Entitled Adult Children Quotes

The beggarly question of parentage--what is it, after all? What does it matter, when you come to think of it, whether a child is yours by blood or not? All the little ones of our time are collectively the children of us adults of the time, and entitled to our general care. That excessive regard of parents for their own children, and their dislike of other people's, is, like class-feeling, patriotism, save-your-own-soul-ism, and other virtues, a mean exclusiveness at bottom.

We are all entitled to our own share of mistakes and learning experiences in life. No one should take them away from us. Not even our parents.

American adult children, and I think most adult children, seem to believe that they are entitled to a perfect relationship with their parents and if it can’t be perfect, if it is challenging in any way, then they are justified in abandonment because she/he is just too difficult to relate to.

Emotionally immature people are annoyed by other people’s differing thoughts and opinions, believing everyone should see things their way. The idea that other people are entitled to their own point of view is beyond them. They may be prone to making social gaffes because they don’t have enough awareness of other people’s individuality to avoid being offensive.

The sooner temper shows up in a relationship, the worse the implications. Most people are on their best behavior early in a relationship, so be wary of people who display irritability early on. It can indicate both brittleness and a sense of entitlement, not to mention disrespect. People who have a short fuse and expect that life should go according to their wishes don't make for good company. If you find yourself reflexively stepping in to soothe someone's anger, watch out.

Role entitlement is an attitude of demanding certain treatment because of your social role. When parents feel entitled to do what they want simply because they’re in the role of parent, this is a form of role entitlement. They act as though being a parent exempts them from respecting boundaries or being considerate.

The beggarly question of parentage...what is it after all? What does it matter,when you come to think of it, wheter a child is yours by blood or not? All the little ones of our time are collectively the children of us adults of the time, and entitled to our general care. That excessive regard of parents for their own children, and their dislike of other people's, is, like class-feeling, patriotism, save-your-own-soul-ism and other virtues, a mean exclusiveness at bottom.

In 1833, the surgeon Peter Gaskell had published a thoroughly researched manuscript entitled The Manufacturing Population of England, focusing chiefly on the moral, social, and physical toll of silver-working machinery on British labourers. It had gone largely unheeded at the time, except by the Radicals, who were known to exaggerate everything. Now, the antiwar papers ran excerpts from it every day, reporting in grisly detail the coal dust inhaled by small children forced to wriggle into tunnels that adults could not, the fingers and toes lost to silver-powered machines working at inhuman speeds, the girls who’d been strangled by their own hair caught in whirring spindles and looms.

Lareau calls the middle-class parenting style "concerted cultivation." It’s an attempt to actively "foster and assess a child’s talents, opinions and skills." Poor parents tend to follow, by contrast, a strategy of "accomplishment of natural growth." They see as their responsibility to care for their children but to let them grow and develop on their own. Lareau stresses that one style isn’t morally better than the other. The poorer children were, to her mind, often better behaved, less whiny, more creative in making use of their own time, and had a well-developed sense of independence. But in practical terms, concerted cultivation has enormous advantages. The heavily scheduled middleclass child is exposed to a constantly shifting set of experiences. She learns teamwork and how to cope in highly structured settings. She is taught how to interact comfortably with adults, and to speak up when she needs to. In Lareau’s words, the middle-class children learn a sense of "entitlement." That word, of course, has negative connotations these days. But Lareau means it in the best sense of the term: "They acted as though they had a right to pursue their own individual preferences and to actively manage interactions in institutional settings. They appeared comfortable in those settings; they were open to sharing information and asking for attention It was common practice among middle-class children to shift interactions to suit their preferences." They knew the rules. "Even in fourth grade, middle-class children appeared to be acting on their own behalf to gain advantages. They made special requests of teachers and doctors to adjust procedures to accommodate their desires." By contrast, the working-class and poor children were characterized by "an emerging sense of distance, distrust, and constraint." They didn’t know how to get their way, or how to "customize"—using Lareau’s wonderful term—whatever environment they were in, for their best purposes.

