Are We Raising Unhelpful, Bossy Kids? Here's The Fix

It was a simple experiment. Lucia Alcala, a psychologist, built a tiny model grocery store with aisles and different items that she could put on a family's dining room table.

She and her colleagues brought the model store to 46 family's homes along California's Central Coast. Each family had a pair of siblings, ages 6 to 10.

She gave the siblings clear instructions: Find an efficient route through the store to pick up a list of grocery items and — this was made clear — "work together, collaborate and help each other," says Alcala at California State University, Fullerton. "We gave them very specific instructions."

Alcala and her colleagues logged what happened. Did the siblings help each other? Did they boss each other around? Did the older ones exclude the younger ones from the task?

For decades, scientists have documented a surprising phenomenon: In many cultures around the world, parents don't struggle to raise helpful, kind kids. From ages 2 to 18, kids to help their families. They wake up in the morning and voluntarily do the dishes. They hop off their bikes to help their dad carry groceries into the house. And when somebody hands them a muffin, they share it with a younger sibling before taking a bite themselves.