Metro

‘Shopaholic’ daughter: How I got un-spoiled

In yesterday’s Post, Tracey Jackson confessed to raising a spoiled Upper East Side brat — and shipping her off to the slums of India for three weeks to set her straight, while making a documentary, “Lucky Ducks,” about the experience. Now, her daughter, Taylor Templeton, 18, tells her side of the story.

I grew up on the Upper East Side, part of the private prep-school crowd, the kind you see on “Gossip Girl.”

My friends and I shopped at Barneys, Bergdorf’s and Henri Bendel after school. We ate at really nice restaurants (Philippe, Mr. Chow). And we partied at downtown clubs like 1OAK.

Everything I wanted was thrown at me, and I didn’t have to do anything to earn it — I just had to exist.

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Meanwhile, I had no idea of who I was. If you said to me, “Tell me about yourself,” I would have named most of my friends — that was how I defined myself. I never read books — I just wasn’t curious about the world beyond my own cloistered life.

I had no concept of money whatsoever. I didn’t realize that charging $1,000 a month to my parents’ restaurant account was absurd. At home, I never really got in trouble for anything.

I didn’t see it coming when my mom told me I was going to India for three weeks over spring break to teach English in the slums of Mumbai.

She said I was going because I was spoiled. It was hard for me to look at her and not see hypocrisy. She was the one who bought me all the things that I had; she was the one who sent me to private school. “You have a $10,000 handbag. Are you going to take it back to the store?” I asked her.

When we got to the shack-like building in Mumbai where I would be staying, I cried. I was sharing one room with five people, including a cameraman who was filming my experience for a documentary my mom was making.

It took a week or so, but I eventually began falling in love with the children.

Particularly this girl named Sonya. She was just a few years younger than me — I was 15, the youngest volunteer ever at the school, and she was 12 or 13. I was teaching the class how to write the days of the week in English, and Sonya would always stay after class and ask me to go over them with her again.

I would put my hand on hers and physically draw the letters. I could tell she was frustrated, but she really wanted to learn, and we really had a connection.

On one of my last days of teaching, she came up to me, and said, “Taylordidi!” — they call teachers there “didi” — and she wrote out all the days of the week by herself.

It was the happiest I’d seen her — her smile was so real. I still remember it all the time.

The kids in India didn’t know how poor they were. They really didn’t fight with each other, and they were so smiley. The kids I knew back in New York City, with all the privileges they had, weren’t nearly as happy and excited about life.

And I noticed that the people in India were very proud of the work that they do — even if they just had a small job, like delivering packages on a bicycle or cooking food.

I always understood that I was spoiled — but there’s knowing, and then there’s seeing. Why did I have all this stuff, like designer clothes and a laptop and an iPhone?

When I came back to NYC, I found myself gradually cutting off ties with my old friends. I wouldn’t go out with them, and in school I wouldn’t sit with them in the cafeteria, or I’d sit alone in the library and read. I had no friends for a while, and it was really hard.

I used to look at the “not popular” girls and think that they looked up to me and my friends, and I realized then that they had no interest in having a conversation with me. I had nothing to talk about. They would rather not have a conversation about what this person was wearing, or who that person slept with. I had to prove myself to the other girls at school for a good six months.

My mom thought a super-privileged lifestyle would make me happy, but when she saw that it didn’t — and that it was actually ruining me — she wanted to do whatever possible to mend the situation.

She worked for everything she has. She didn’t go to college, but she was a really hard worker, and she really appreciates everything she’s earned. So she can live that lifestyle and do it with dignity and grace. I, on the other hand, couldn’t, because I hadn’t done anything to earn it — in fact, I made her life more difficult.

Now I’m nearing the end of my freshman year in college, at Emerson College in Boston. And I can say with 100 percent certainty that I’m going to go back to India after I graduate and live there for a few months, at least, and teach.

There was a little girl, a 5-year-old whose name I never learned, whom I’ll never forget. I gave her a Barbie after playing with her one day, and she lit up — she’d never had a doll before.

Two years ago, I went back to India with my mom. When the girl saw me, she ran home and came back holding the doll like it was made out of gold — it was in pristine condition, and she looked so proud.

There’s nothing in the world more meaningful to me than that moment. It really takes doing something long term to see a positive result. At least, that’s what it took me to learn to respect myself. As told to Sheila McClear