We don’t want them to be lazy. We don’t want them to be entitled. We don’t want to spoil them.

That’s why parents have always tried to make their kids work for things. It’s why they wrestled—in the ancient world just as we do today—about which desires to indulge and which hills to die on, when to say yes and when to no. The idea is that we’re trying to raise self-sufficient kids, adults who take pride in effort, who are driven and ambitious, kids who as Ron Lieber’s fantastic book says are “the opposite of spoiled,” and have the grit to go after what they want in life.

But just as we’re concerned about our kids having too little of this, we ought also to consider if we’re giving them too much. It’s not just entitlement we ought to curb, but also the tendency toward obsession, burnout, and the belief that their worth is measured only by their productivity.

A recent profile of Sarah McNally, the owner of New York’s amazing bookchain McNally Jackson, focused on her tough childhood. Sarah never got an allowance as a kid. She had to earn every penny she ever got to spend. “I had my first job at 8,” she recalls. “I had to wake up before school and deliver newspapers. You can’t imagine. It’s so cold that your eyelashes freeze shut because of the condensation from your eyeballs, which are tearing.” This was not her only job as a kid either. It was a grind, an exhausting grind that taught her many positive lessons, but also wore her down.

It was also a grind she sought to mitigate with her own son, despite complaints and judgement from her parents who believe she’s spoiling and ruining him. To which McNally replies that it was their method that caused the most harm. “You ruined me,” she said. “I cannot stop working.”

The key is balance. We want our kids to work hard, but not at the cost of their well-being. The best way to teach that is to model it—by living lives that value both effort and rest. If we model balance, we give them permission to find it too.