Children and the Sense of Entitlement

I went to a kids’ birthday party a few days ago. Along with mountains of food there were the usual party games. I sat and watched while the kids ran around and played musical chairs amidst squeals of excitement. At the end of the game the winner proudly accepted her prize while we all clapped. However the next minute the child who lost was also given a prize much to my surprise. Later I asked the host why this was so and she replied that the child who lost shouldn’t feel bad.

I walked away feeling dissatisfied with the whole event. As I was chatting with my five year old daughter later in the day I realized that this incident actually showed what was wrong with the current generation. We talk about how kids are growing up spoilt and with a sense of entitlement but aren’t we only responsible for this? In the attempt to prevent a child from feeling bad for losing in a game, what we are doing is telling the child that it’s okay to not make an effort to do better. While the child who’s won ends up feeling that it’s not worth the effort to have won.

I am not one of those who push her child to come first but a little bit of healthy competition never hurt anyone. When I was growing up I knew that the rewards were equal to the efforts I put into a task; I was never told that irrespective of my efforts I would still get something.

As more and more parents are working and becoming busy with their lives, somewhere we are ending up giving our children an unfair sense of entitlement. As a result when they go out into the big, bad world and face real life challenges, they find themselves ill-equipped to deal with the same. A promotion denied or a percentage not achieved is enough to make them feel inadequate and throw them into the deep recesses of depression. A friend of mine who is a college professor told us how common depression has now become among young adults. The crux of it being that they cannot accept the difference between their expectations and reality.

My daughter started skating a year ago and became quite adept at it. We took her for a few competitions, more to give her exposure and increase her confidence than to have her actually win anything. In the first competition she won a medal but in the second competition she started crying just before her turn came. When we coaxed the reason out of her she said it was because she knew she wouldn't win since there were older kids also participating. That was a wake up call for me.

I sat her down and explained to her that it’s okay to come second too, because it gives someone else a chance to come first. I told that that if she only always came first then life would be very boring because there would be nothing to look forward to.

The childhood shapes the rest of a child’s life. As parents we need to ensure that children not only understand that it’s okay to lose sometimes, but that it’s actually good to let others win also. This will encourage them to strive to be better while simultaneously making them magnanimous in defeat. Let the coming generation not be one to fall apart at the slightest stress or crossover into being violent at being denied something. And the only way to secure this is by starting when they are young.

In today's day and age, our responsibilities as parents are tremendous. We will always want the best for our children, but we also need to ensure they don't grow up believing that they are automatically entitled to it.