising from another subject with preteen children.

The new parental-filial crises are led by spoiled children who tend to become tyrants. They possess the "Little Emperor Syndrome". It is the consequence of misunderstood parental love.

Many children nowadays are spoiled by almost everything at home, to such an extent that family life ends up revolving around what they want every day. For example, they have to watch the TV program they like, eat at the time they feel like, etc.

More and more children are becoming domineering in their homes. Some behave despotically towards their parents, demanding that they satisfy all their wishes without delay. If on any occasion the parents do not please them in something, the children have violent reactions (noisy tantrums, shouting, insults, hitting, etc.). The mother is usually the main victim in 90 percent of the cases.   

Excessive parental permissiveness and tolerance makes these children become real dictators in their family. As they are used to "getting their own way" and not finding limits in their behavior, they do not take "no" for an answer. They have not been prepared to tolerate frustrations, however small they may be (such as, for example, having the jam jar taken away from them after spreading it more than ten times on their bread).

Tyrant children are not born, they are made. In very few cases the genetic factor influences. In their profile the following traits stand out: demanding, bossy, selfish, capricious, angry, unhappy, moody, jealous and envious. With this way of being they are not usually accepted in the group of games and in the gang of friends.

They also lack sensitivity and empathy, so they do not feel guilt and compassion for the people they mistreat. Highly aggressive behaviors, such as defying parents and hitting them, do not usually occur before the age of 13.

Parents have a hard time accepting that their child is a tyrant; they admit, at most, that he or she is a little "naughty. However, these same parents easily detect tyranny in the children of others.

In a comic cartoon by Forges sample the dialogue between a psychologist consultant and the naive parents consulting a tyrannical child who carries a hammer:

-Scientifically evaluated the status, I am inclined to remove the hammer.

-And we won't create a trauma?

-No, silly, no.

In defense of the parents of tyrannical children, it must be said that they have to face an unusual status , for which there are no known solutions.

A very distressed mother told how her nine-year-old son had pulled her hair for (unintentionally) covering the TV set while a goal was being scored, when she was carrying the lunch tray to him. The woman also confessed that her son had not been allowed to eat anything but fried eggs with tomato since he was a child. Neither she nor her husband had ever dared to correct him.

These parents often lack character, strength and resources to exercise authority. In some cases they justify themselves by saying that authority creates repressed children; they confuse educational authority with authoritarianism. Let us remember that in Roman thought authority did not consist so much in the exercise of power, potestas, as in its foundation, auctoritas, a force that serves to sustain and increase the possibilities of others; an impulse to develop capacities and a reinforcement of good behavior. It is moral authority, which is based on the credibility of the one who exercises it. "What he could not achieve by power, he achieved by authority". (Cicero: speech against Pison).

In the prevention of violence in children, it is essential to set rules and limits on their behavior, so that they learn from an early age that they cannot have everything they want. It is also convenient to give them responsibilities according to their age. Finally, it is good to allow them to feel sometimes small frustrations, since this way they will learn to tolerate them.