Entitled is becoming a dirty word. If you look in the dictionary you'll find that entitled means "to give (a person or thing) a title, right, or claim to something; furnish with grounds for laying claim."
When we talk about kids being entitled we are generally describing young men and women who believe they have a right to the best job or situation without putting in the work. They want to jump from mailroom clerk to senior administrator in a matter of months. That's the claim of many older people who work with these young adults. I have also heard parents complain that their older children expect to be able to move from the family home to another lovely space. No used furniture in a basement suite for these folks!
This sort of attitude and behaviour is not inborn and it doesn't just suddenly appear when a teen turns 18. It's a reflection of how we're raising these young persons. So how can we avoid raising a child to become an entitled young adult?
Here's an example. I was enjoying myself at a book launch recently. The room was filled with interesting people, the author was welcoming and the conversation flowed.
When it came time for the author, an expert on the different generations of children and their characteristics, to speak to the group, I noticed she was holding off for some reason.
Then her daughter, a millennial, arrived. At that point the author pointed out that her daughter is one of those young people who marches to the tune of her own drummer and may show up late and not see that as a problem. But her mom, the author, had promised to wait until she arrived. Mom did, we all did and this daughter seems to me to be a perfect definition of entitled. She had no concept of adjusting her schedule to meet the needs of the event and her mom's guests. She had not learned to be considerate of the needs of others, and her mother was enabling that behaviour.
Setting reasonable expectations is one way we can avoid raising an entitled young adult.
From when our children are very young we need to teach them the difference between wants and needs. How often have you heard a preschooler say, not that she wants a cookie but that she needs a cookie? Our kids learn at an early age that parents respond to the word need. We have a responsibility to meet our kids' needs.
The trick is to recognize whether what they are requesting is a want or a need and odds are we will find that most times it is a want, it is something they would like but can live without. The next stage to looking at what our children want is to decide if it is something we would like them to have. And, when? In other words, maybe it makes sense to you that your child should have a new hockey stick but that doesn't mean it has to happen this very day. You might ask him to save some of his allowance to put toward the purchase, or wait until his birthday.
When kids learn that they need to save for some things, wait for some things and do without some things, they learn that they are not automatically entitled to everything they want.
Children who do regular chores around the house learn that it takes work to make the household run smoothly. They do not expect that whatever they want will just appear magically. With our busy schedules it is so easy to just give in to our kids and maintain the peace. But that backfires when we want them to learn that they have to work hard to earn an education, a job, a vacation, a house or their own stuff.
We can avoid raising children to become young adults who believe they are entitled. We do this by setting expectations that they behave in ways that are considerate of others, by differentiating between their wants and needs, by insisting they do their fair share around the house and to take responsibility for their own decisions and actions.
Good parenting is not easy. But it's rewarding.
Kathy Lynn is a professional speaker and author of Vive la Difference, Who's In Charge Anyway? and But Nobody Told Me I'd Ever Have to Leave Home. If you want to read more, sign up for her informational newsletter at parentingtoday.ca.
