Entitled Adults Quotes

Work hard, know your shit, show your shit, and then feel entitled. Listen to no one except the two smartest and kindest adults you know, and that doesn't always mean your parents. If you do that, you will be fine.

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.

If you jotted down all of my ill-thought out comments, you could write a book entitled, Guide to Getting Punched in the Throat for Boneheads-Mad Hatter in "Death of the Mad Hatter" (Coming Soon!)

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.

You can and will do this. You are entitled to speak your truth in a respectful way.

You are entitled to speak your truth in a respectful way.

Mindfulness is an ancient meditation mode in which we let go of our fears, our attachments to control and being right, our expectations and entitlements, and our judgments of others.

There are no dirty words in this book, except for 'hell' and 'God', in case someone is fearing that an innocent child might see 1...Perhaps the only precept taught me by Grandfather Wills that I have honoured all my adult life is that profanity and obsceny entitle people who don't want unpleasant information to close their eyes and ears to you.

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.

There is nothing wrong with being a child; in fact, it is far more important than you know. You are entitled to your childhood, Eric. All boys and girls are, and it is the adults’ responsibility to protect those childhoods.

I used to not want to call them shrinks, but now that I’ve been through so many, I feel entitled to it. It’s an adult term, and it’s disrespectful, and I’m more than two thirds adult and I’m pretty disrespectful, so what the hell.

If a curiously selective plague came along and killed all people of intermediate height, 'tall' and 'short' would come to have just as precise a meaning as 'bird' or 'mammal'. The same is true of human ethics and law. Our legal and moral systems are deeply species-bound. The director of a zoo is legally entitled to 'put down' a chimpanzee that is surplus to requirements, while any suggestion that he might 'put down' a redundant keeper or ticket-seller would be greeted with howls of incredulous outrage. The chimpanzee is the property of the zoo. Humans are nowadays not supposed to be anybody's property, yet the rationale for discriminating against chimpanzees in this way is seldom spelled out, and I doubt if there is a defensible rationale at all. Such is the breathtaking speciesism of our attitudes, the abortion of a single human zygote can arouse more moral solicitude and righteous indignation than the vivisection of any number of intelligent adult chimpanzees! [T]he only reason we can be comfortable with such a double standard is that the intermediates between humans and chimps are all dead.

I wouldn’t want Larry to die through my oversight. Larry is entitled to work out his own damn foolishness without having it cut short through my carelessness. Duke, I believe in everyone’s working out his own damnation his own way . . . but nevertheless that is no excuse for an adult to give a dynamite cap to a baby as a toy.

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.

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.

Work hard, know your shit, show your shit, and then feel entitled. Listen to no one except the two smartest and kindest adults you know, and that doesn’t always mean your parents. If you do that, you will be fine.

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.

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.

Afterwards, sitting on my bunk, I cried. I read somewhere that when you’re a kid it’s people’s cruelty that makes you cry, then when you’re an adult it’s their kindness. I hadn’t realised until that moment how completely I’d given up any entitlement to kindness. And then when I saw Jake, so visibly strung out, looking so totally alone, the makeup felt cheap on my face, a stupid girl’s gesture. (The girl’s still in there, waist-deep in the blood and guts of the monster’s victims. There might be something out there that’ll kill the girl but if so I can’t imagine what it could be.) Are you okay? I’m fine. Are you all right? I’m fine. Weeks of waiting and then when the moment comes you trade the plainest words. The nearness of him hurt, my heart, my head, my breasts, my womb, it felt like, started the wolf trying to tear itself free.

Unfortunately, too many adults feel that once they have hit twenty or thirty—or certainly forty—they are entitled to relax in whatever habitual grooves they have established.

I believe that informed adults should be allowed to inflict whatever suffering they wish - on themselves. But we are not entitled to harm other people.

Here’s how I think you can get your confidence back, kid: Work hard, know your shit, show your shit, and then feel entitled. Listen to no one except the two smartest and kindest adults you know, and that doesn’t always mean your parents. If you do that, you will be fine. Now,

He is a free man, not because is in a poition of political power and influence that you will never be able to achieve, and not because he has more character and heart in his fingertip than you have in your entire being, but because he is a man, and is thus entitled to be free.

