If I was spending a quarter of a million dollars on my kid I darned well would expect some show of gratitude/appreciation.
Raising kids is already expensive. They don’t ask to be brought into this world. If I can spend 250K or whatever on my kid then I don’t expect applause. For what do we live than to give our children the best start in life that we can?
I am very grateful to my parents for paying for my college degree so that I had no loans and could choose my life path without that encumbrance. I feel grateful and fortunate that I can do the same for my child. I don’t want her to kiss my feet; I want her to pay it forward and make the most of her opportunities.
It seems that for some, “entitled attitudes” means “anyone who expects more out of life than I do.” Well, I don’t want to encourage my child to be an ungrateful wastrel, but I also don’t see the point of designing an artificial environment of self-imposed scarcity in order to teach some kind of lesson about never hoping or wishing for anything. That seems sad to me.
I think some don’t really understand what the bad “entitled” attitude is. If parents pay $250k for college (without damaging themselves financially) and the kid is appreciative, then super. I was appreciative that my parents paid for my wedding. Did I kiss the ground they walked on? No. But I was grateful and appreciative and I thanked them. I knew that they didn’t “have to” do it.
The nasty entitled bratty behavior doesn’t just have to do with “money being spent.” It’s a rude “me first,” attitude…that doesn’t even have to do with one penny being spent.
Upthread I mentioned how shocked I was when I did substitute teaching. A parent or child would bring in birthday cupcakes to share with the class. Often there would be a couple cupcakes left-over - and I would ask the bday child what to do with them (send them home? share with the principal and secretary?) However, usually some bratty kid (not the bday child) would give me a song and dance about why S/HE should get those extra cupcakes (and no, these weren’t starving kids). A couple of times, these kids sneaked and grabbed them anyway. Sometimes they would try to grab two cupcakes when everyone hadn’t yet been given one!
Who raised these kids?
Entitled kids want/expect/demand things even when it means that others will get short-shrift.
“However, a more expensive college is NOT a necessity for obtaining a bachelor’s degree - it is a luxury and a privilege. So, if Mom and Dad are spending more for that privilege - when the child could simply attend an in-state school, or a school on a scholarship - then, yes, the child should feel grateful.”
It’s all in context, I think. When there is a family making beaucoup bucks, living an otherwise high-on-the-hog lifestyle but there’s “only enough money” for an average college (and the kid is smart, hard worker, would really take advantage of the advantages of a better college) then yeah, I can see some resentment.
Yes, I could see the resentment, too, actually - but I still see the more elite, expensive school as a privilege. (As would be the family’s more lavish lifestyle).
Also - financial situations change, and sometimes that’s not clear to the kids.
There are no resentment in my family and they went to average college. Granted they are not in New Jersey. I might have a different opinion otherwise. I’m aware that most students from New Jersey don’t like Rutgers, thanks to CC.
Would they have preferred something else?
My son went to our flagship state university by choice. It was what he wanted. He doesn’t resent having gone there, and he doesn’t resent the fact that his sister, who had different aspirations and a stronger academic record, went to a much more expensive college.
But perhaps, if he had gone to the state university because family finances (or parents’ choices about family finances) had prevented him from going somewhere else, his feelings would have been different.
I don’t know but my kids are pretty happy with their college choices. They get opportunities for being the top dog at their universities while their friends who were more prestigious conscious picked an Ivy instead of less prestigious choices and some were miserable for the first few years. Even one dad told me he was not sure that was better choice than my daughter’s choice, this is way before his daughter left for college. They are in the top 1% or higher, could easily afforded any school.
I think how we approach this is a bit different from most families here. My kids know how highly we value education and that we can afford to pay the tuitions at their colleges of choice without sacrifice. Although I know they appreciate the fact that we can send them to expensive schools and they know how fortunate they are in this regard I don’t know if they’ve ever explicitly thanked us for college and I don’t expect them to. On the other hand if I buy them chocolate milk at the store or give them a ride to a friend’s I do expect a “thank you” and if I don’t receive it I will remind them with a quiet “thank you mom”.
Perhaps it’s because in some sense we see education as a need and chocolate milk or a ride as a want.
When kids grow up in a household where the family can afford most wants it can be a little more challenging to raise them without a sense of entitlement because it’s hard to use the “We can’t afford that” line. We’ve talked with our kids a lot about the difference between wants and needs and about how working for something oneself makes it more valued. We could buy our kids cars, but we won’t because we want them to know what it feels like to earn, save, negotiate and pay for their own beater.
I suspect that most entitled kids learned that attitude by observing their parents. The parents don’t recognize it in themselves, though.