But it is the nature of narcissistic entitlement to see the situation from only one very subjective point of view that says “My feelings and needs are all that matter, and whatever I want, I should get.” Mutuality and reciprocity are entirely alien concepts, because others exist only to agree, obey, flatter, and comfort – in short, to anticipate and meet my every need. If you cannot make yourself useful in meeting my need, you are of no value and will most likely be treated accordingly, and if you defy my will, prepare to feel my wrath. Hell hath no fury like the Narcissist denied. Narcissists hold these unreasonable expectations of particularly favorable treatment and automatic compliance because they consider themselves uniquely special. In social situations, you will talk about them or what they are interested in because they are more important, more knowledgeable, or more captivating than anyone else. Any other subject is boring and won’t hold interest, and, in their eyes, they most certainly have a right to be entertained. In personal relationships, their sense of entitlement means that you must attend to their needs but they are under no obligation to listen to or understand you. If you insist that they do, you are “being difficult” or challenging their rights. How dare you put yourself before me? they seem to (or may actually) ask. And if they have real power over you, they feel entitled to use you as they see fit and you must not question their authority. Any failure to comply will be considered an attack on their superiority. Defiance of their will is a narcissistic injury that can trigger rage and self-righteous aggression. The conviction of entitlement is a holdover from the egocentric stage of early childhood, around the age of one to two, when children experience a natural sense of grandiosity that is an essential part of their development. This is a transitional phase, and soon it becomes necessary for them to integrate their feelings of self-importance and invincibility with an awareness of their real place in the overall scheme of things that includes a respect for others. In some cases, however, the bubble of specialness is never popped, and in others the rupture is too harsh or sudden, as when a parent or caretaker shames excessively or fails to offer soothing in the wake of a shaming experience. Whether overwhelmed with shame or artificially protected from it, children whose infantile fantasies are not gradually transformed into a more balanced view of themselves in relation to others never get over the belief that they are the center of the universe. Such children may become self-absorbed “Entitlement monsters,” socially inept and incapable of the small sacrifices of Self that allow for reciprocity in personal relationships. The undeflated child turns into an arrogant adult who expects others to serve as constant mirrors of his or her wonderfulness. In positions of power, they can be egotistical tyrants who will have their way without regard for anyone else. Like shame, the rage that follows frustrated entitlement is a primitive emotion that we first learn to manage with the help of attuned parents. The child’s normal narcissistic rages, which intensify during the power struggles of age eighteen to thirty months – those “terrible twos” – require “optimal frustration” that is neither overly humiliating nor threatening to the child’s emerging sense of Self. When children encounter instead a rageful, contemptuous or teasing parent during these moments of intense arousal, the image of the parent’s face is stored in the developing brain and called up at times of future stress to whip them into an aggressive frenzy. Furthermore, the failure of parental attunement during this crucial phase can interfere with the development of brain functions that inhibit aggressive behavior, leaving children with lifelong difficulties controlling aggressive impulses.

Lareau stresses that one style isn’t morally better than the other. The poorer children were, to her mind, often better behaved, less whiny, more creative in making use of their own time, and had a well-developed sense of independence. But in practical terms, concerted cultivation has enormous advantages. The heavily scheduled middle-class child is exposed to a constantly shifting set of experiences. She learns teamwork and how to cope in highly structured settings. She is taught how to interact comfortably with adults, and to speak up when she needs to. In Lareau’s words, the middle-class children learn a sense of “entitlement.” That word, of course, has negative connotations these days. But Lareau means it in the best sense of the term: “They acted as though they had a right to pursue their own individual preferences and to actively manage interactions in institutional settings. They appeared comfortable in those settings; they were open to sharing information and asking for attention…. It was common practice among middle-class children to shift interactions to suit their preferences.” They knew the rules. “Even in fourth grade, middle-class children appeared to be acting on their own behalf to gain advantages. They made special requests of teachers and doctors to adjust procedures to accommodate their desires.” By contrast, the working-class and poor children were characterized by “an emerging sense of distance, distrust, and constraint.” They didn’t know how to get their way, or how to “customize”—using Lareau’s wonderful term—whatever environment they were in, for their best purposes.