Overall, the American Millennial demographic group falls into two categories. The first match the stereotype of entitlement and laziness and taking an extended adolescence between college and entering the workforce. The second . . . got screwed: they attempted to be adults, but got sideswiped by the combination of Boomers squeezing them out of the workforce, and the mass unemployment triggered by the 2007–09 financial crisis. Regardless of bucket, the Millennials lost years of meaningful work experience, and today are the least skilled of any equivalent age cohort in modern American history

Lads, I forgot to tell you. Naya don’t like good music because she’s a feminist.’ ‘What’s a feminist?’ Tyse asks. ‘It’s like a chick who blames all of her mental problems on dudes,’ Jimmy explains. ‘But not even on specific dudes, just, like, the idea of dudes. It’s fucked up. And it’s ironic cos feminists usually look like dudes themselves.’ ‘But Naya doesn’t look like a dude.’ ‘Aww, thanks Tyse,’ Naya says. ‘James has given you a horribly inaccurate definition of a feminist, but he has ably demonstrated why we exist. Unfortunately, he’s not the only entitled male with no respect for women.

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.

Interestingly, adult narcissists often look like an infant, or, at least, a toddler: They “cry” (or yell) when they do not quickly get what they want, assume that people will come running when they cry, and become agitated when they don’t come running, don’t really care about the needs of the people around them, and believe that they are truly the center of the universe.

I didn't like what that word-'childhood'-conjured up, or rather, I didn't like the way most people use it: that presumption of innocence and starry-eyed wonder. The only good thing about childhood is that no one really remembers it, or rather, that's the only thing about it to like: this forgetting. What else could possibly lie beneath that blissful oblivion but shame: a dark knowledge of that terrible badge of weakness, that inescapable servitude (bearable only thanks to the slow revelation that we could inflict cruelty and evil on the weaker kids), a sickening awareness that just about everything there is to understand was beyond us, made even worse by the lies and inaccuracies that adults feel entitled to spread around, deliberately, or because they don't know any better, about themselves or about the nature of reality?

I sat there on that Wednesday evening in my pokey fucking living room, looked at myself on the TV screen being a massive, odious cunt, and realised that nothing has really changed. Deep down, like most of us, still now at the age of thirty-eight, I have this empty, black hole inside of me that nothing and no one seems capable of filling. I say like most of us because, well, look around you. Our society, our businesses, our social constructs, habits, pastimes, addictions and distractions are predicated on vast, endemic levels of emptiness and dissatisfaction. I call it self-hatred. I hate who I was, am and have become and, as we are taught to, I constantly chastise myself for the things I do and say. And such are the global levels of intolerance, greed, entitlement and dysfunction it is evidently not just confined to a small, wounded section of society. We are all in a world of pain. If it was ever any different way back in the past, it has, by now, most certainly become normalised. And I am as angry about that as I am about my own past. There is an anger that runs underneath everything, that fuels my life and feeds the animal inside me. And it is an anger that always, always prevents me, despite my best efforts, from becoming a better version of myself. My goddamn head seems to have a life of its own, quite beyond my control, incapable of reason, compassion or bargaining. It shouts at me from deep inside. As a kid the words didn’t make sense. As an adult it’s waiting at the end of my bed and starts talking an hour or two before I wake up so that when my eyes open it is in full-on rage mode, blaring this shit at me about how glad it is I’m finally awake, how fucked I am today, how there won’t be enough time, I’ll fuck everything up, my friends are plotting against me, trust no one, I must try as hard as I can to salvage everything in my life while knowing it’s already a lost cause. I’m exhausted all the time. It’s a kind of toxic ME – corrosive, pervasive, penetrative, negative, all the bad -ives.

I’m not a child!” the boy cried out while hastily using his sleeve to wipe away his running nose. “Yes, my son, you are.” Norman stepped forward and knelt before the young prince before resting his hands on his shoulders. “There is nothing wrong with being a child; in fact, it is far more important than you know. You are entitled to your childhood, Eric. All boys and girls are, and it is the adults’ responsibility to protect those childhoods. When you are grown up, then it will be your job to protect the younger ones.

Youth. Particularly hard hit is the younger generation that faces an economic situation for which it has been inadequately prepared. Imbued with the unrealistic expectation of continuing economic prosperity, of having things better than their parents did, they grapple, often unsuccessfully, with underdeveloped self-sufficiency, unemployment, and underemployment in all but a few circumscribed areas. But this sense of entitlement creates a resentment of the compromises necessary to effectively survive. As a result, young adults may tend to feel more disillusioned and alienated.