We never used the “we can’t afford that” line. Whether we could or we couldn’t. From an early age, in addition to the volunteer service and giving back that we had them do with us, they learned to earn things, and from an early age we had a point system that they could use to cash in to get rewards. I recall DS#1, when he was maybe about, asking “is that es-pensive, mommy?” They learned differential cost, that things had value and had to be earned. And they learned the value of saving from an early age, and that frugality was a good thing. Neither s. is entitled in the least bit, though one is a bit more willing to pay for comfort/convenience. That said, he drives a 14 year old beater car, so perhaps comfort is selective.
oops, missed the edit cutoff. DS was about 4 when he asked that question “is that es-pensive, mommy?”
I think some sense of entitlement is important for children. If I’m too afraid to ask my parents for basic things (because I know there is no $ and we’re constantly told not to ask for stuff), then how will I know how/when to ask for appropriate things as an adult? When do I learn that I am entitled to a boyfriend who treats me well? That I am entitled to set limits in a relationship or with colleagues? That I am indeed entitled to say NO to a pedophile, or ask for clothing that fits and for hygiene products?
My kids learned that they can always ask. They may not like the answer, but I am always willing to discuss. That said, they knew early on that we would do whatever it took to pay for the college of their choice, and knew that many of our financial decisions flowed from that.
There is one poster who is not from NJ but, I believe, from California, who pushes that narrative. I’m not sure how true it really is. The Northeast is not like California in that, historically, there have been many private colleges predating the state systems, and the privates are generally perceived as more prestigious. NJ students live in a small, densely populated state and they want to get away. Nonetheless, a lot of very good NJ public high school students end up at Rutgers New Brunswick or The College of New Jersey.
CD,
Those are great examples, but sound more like examples of situations warranting assertiveness or self respect, not entitlement. It may be a matter of semantics. To me entitlement has a negative connotation, whereas the examples you gave are to me associated with self worth or self respect.
Maybe the concept we’re looking for is empowerment, which is the positive side of entitlement?
When I was a child, whenever my mother put an orange in my lunchbox, I always threw it away, because I did not know how to peel an orange without a knife. I was neither empowered nor entitled.
I think that an entitled child would have asked for a different type of fruit in her lunch – and that’s probably going too far.
An empowered child would have asked her parent to teach her how to peel an orange without a knife – or maybe asked for the oranges to be cut in sections – and I wish I had had the courage to do either of those things.
Yes, empowered is a great word. The entitled child would have asked that the orange be peeled and sectioned for them or asked for a catered lunch.
One of my kid didn’t know what an orange was until her sister pointed out. I don’t know why she didn’t know but she had been eating them. I would be happy if she knew what an orange was let alone peeling them. Talking about expectations.
I just saw an amazing movie about entitlement and just how complicated a subject it can be. It’s a Brazilian movie called, “The Second Mother” and it is fantastic. I immediately thought of this thread upon seeing it. Highly recommended!
The original post said a kid who whined on CC about his parents unwillingness to pay for an expensive college was by definition “entitled.” Some of us disagree with that premise. Indeed, I’d go further and say that there are times when kids from families that would have to sacrifice to send their kids to college have a right to complain too. They simply have different financial priorities than their parents.
I have a divorced Latina neighbor–an immigrant from South America-- who has girl and boy twins. When they turned 15, mom was expected to throw a blow out Quinceanera for the girl. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, search youtube for Quinceanera.) She refused. The girl was pretty and popular and had been in the Quinceanera “courts” of a number of friends. Her friends and some of their parents were horrified by the fact that she wasn’t going to have a Quinceanera. Her mother told her that when the twins finished high school she would throw a SMALL party at home for BOTH of them IF they got into good colleges.They did and they had the NYC equivalent of a backyard barbecue. Not throwing a huge Quinceanera bash for her D took real courage.
There are some young Latina girls who would rather go to a better college than have a Quinceanera. But they don’t get to decide which they get. Mom and dad do. The girl turns 15. It’s often during her freshman year of high school. She’s not even thinking about college yet. Mom and dad spend $50,000 on her Quinceanera. The kid has NO idea how much money is being spent or how much of the family savings have been spent…or in some cases, how much debt the party leaves mom and dad in.
When she’s a senior and wants to go to college, in some cases there’s no money for it. I KNOW that some of the girls would rather have skipped the Quinceanera and gone to college. Some of them would have made the college choice even as freshmen. But, nobody asks them whether they want one. And the party is as much about their families’ role in the community as it is about the girl herself. They are not ALLOWED to say “Mom and Dad, could I use the Quinceanera money for college instead?”
Some of these girls will go to college, but it will be Borough of Manhattan Community College followed by two years at a CUNY while living at home. Now, sometimes living at home isn’t negotiable with their parents. But even if they live at home, they’d rather have gone to Barnard, St. John’s, Pace, NYU, Fordham, Manhattan College, etc. than BMCC. And they know that their parents–who “can’t afford” these options-- COULD somehow afford an over the top Quinceanera.
And they resent it…AND they are good kids, IMO.