Ten New Rules for Parent–Adult Child Relations RULE #1: Your adult child has more power than you to set the terms of your relationship because they’re more willing to walk away. Basic game theory: she who cares less has more power. RULE # 2: Your relationship with your adult child needs to occur in an environment of creating happiness and personal growth, not an environment of obligation, emotional debt, or duty. RULE # 3: You are not the only authority on how well you performed as a parent. Your adult child gets to have their own narrative and opinions about the past. RULE #4: Use of guilt trips or criticism will never get you what you want from your adult child, especially if you’re estranged. RULE #5: Learning to communicate in a way that is egalitarian, psychological, and self-aware is essential to a good relationship with your adult child. RULE #6: You were the parent when you were raising your child and you’re the parent until they die. You brought your child into this world. That means that if your child is unable to take the high road, you still have to if reconciliation is your goal. RULE #7: A large financial and emotional investment in your child does not entitle you to more contact or affection than that which is wanted by them, however unjust that may seem. RULE #8: Criticizing your child’s spouse, romantic partner, or therapist greatly increases your risk of estrangement. RULE #9: Criticizing your child’s sexuality or gender identity greatly increases your risk of estrangement. RULE #10: Just because you had a bad childhood and did a better job than your parents doesn’t mean that your adult child has to accept all of the ways that they felt hurt by you.

Although psychoanalysts, including Freud, tended to acknowledge sexual trauma as tragic and harmful (Freud, 1905b, 1917), the subject seems to have been too awful to consider seriously in civilized company. One notable exception, Sandor Ferenczi, presented a paper entitled “Confusion of Tongues between the Adult and the Child: The Language of Tenderness and of Passion” (1955), to the Psychoanalytic Congress in 1932. In this presentation he talked about the helplessness of the child when confronted with an adult who uses the child’s vulnerability to gain sexual gratification. Ferenczi talked with more eloquence than any psychiatrist before him about the helplessness and terror experienced by children who were victims of interpersonal violence, and he introduced the critical concept that the predominant defense available to children so traumatized is “identification with aggressor.” The response of the psychoanalytic community seems to have been one of embarrassment, and the paper was not published in English until 1949, 17 years after Ferenczi’s death (Masson, 1984).

Sgt. Jack was a hard-ass teacher, but kids need hard-ass teachers sometimes. I know that might hurt your ears because things are different now. We are warned of the lasting effects of stress on children, and to compensate, parents strategize about how to make their children’s lives comfortable and easy. But is the real world always comfortable? Is it easy? Life is not G-rated. We must prepare kids for the world as it is. Our generation is training kids to become full-fledged members of Entitlement Nation, which ultimately makes them easy prey for the lions among us. Our ever-softening society doesn’t just affect children. Adults fall into the same trap. Even those of us who have achieved great things. Every single one of us is just another frog in the soon-to-be-boiling water that is our soft-ass culture. We take unforeseen obstacles personally. We are ready to be outraged at all times by the evil bullshit of the world. Believe me, I know all about evil and have dealt with more bullshit than most, but if you catalog your scars to use them as excuses or a bargaining chip to make life easier for yourself, you’ve missed an opportunity to become better and grow stronger. Sgt. Jack knew what awaited me as an adult. He was preparing me for the grip of life. Whether he knew it or not, the man was training me to be a savage.

An English silence – one in which the unspoken words are perfectly understood by both parties. What did I dislike and distrust about adulthood? Well, to put it briefly: the sense of entitlement, the sense of superiority, the assumption of knowing better if not best, the vast banality of adult opinions, the way women took out compacts and powdered their noses, the way men sat in armchairs with their legs apart and their privates heavily outlined against their trousers, the way they talked about gardens and gardening…… their docile obedience to social norms, their snarky disapproval of anything satirical or questioning, their assumption that their children’s success would be measured by how well they imitated their parents, the suffocating noise they made when agreeing with one another… But I do believe now that when two lovers meet, there is already so much pre-history that only certain outcomes are possible. Whereas the lovers themselves imagine that the world is being reset and the possibilities are both new and infinite. On the one hand – and this is the part to do with the past – love feels like the vast and sudden easing of a life long frown. In love everything is both true and false; it’s the one subject on which it’s impossible to say anything absurd Misunderstanding is democratically distributed. Some men mistook boorishness for honesty. Just as others mistook primness for virtue.