I do not know how long more I shall live. I am already an old man. But now that I have you, I want to enjoy every minute of my remaining life. I want to eat your Ambrosia & drink your Nectar till the last day of my life. I hope to live ten years longer to enjoy every minute of you to which I am entitled. If you treat me well & continue to make me happy, who knows, when I die, I might even leave the company to you. Imagine, you, my darling, as Chairman of the Board! Then you can sit at the Board Meeting: with your cup on the table & ask all the Directors to lick it1 Haw! Haw! Haw!"[MMT]

Lads, I forgot to tell you. Naya don’t like good music because she’s a feminist.’ ‘What’s a feminist?’ Tyse asks. ‘It’s like a chick who blames all of her mental problems on dudes,’ Jimmy explains. ‘But not even on specific dudes, just, like, the idea of dudes. It’s fucked up. And it’s ironic, cos feminists usually look like dudes themselves.’ ‘But Naya doesn’t look like a dude.’ ‘Aww, thanks Tyse,’ Naya says. ‘James has given you a horribly inaccurate definition of a feminist, but he has ably demonstrated why we exist. Unfortunately, he’s not the only entitled male with no respect for women.

The one image I eventually found of Alexis St. Martin as a whole young man is in a painting by Dean Cornwell entitled Beaumont and St. Martin—part of the Pioneers of American Medicine series commissioned in 1938 by Wyeth Laboratories for an ad campaign. Despite the unfortunate side-parted bob that St. Martin appeared to stick with all through his adult life, the man as Cornwell rendered him is striking: broad cheekbones, vertically plunging aquiline nose, and a firmly muscled, deeply tanned chest and arms. Beaumont is dashing but dandified. His hair is oddly waved and piled, like something squeezed from a cake decorator’s bag.

At the conference, Hitler mapped out plans for a vote to be held throughout Germany and Austria on April 10, to confirm the Anschluss. The question on the ballot paper was: ‘Do you accept Adolf Hitler as our Führer, and do you thus accept the reunification of Austria with the German Reich as effected on March 13, 1938?’ Unlike Schuschnigg's phoney plebiscite, it was a genuinely secret ballot. The result staggered even Hitler: of 49,493,028 entitled to vote, 49,279,104 had cast votes, and of these 99.08 percent had voted ‘Yes’ – altogether 48,751,587 adults had stated their support of Hitler's action. This was a unanimity of almost embarrassing dimensions. His

I’m not… What’s wrong with them believing?” Bea asked, a note of pleading creeping, uninvited, into her voice. “You do not sell belief, you sell belief-in. Belief in true love, as if everyone were entitled to it. Belief in a simple solution to a complex problem. Belief in one type of person, one type of future.” “No I don’t. I offer people dreams, and hope, and, and, something to organise their lives with,” Bea said, not sure why she was trying to convince him. “I don’t make them into ‘one person’.” “Oh no? Let me recall your doctrine: Kings, Princes and their ilk must marry girls whose only asset is their beauty. Not clever girls, not worthy girls, not girls who could rule. Powerful women, older women – like one day you will become – are nought but wicked creatures, consumed with jealousy and unfit to hold position. No,” he said as Bea began to speak, “I am not finished. Let us turn our attention to the men. As long as the woman is something to be won, it follows only the worthy will prevail. It matters not if they truly love the girl, nor if the man is cruel or arrogant or unfit to tie his own doublet. As long as he has wealth and completes whatever trials are decided fit, he is suitable. For what is stupidity or arrogance when compared against a crown? The good will win, and the wicked perish, and you and your stories decide what makes a person good or wicked. Not life. Not choice. Not even common sense. You.

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.

In an era of young girls clad in pink “Princess” T-shirts, a worrisome message emerges. That we have cause for concern is backed up by data on narcissism from surveys of college students and young adults indicating a culture of specialness and entitlement. It seems that more and more young women (and men) are adopting a disturbing ideology of self-government that I refer to as a narcisstocracy. Under this self-serving administration, they come to believe that the only things that matter in life are looking great, excelling in performance and achievement, winning the attention of important people, and positioning themselves well, and that if they do these things, the world will come right to their door. They aren’t concerned about the needs of others or the impact of their behavior on others unless it stymies their winner-take-all ambition, and gets in the way of getting what they want.

