Death by Entitlement
It’s Monday. My nanny called in sick today. I have two proposals to write, a house on the market I need to follow up on and I have to take my dog to the vet to get her vaccinations. Both of my kids are home today, no school. I have to remember to cancel the milk delivery order and return the class mascot for my son’s preschool. I have a website to design, a logo to think about and thoughts floating around in my head, waiting to be transferred to paper to put on my blog. I have phone calls to make, appointments to schedule, and a dishwasher to unload. Just a typical day. But today, I have to put it all on hold. I have to resign myself to the fact that the morning and early afternoon will be unproductive for me. That’s a tough pill for someone like me to swallow. But I do it and do the best I can with it. Today is about my kids. And what a lesson I learned today.
It’s frightening to me the amount of sacrifice mothers make for their families. And how it all seems to go unnoticed, especially by the kids. Today I was told I was stupid more times than I can count on one hand. I was told my homemade hamburgers were yucky, after being asked specifically to make them. I heard tantrums and screaming when I turned down requests to buy cupcakes or a drink; when I wouldn’t let them eat potato chips and when dessert was not an option because someone didn’t eat his lunch. I was told, “I don’t like you,” and “I’ll just go live with Grandma because she gives me what I want.” The icing on the cake was when my oldest screamed out in the mall this morning, “Just buy me something!” I just about lost my shit. And while I’m sure any mother can relate to these days, it really struck a chord with me today. I started to worry that I was raising entitled boys.
Entitlement is something I’ve always known about but for some reason never recognized until recently. I think as a woman you eventually reach a point where you stop looking at everything through rose-colored glasses and you start to get real. Get real with everything around you. Start to see it for what it is, not what you want it to be. And there comes a point where you stop making excuses. When you start acknowledging the truth. I’ve seen entitlement in grown men. I’ve seen it in my children, my coworkers, my friends. It is terrifying. This notion that they can have whatever they want because they are who they are is sickening. And I will be damned if I’m going to raise my boys to be that way.
But the question is, how? How do I teach these children to have compassion and be appreciative of all of their blessings? Take away toys? Take away privileges? Spank them? Threaten them? And further, how do you get your “village” to follow suit and teach them these things alongside you, and not against you? Family, friends, caretakers, teachers…they all play an important role in developing our kids and the kind of people they will become. How do we all get on the same page? In the meantime, I’ll do my best to drill into their heads the value of compassion, appreciation and respect.
We’re doing such a great job in this country empowering our young girls, teaching our girls how to be strong and independent. And I can’t help but worry that we’re letting our boys fall by the wayside. It’s an interesting thought. If we continue to do a good job with our girls, to make them strong and independent, and we let our boys stay entitled, the human race will die out. No strong woman is going to put up with an entitled prick. So let’s change this. Let’s show our boys emotion and allow them to feel it. Let’s allow them to be vulnerable and shift this macho man complex enough so that they can learn to respect people and feelings. If we can be somewhat successful at that, the human race will continue.