In a pastoral letter in 1976, Archbishop Kabanga of Lubumbashi issued a devastating critique of the system that Mobutu ran. The thirst for money . . . transforms men into assassins. Many poor unemployed are condemned to misery along with their families because they are unable to pay off the person who hires. How many children and adults die without medical care because they are unable to bribe the medical personnel who are supposed to care for them? Why are there no medical supplies in the hospitals, while they are found in the marketplace? How did they get there? Why is it that in our courts justice can only be obtained by fat bribes to the judge? Why are prisoners forgotten in jail? They have no one to pay off the judge who sits on the dossier. Why do our government offices force people to come back day after day to obtain services to which they are entitled? If the clerks are not paid off, they will not be served. Why, at the opening of school, must parents go into debt to bribe the school principal? Children who are unable to pay will have no school . . . Whoever holds a morsel of authority, or means of pressure, profits from it to impose on people, especially in rural areas. All means are good to obtain money, or humiliate the human being.

The statistics on sexual assault may have forced a national dialogue on consent but honest conversations between adults and teenagers about what happens after 'yes', discussions about ethics, respect, decision making, sensuality, reciprocity, relationship building, the ability to assert desires and set limits remain rare. And while we are more often telling children that both parties must agree unequivocally to a sexual encounter, we still tend to avoid the biggest taboo of all; women's capacity for, and entitlement to, sexual pleasure.

Lies have always been told to children, and to adults, but in pre-industrial times children were well aware of adult superiority in skill and knowledge, and viewed themselves "juniors" in the true sense. Today, however, children absorb adult lies within an artificial protected environment. Here Graham says something of special interest: "Children of kings and great magnates were the first to grow up out of touch with the world. Suburbia means half the population can live like kings in that respect." Yet consider entitlement programs as an attempt to return us all to childhood. Here it is not suburbia that puts us out of touch with reality, but government. We are, then, all children of the king, and of those beneficent bureaucrats who have taken charge. We are all entitled, at this turning point of history, to become spoiled misfits.

In his TED Talk, entitled The Decline of Play and the Rise of Mental Disorders, he will open your eyes in several ways. In addition to describing play as a critical learning experience, he also compellingly cites the “reality that over the past 60 years in the United States there has been a gradual but, overall dramatic decline in children’s freedom to play with other children, without adult direction. Over this same period, there has been a gradual but overall dramatic increase in anxiety, depression, feelings of helplessness, suicide, and narcissism in children and adolescents.

I address the aftermath of cutting ties, because when people hear the words “cutting ties” or “no contact,” they may automatically assume those who cut ties are angry, bitter, immature, spiteful, spoiled, jealous, entitled adult children who are being cruel and unreasonable toward our family members. Nothing could be further from the truth. Cutting ties is not about malice, hate, stubbornness, a lack of forgiveness, being spoiled, or exacting revenge. Severing ties is exclusively about self-care.

The idea that other people are entitled to their own point of view is beyond them.

The sooner temper shows up in a relationship, the worse the implications. Most people are on their best behavior early in a relationship, so be wary of people who display irritability early on. It can indicate both brittleness and a sense of entitlement, not to mention disrespect. People who have a short fuse and expect that life should go according to their wishes don’t make for good company. If you find yourself reflexively stepping in to soothe someone’s anger, watch out.

This book, also known as the Bible of Psychiatry, explains that to be diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) a person has to meet at least five of the following criteria: •​Has a grandiose sense of self-importance; for example, exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior. •​Has fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or idyllic love. •​Believes that they are “special” and should only associate with other “special” or high-status people or institutions. •​Requires excessive admiration. •​Has a sense of entitlement, that is, an unreasonable expectation of favorable treatment, or automatic compliance with their wishes. •​Takes advantage of others to achieve their ends. •​Lacks empathy and is unwilling or unable to recognize other people’s feelings or needs. •​Is often envious of others and believes that others are envious in return. •​Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.

