I am exhausted of the entitlement of our society and the growing epidemic within our children...just... PLAIN... EXHAUSTED of it. An Excerpt from We Are That Family...If you read anything tonight...take time to read this one: What kind of kids are we raising? I ask myself this question often. As parents I think we’ve missed something very important in our culture. In an effort to make family a priority and give our kids what we didn’t have, we’ve become a child-focused culture. In many ways, we’ve lost our purpose. The sense of entitlement our kids exhibit is fueled by a parenting model that is obsessed with giving our children what they want and by making our kids the center of our lives. In a way, we are just too into this parenting thing. We used to have birthday parties where A CAKE made it special and now it’s an EVENT. We used to pass out store bought Valentine cards, now we have them professionally printed with photographs and candy and goodie bags and mylar balloon bouquets. We used to play outside with sticks and get dirty; now kids have a variety of expensive game systems and a lot of technology at their disposal. This quote by Jerry Seinfeld made me laugh because it’s so true. But then it really made me think. The bedtime routine for my kids is a royal coronation jubilee centennial of rinsing and plaque and dental appliances and the stuffed animal semi circle of emotional support. I have to read 8 different moron books to my kids. Do you know what my bedtime story was when I was a kid? DARKNESS. My parents would yell “Go to bed!” We’ve all probably done the bedtime dance. I remember one of my kids had to have a certain color of pacifier to HOLD in her hand before she’d sleep. So, clearly, I’m no expert here. I’m learning from my parenting mistakes, too. But in centering our world around our children and giving into their demands, we foster entitlement. Most entitlement begins because we lack the courage to tell our children no or because we don’t exhibit the strength to keep our no a no. We continue to enable entitlement by rewarding our kids for everything they do. We may be taking away the sense of satisfaction and pride that comes from genuine achievement.” Jason Walsh, a special education teacher in Washington, D.C., witnessed this firsthand during his school’s fifth-grade graduation ceremonies. Some students received as many as 14 different awards. “The majority of the students didn’t know what their awards really meant,” says Walsh. The honors “didn’t reinforce a specific achievement—but a sense of entitlement and of being great.” Kids don’t need more stars and stickers. They need more hard work. Kids don’t need more activities. They need more unstructured time. Kids don’t need more stuff. They need more opportunities to give their stuff away. Kids don’t need more store-bought or manufactured fun. They need freedom to create their own.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Feb 2014 03:39:27 +0000
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