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.

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).

Spoiled-dependent. The narcissist in your life might best be characterized as having been spoiled as well as dependent. In this case, not only will he act entitled and feel superior (not surprising given the family modeling of a “we’re better than others” attitude), he may also feel dependent and incompetent, as his parents were always waiting on him and rescuing him instead of helping him develop the necessary skills of self-reliance and functionally appropriate dependence. As an adult, he may show up as entitled and expect to be doted on and indulged. Or he may avoid taking initiative and making decisions because he has an underlying fear of shamefully exposing his limitations and failures when tackling the everyday decisions of life. Deprived-dependent. Another combination that might characterize your narcissist is being both a deprived type and a dependent type. In this case he will be easily offended as well as dependent, needing others to constantly reassure him that he is great and manage life for him. Discreetly, he seeks out others to protect him from a deeply felt sense of shame about his defective, lonely, and inadequate self. He may come across as needy and hypersensitive, rather than demanding and show-offish. He may show signs of being addicted to self-soothing behaviors,

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.

But self-mastery triumphs in this Modern Life of ours. So if we haven’t found happiness or calm or balance amidst it all - if we don’t cope - it’s because we’ve not tried hard enough. Because Modern Life dictates there’s an answer out there . . .you just have to try harder to find it and master it. Of course it doesn’t exist. So we are set up to fail. I feel for younger people. I think they’re hit particularly hard by this doomed imperative. Many sociologists peg increased anxiety among teens and young adults to this phenomenon. The standard solution is to consume - food, possessions, partners, gurus. If our self-worth is suffering, we’re told to buy a new moisturizer. Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, writes, “We have so much fucking stuff and so many opportunities that we don’t even know what to give a fuck about anymore.” Shia once again: “Today we’re told to do more stuff that has no purpose, which makes anxious.” Again, I think young people feel this acutely. And here’s the dirty clincher: All of it drives us outward, away from our true selves and fro our yearning to know ourselves better. Plus, it drives us away from each other. Lack of community and belonging is cited by Dr. Jean Twenge, a social psychologist at San Diego State University and author of Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled - And More Miserable Than Ever Before, as the primary driver of anxiety today. I’d include extensive quotes from Dr. Twenge, but I think the book title says it all. Then (big sigh), when we do find it all too much, Modern Life slaps us with a “disorder” or disease diagnosis.

Usually adolescent rebels are quickly humbled because they overestimate their own truth and underestimate the truth of their elders. As Mark Twain famously put it, “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.” One purpose of youthful rebellion is to put one’s self at odds with adult authority not so much to defeat it as to be defeated by it. One opposes it to discover its logic and validity for one’s self. And by failing to defeat it, one comes to it, and to greater maturity, through experience rather than mere received wisdom. Of course, every new generation alters the adult authority it ultimately joins. But if the young win their rebellion against the old, their rite of passage to maturity is cut short and they are falsely inflated rather than humbled. Uninitiated, they devalue history rather than find direction in it, and feel entitled to break sharply and even recklessly from the past. The sixties generation of youth is very likely the first generation in American history to have actually won its adolescent rebellion against its elders. One of the reasons for this, if not the primary reason, is that this generation came of age during the age of white guilt, which meant that its rebellion ran into an increasingly uncertain adult authority. Baby boomers, already rather inflated from growing up in the unparalleled prosperity of postwar America, were inflated further by an adult authority that often backed down in the face of their rebellion. It doesn’t matter, for example, that there was honor in America’s acknowledgment of moral wrong in the area of race. An acknowledgement of wrong was an acknowledgment of wrong, and it brought a loss of moral authority—and, thus, adult authority—despite the good it achieved.

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.

At the conference, Hitler mapped out plans for a vote to be held throughout Germany and Austria on April 10, to confirm the Anschluss. The question on the ballot paper was: ‘Do you accept Adolf Hitler as our Führer, and do you thus accept the reunification of Austria with the German Reich as effected on March 13, 1938?’ Unlike Schuschnigg's phoney plebiscite, it was a genuinely secret ballot. The result staggered even Hitler: of 49,493,028 entitled to vote, 49,279,104 had cast votes, and of these 99.08 percent had voted ‘Yes’ – altogether 48,751,587 adults had stated their support of Hitler's action. This was a unanimity of almost embarrassing dimensions.