THE PRAISED GENERATION HITS THE WORKFORCE Are we going to have a problem finding leaders in the future? You can’t pick up a magazine or turn on the radio without hearing about the problem of praise in the workplace. We could have seen it coming. We’ve talked about all the well-meaning parents who’ve tried to boost their children’s self-esteem by telling them how smart and talented they are. And we’ve talked about all the negative effects of this kind of praise. Well, these children of praise have now entered the workforce, and sure enough, many can’t function without getting a sticker for their every move. Instead of yearly bonuses, some companies are giving quarterly or even monthly bonuses. Instead of employee of the month, it’s the employee of the day. Companies are calling in consultants to teach them how best to lavish rewards on this overpraised generation. We now have a workforce full of people who need constant reassurance and can’t take criticism. Not a recipe for success in business, where taking on challenges, showing persistence, and admitting and correcting mistakes are essential. Why are businesses perpetuating the problem? Why are they continuing the same misguided practices of the overpraising parents, and paying money to consultants to show them how to do it? Maybe we need to step back from this problem and take another perspective. If the wrong kinds of praise lead kids down the path of entitlement, dependence, and fragility, maybe the right kinds of praise can lead them down the path of hard work and greater hardiness. We have shown in our research that with the right kinds of feedback even adults can be motivated to choose challenging tasks and confront their mistakes. What would this feedback look or sound like in the workplace? Instead of just giving employees an award for the smartest idea or praise for a brilliant performance, they would get praise for taking initiative, for seeing a difficult task through, for struggling and learning something new, for being undaunted by a setback, or for being open to and acting on criticism. Maybe it could be praise for not needing constant praise! Through a skewed sense of how to love their children, many parents in the ’90s (and, unfortunately, many parents of the ’00s) abdicated their responsibility. Although corporations are not usually in the business of picking up where parents left off, they may need to this time. If businesses don’t play a role in developing a more mature and growth-minded workforce, where will the leaders of the future come from?

It’s interesting that wealth tends to skip a generation. Overwhelming abundance often leads to a lackadaisical mentality, which brings about a sedentary lifestyle. Children of the wealthy are especially susceptible. They weren’t the ones who developed the discipline and character to create the wealth in the first place, so it makes sense that they may not have the same sense of value for wealth or understand what’s necessary to keep it. We frequently see this entitlement mentality in children of royalty, movie stars, and corporate executives—and to a lesser degree, in children and adults everywhere. As a nation, our entire populace seems to have lost appreciation for the value of a strong work ethic. We’ve had two, if not three, generations of Americans who have known great prosperity, wealth, and ease. Our expectations of what it really takes to create lasting success—things like grit, hard work, and fortitude—aren’t alluring, and thus have been mostly forgotten. We’ve lost respect for the strife and struggle of our forefathers. The massive effort they put forth instilled discipline, chiseled their character, and stoked the spirit to brave new frontiers. The truth is, complacency has impacted all great empires, including, but not limited to, the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English. Why? Because nothing fails like success. Once-dominant empires have failed for this very reason. People get to a certain level of success and get too comfortable.

Similarly, when we as parents get in the habit of doing small things to make our children’s lives easier—when we clean up after them, drive them places that they could walk to, fill out applications for our teenagers, pay teenagers’ parking tickets, or regularly jump in to solve children’s problems with peers, teachers, or coaches—we run the risk of making our children more fragile, entitled, and self-occupied.

Around the same time that index was released, Nicholas Kristof (again, a hero to many liberals), wrote a column that addressed the dependency on government programs.5 He focused on Kentucky’s Appalachian area, where people have yanked their kids out of literacy classes because if those kids learn to read, the parents will be less likely to qualify for a monthly SSI check for having kids with intellectual disabilities. We are not even making this up. Apparently, many of these people receive nearly $700 each month from Supplemental Security Income for those “disabled” children, and they receive those payments until their kids turn eighteen. And when the kids do turn eighteen, they are illiterate and unproductive because of their parents, and they collect SSI income as adults, many of them never holding a job in their entire lives. This is how our entitlement programs “help.” Nice, huh? Kristof wrote, “This is painful for a liberal to admit, but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency. Our poverty programs do rescue many people, but other times they backfire.

