The newest form of abuse.... Entitlement!

I am old enough now to have seen kids go from babies to being adults.  I have watched closely the way friends and family have raised their kids.  Somethings have been great and I have taken them with me through my parenting, other things have not been so great and I have vowed to not make them a part of my parenting plan.

My husband is an Assistant Principal at a private high school.  One of the areas he is in charge of is discipline .  He also sees the outcome of parenting and the different types that are currently out there.  There are those that make their kids feel entitled and those that don’t.  The difference in the child is HUGE.  In my opinion, this is a new form of abuse to our children.  When we make our children have a sense of entitlement we are not preparing them for the REAL world.  A lot of people think only “rich” people do this, that entitled kids are spoiled with material things.   That is not true, all income levels are guilty of it and you need to make sure you are not doing this to your child.

Look, it is easy to do.  It’s a form of abuse that comes from love, so it is easily disguised and in some areas very acceptable.  We all want our children to feel loved, powerful, the sky is the limit, special, the world is their oyster, have it your way,  they deserve “it”, etc… However, we as parents were given these children to prepare them for the world.  We get only 18 short years with them and then the last 80 of their life is on their own.  If we teach them growing up to never fail, if we protect them from every coach who does not start them in the position WE want for them, if we fight for every grade to be an “A” for them, if we do their homework assignments because they are too tired, and if we make them feel like they are the greatest thing since the invention on the IPhone, IPromise you are abusing your kids and setting them up for failure when the real world comes their way.

Maybe you are a single mom and your one child is all you have got, or a mom who has a husband that is just absent in their child’s life and you feel like you need to “protect” your child(ren).  Or maybe you have been blessed with a lot of material wealth and you never had things growing up so you want your child(ren) to have those things.  All of these things are good and understandable reasons for wanting to give your child the best, but kids have to experience failure and defeat to grow into the people God wants them to be.  They have to learn to accept responsibility for the nights they just do not feel like doing their homework, because guess what? You will not be there in college to teach them that discipline.  How about when they get in trouble at school for breaking a rule you both feel is stupid, yes it may be stupid, but it’s a rule and if they do not learn to follow them without mommy getting them out of it they will never know how to follow the more serious rules when they are older.  And guess what, you can’t go down to the police station when they are 21 and argue your way out of them getting them arraigned.  My personal favorite is the parent that has made a sport so important in their kids life  that even if the child wanted to quit they couldn’t because the love they feel from their parents is attached to them playing that sport or that position in that sport.

I write this not in judgement of you if you do this, but with a plea to please take a good look within and if you do this to be the change this world so desperately needs.  We are raising kids (mainly the young 20′s and younger) to believe they are “it”,  that if they do not like their boss they should just quit because no one deserves to have a bad day at work, that if you do not like a rule break it and then pay for the lawyer to fight for you.  These kids actually think their place of employment or school is blessed to have them there…. WHAT? No, they are blessed to have a job and be attending school.  We are raising SPOILED BRATS!  

Some of you are jumping up and down saying “Thank you for finally talking about this!” others may be mad saying, “How dare she, like she is perfect or something!” Our responses to things offer a great deal of insight to how we feel and think inside.  I urge you to spend some time in prayer today ask the Lord to show you anywhere in life that you may be enabling your child to feel entitled to anything but God’s love.  Only He can reveal what is going on in the loving and truthful manner that is needed.

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