See you can't have both worlds. Stop the spending. Sure, he will want every toy and item of clothing under the sun. But are you prepared for a 12 yr old bitching on about not having the latest and greatest because you created this monster?

Put the money aisde for college and spend time with him. And stop beating yourself up. Or take a part time job and live with the lack of extra income.

Oh, I think we all fall into "guilty parenting" at times in our lives. We have this inner vision of what a great parent looks like. We internalize an external version of good parenting/step-parenting. We have friends, family and even media modeling what "good parenting" looks like.

Then we have the reality of our daily life. 60 hour work weeks. Deployment for months. Working full-time while going to school full-time. Divorce and separations. Outlaws and in-laws. Deaths in the family. Illness. Unhealthy, dysfunctional relationships that we model for our kids. There are a million reasons that our "real life" parenting doesn't match our inner, stylized idea of great parenting. I believe that this triggers our "compensation/over-compensation," "guilty" parenting.

Stay aware. Remember that the kids just want TIME with you, do your best, consider balance in your life and ditch the guilt.

It's good that you can still sense within yourself that something is not right by "buying" your child things to compensate your guilty feelings...The deeper question is...Why are you feeling guilty for working? Maybe you should go part time temporarily...If you cannot afford to, then perhaps you should weigh the importance of your lifestyle, and the choices you have made. If you can afford to "buy" extras for your child ...then what you are doing is giving him or her the "things" your choice of how you spent your time bought him instead...In other words...how you choose to spend your time is one of the most important decisions you will make.

You can either give your child the "time" it would have taken to earn the money to buy the "things" you are giving him to replace yourself in his life with. Sometimes, when our lives go through big changes, like having a baby...we have to adjust our choices to push the reset button on finding our balance. Our balance is always changing....

There is nothing wrong with buying our kids things....but, with that being said, if you are buying him things to compensate for the void of your presence in his life...then, yes...I would totally re assess what you are doing and why you are doing it....

You do only get this time once with your child and then it is over...The reason people associate buying stuff to entitlement is because what happens if you are using stuff to replace your presence in your child life, or to compensate for the lack of your presence...is because it can create a life pattern that sends the kids a message that I owe it to you to buy you things as a consolation prize for the lack of time I am giving you...So, then what happens is, the kid grows up expecting "things" to fill the void inside of their heart that they perceive as "love". If it becomes a life pattern...the kid will learn that love is what you give me in the form of materialism. And when they get older...they have lost the ability to enjoy relationships and people if there is not a price tag attached. (The inventions of the Pay-per-View relationship) ...

I know because that is exactly what happened to my sd who is now 40 and still thinks we have to give her something if she blesses us with her presence. It is so bad..she has learned how to manipulate emotions to guilt you into giving her something by exploiting pity, or she will come right out and ask us for things...things she doesn't even need.. .because her parents taught her that the highest bidder is the one who loved her the most...She is going on her 4th marriage...and still cannot figure out how to sustain her insatiable appetite for "things"..because her self worth has been defined by things her whole life....You see self is never satisfied, and materialism is a hollow and shallow and dangerous substitute.... to try and obtain true identity and self worth from...It is fallible...

If principal and truth do not become your foundation as a child, the you are left to the mercy of believing that the "highest bidder" loves you the most..Which basically ends up making you a slave to those who have money and wealth because you perceive it as an acceptable replacement of personal value and self worth.....Money can be replaced...things can be replaced...you, on the other cannot be replaced.

The mother is the one who instills self worth in a child and the father is the one who affirms identity...

So...kudos to you for recognizing this early in the game...Yes. we have probably all done it...and I hope you can learn from our mistakes that this way of thinking can be incredibly damaging in the long run...Yo do not want to teach your child that "things" replace people or love...they can be an expression of love once in a while....but if the life pattern teaches them to love things first, they will end up using people to attain enough things to try and satisfy that space in their heart that only real love can fill.

As I watch my sd of 40 go through life "panhandling" all of her relatives and friend to try and quench her appetite for things, I realize it is because her beliefs regarding her self esteem and identity have been attached to What she drives, where she lives, and how much money she has....I have nothing against prosperity...but when it becomes your identity...who you are as a person, how you value yourself and the worth you put on others...then they have let things dictate a person's value...it is a deception that riddles our culture with false information that can ruin a person's self worth...or at least how they perceive it...

"Things" cannot replace love and attention...celebrating someone because of who God created them to be...Valuing someone's existence because the very fact that you are stand there....living and breathing is proof that he loves you ad His love created you for a special purpose...Each one of us matters....a toy does not validate, and cannot become a adequate replacement token for that love....

This is an issue between you and your guilt..and you are at a decision making moment that is most precious...Either you will stay true to yourself and make the necessary adjustments...or you will ignore it until it finally has no more convicting power over your heart...it's that small voice inside of you saying...this isn't right for me...it doesn't matter what everyone else thinks..It is your life...your child...and the best advice I can give is is to stay true to yourself no matter what...because in the end...you only live once.....peace

BM does this. Every weekend she has a new toy for SS. She's constantly buying him something when they go to the store and any time he gets in the car she has to get him food or drink. He's only three and she's already struggling to keep up with him financially. He's already a little terror when he's with her and since she's always given him what he wants and extras now he expects it. When he doesn't get it, he fights back and throw tantrums and fits. She's done it to herself, she's created the entitled little beast that embarrasses and disrespects her when she doesn't give him what he wants. I would advise you to stop "making up" time with gifts because you're setting yourself up to fail.