The leaders of Jamestown had borrowed directly from the Roman model of slavery: abandoned children and debtors were made slaves. When indentured adults sold their anticipated labor in return for passage to America, they instantly became debtors, which made their orphaned children a collateral asset. It was a world not unlike the one Shakespeare depicted in The Merchant of Venice, when Shylock demanded his pound of flesh. Virginia planters felt entitled to their flesh and blood in the forms of the innocent spouses and offspring of dead servants.36

I often hear adults telling children to give them a hug, which I find curious. We ask children to do things that violate their boundaries every day. We entitle ourselves to their personal space without consideration for who they are, and how they like to experience closeness. Embracing or laying a hand on a child’s shoulder can be more about us than about them, rather than how they need or want to be handled.  To sensory-affected and children with spectrum disorders, touch can feel alarming. Consider asking a child if you can give them a hug and be open to the answer being no. An embrace is a gift we give someone else. Not all children or adults like to be hugged or fondled, particularly by strangers. We don’t need to take it personally; what we need to do is honor what others want. Giving kids a choice in the matter will be carried through adolescence and into adulthood and help them do what it takes to protect their bodies by setting boundaries. Set the standard for yourself and for children that it is okay to create one’s own signature gesture of love or greeting, and an entirely new chain of respect can begin.

Because today’s parents have often invested more in their children, financially and emotionally, than previous generations, they may feel entitled to a kind of availability that is at odds with what their adult child can reasonably or sanely provide. This entitlement can make parents communicate in ways that work against them—and, in turn, cause the adult child to push back. A negative feedback loop sometimes ensues: the child moves further and further away to escape the feelings of guilt and responsibility for the parent. As they feel their child becoming more and more distant or angry, the parent pursues them even more aggressively. In research on marriage, this feedback loop is referred to as the “pursuer-distancer dynamic” and is associated with greatly increased risk of divorce.

They’re Even-Tempered The sooner temper shows up in a relationship, the worse the implications. Most people are on their best behavior early in a relationship, so be wary of people who display irritability early on. It can indicate both brittleness and a sense of entitlement, not to mention disrespect. People who have a short fuse and expect that life should go according to their wishes don’t make for good company. If you find yourself reflexively stepping in to soothe someone’s anger, watch out. There are enormous variations in how people experience and express their anger. More mature people find a sustained state of anger unpleasant, so they quickly try to find a way to get past it. Less mature people, on the other hand, may feed their anger and act as though reality should adapt to them. With the latter, be aware that their sense of entitlement may one day place you in the crosshairs of their anger. People who show anger by withdrawing love are particularly pernicious. The outcome of such behavior is that nothing gets solved and the other person just feels punished. In contrast, emotionally mature people will usually tell you what’s wrong and ask you to do things differently. They don’t sulk or pout for long periods of time or make you walk on eggshells. Ultimately, they’re willing to take the initiative to bring conflict to a close, rather than giving you the silent treatment. That said, people typically need some time to calm down before they can talk about what made them angry, regardless of their emotional maturity level. Forcing an issue when both parties are still angry isn’t a good idea. Taking a time-out often works better, helping people avoid saying things in the heat of an argument that they might later regret. In addition, people sometimes need space to deal with their feelings on their own first.

Most people with toxic adult children I interviewed reported that the difficult patterns had kicked in by the early teens and adolescence and never abated.

Growing up with parents like this can make the world feel like an unsafe space—both for children and for the adults that they will become.

Narcissistic parents are threatened by their adult children’s accomplishments or joys and minimize them, trivialize them, or take responsibility for them.

Interestingly, many golden children will report that they found it even more difficult to distance themselves from the narcissistic parent as adults for a complex set of reasons, including guilt, fear, confusion, duty, and obligation.

Even the best of children can be little tyrants, believing themselves absolutely entitled to every bit of the love and servitude bestowed upon them by the adults entrusted with their care,

The analogy I have used with numerous clients when we discuss family-of-origin issues is that the experiences we have or endure as children are like etchings or echoes. These experiences don’t define people, but they also cannot be denied—the echo, the faint mark, is always there. At the most extreme, it is like experiencing an injury in childhood; it may always give you some aches and pains as an adult, but it doesn’t have to restrict you. The awareness of these dynamics, how they impact a person, and how they continue to play out can be used to enable behavioral change and different kinds of choices.

But because middle-class children today occupy privileged positions within the family, and because their parents have overextended themselves on their behalf, kids sense that they have the power to make their boredom their parents’ responsibility. Lareau noticed this immediately too. “Middle-class children,” she writes, “often feel entitled to adult attention and intervention in their play.