Richard and Linda Eyre are prominent speakers on parenting and families. The authors of numerous books, including the Number One New York Times bestseller Teaching Your Children Values, the Eyres are the parents of nine and the grandparents of 21. They live in Park City, Utah. The following column, written exclusively for Grandparents.com readers, is adapted from their latest book, The Entitlement Trap: How to Rescue Your Child with a New Family System of Choosing, Earning, and Ownership (Avery, 2011).
Don't we all worry, at least sometimes, about how our kids are raising our grandkids?
And if the worry was to center on one thing, wouldn't it be the entitlement attitudes we see in our grandchildren?
But how do you tactfully bring it up to your children? How do you make any parenting suggestions without the risk of offending or getting shut off?
These were the questions in our minds as we wrote our new book, The Entitlement Trap: How to Rescue Your Child with a New Family System of Choosing, Earning, and Ownership.
We were writing it for parents, of course, but make no mistake, we were also writing it for grandparents, to give to parents in the interest of grandchildren! Sometimes, giving a book is the least offensive and most productive way to make a suggestion.
Here is our message, in a nutshell:
1. Kids are more entitled today than ever before. They think they deserve to have everything they want, right now, without waiting and without working.
2. They think they have to have everything their friends have, including the latest gadgets and electronics.
3. With this kind of entitlement attitude, they begin to lose their motivation to work and to save and to do their best. Their incentives and their gratitude are diminished, as are their ingenuity and creativity.
4. Media, consumer debt and even government contribute to the entitlement trap, but the simple fact is that parents are most to blame. Well-meaning parents want the kids to have everything their friends have and sometimes give too much to make up for how little time they have for their kids because they are working more.
5. These kids' entitlement attitude goes beyond what they think they deserve to have, it also gets to thinking that they should be able to do whatever they want, and this leads to behavioral problems.
6. Along with the indulgence of parents, a key cause of entitlement in kids is that they do not perceive real ownership of anything, but without the pride of ownership there is no incentive to take care of things. Kids don't perceive ownership of their clothes or their toys. Why should they? They didn't work for them, didn't sacrifice anything for them, and probably didn't even pick them out. So they throw them on the floor, lose them, and undervalue them.
7. It's not only their toys and clothes that they feel no real ownership of, it's also their values, their goals, and their choices.
8. The key to overcoming entitlement is to help kids feel real ownership. This is done by setting up a "family economy" with a payday instead of an allowance day. Kids have certain jobs they are responsible for, and how much they get when the family bank is opened up on Saturday is directly proportional to how much they do.
9. They get a "checkbook" that draws on the family bank and they become responsible for buying their own stuff rather than begging for it. Their "earned" money translates into real ownership of what they buy, and the pride of ownership changes their behavior as well as their attitudes.
10. The sense of ownership is then transferred to even more important things like decisions, grades, and even conflicts. What they own is what they feel responsible for and that is the beginning of real responsibility.
Let us be completely candid. We are grandparents who wrote this book for our children and (hopefully) for the benefit of our grandchildren. We love our grandkids and we see their enormous potential. But we also see the entitlement attitudes that surround them and that swirl into their lives from the media, from their peers, and, too often, from their parents.
We hope our new book will help kids and parents, and give grandparents like us a way to do something about turning the prevailing sense of entitlement into a sense of responsibility!
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