Both men and women are inculcated with social beliefs that help ensnare them in the polka. Most destructive is the belief that a healthy, mature adult is not supposed to need emotional connection and so is not entitled to this kind of caring.

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.

accommodate her. Once again, psychological health is based on having about two years of this no questions asked entitlement to unconditional love. It is the normal healthy narcissism that Freud described as “His Majesty the Baby”. Serious problems accrue however when the toddler does not begin to learn that there are limits to his original entitlement. If there are no limits for too long, then the journey toward adult narcissism begins. On the other hand, if there are too many limits too soon, the matrix of trauma begins to form.

Kids at less prestigious schools are apt to be more interesting, more curious, more open, more appreciative of what they’re getting, and far less entitled and competitive. They tend to act like peers instead of rivals.

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.

Work hard, know your shit, show your shit, and then feel entitled. Listen to no one except the two smartest and kindest adults you know, and that doesn’t always mean your parents. If you do that, you will be fine. Now,

Entitlement is a contagious, insidious state of mind that has infected a whole generation of young people who feel they deserve things based on who they think they are or who their parents are. Or who they’ve been told they are. Entitlement also afflicts adults, who feel they should have or get things based on their friends having them or just feeling worthy. It’s hard to pinpoint the derivation of where and when the disease started, but it’s an epidemic.

Work hard, know your shit, show your shit, and then feel entitled. Listen to no one except the two smartest and kindest adults you know, and that doesn’t always mean your parents. If you do that, you will be fine. Now, excuse me, I need to lie down and watch Sheldon.

If a parent is willing to call their adult child’s workplace to advocate for them, it is no surprise that they had harassed teachers and administration until they got what they felt their child deserved. It is a cycle of never-ending entitlement that leads to mediocrity. It starts with a parent pestering a teacher to get an undeserved grade for their child. Then they manipulate their kid’s way into college, or they get into college with grades they didn’t earn. Next, when the kid gets a job for skills and education that look good on paper but weren’t actually merited, they end up losing their job. And so far, parents cannot save a kid from being fired for poor work performance… at least not yet.

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 people themselves were never given an opportunity to vote upon the Constitution. Professor Beard says " it is highly probable that not more than one-fourth or one-fifth of the adult white males took part in the election of delegates to the state conventions" that ratified the Constitution. He says that " if anything, this estimate is too high." He expresses the belief that not more than 160,000 voters " expressed an opinion, one way or the other, on the Constitution." The rest were either disfranchised because of their lack of sufficient property to entitle them to vote, or made silent by their dense ignorance as to what the elections were about. News did not travel rapidly in those days. Professor Beard declares that in many rural communities the elections were held before most of the voters knew that elections were to be held. He also declares that " It may very well be that a majority of those who voted were against the adoption of the Constitution as it stood.

Rewards are good things, but teens shouldn’t be rewarded for doing what is normally required in life. After all, adults don’t receive promotions for showing up to work on time or for avoiding jail time. Rewarding teens for doing what they should already be doing can result in their not being ready for the future. It can also contribute to an attitude of entitlement or to seeing themselves as superior to others.

Perhaps the only precept taught me by Grandfather Wills that I have honored all my adult life is that profanity and obscenity entitle people who don’t want unpleasant information to close their ears and eyes to you.

The hardest part of trying to become an adult is realizing that your suffering doesn’t entitle you to anything.

The hardest part of trying to become an adult is realizing that your suffering doesn't entitle you to anything.

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.

If that many [20% of all American adults, 46 million] white Americans can trace their legacy of wealth and property ownership to a single entitlement program then the perpetuation of Black poverty must also be linked to national policy.

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.

In the summer of 1961, Segal taught an adult painting class in New Brunswick. The class was encouraged to make use of odd and unlikely materials in assemblages, and one woman brought to class a box of surgeon's bandages. Segal took some home, with the intention of wrapping them around one of his chicken wire framworks. Then a thought occurred to him: why not dip the cloth bandages in plaster, and apply them directly to the body? Segal sat on a chair and instructed his wife to cover him in soaked bandages. The new technique led to a few anxious moments when the plaster began to harden, heat up, and contract, and the artist lost a good portion of his body hair in the course of frantically removing the casts. With great difficulty, he was able to reassemble the pieces into a complete figure which he then placed on a chair. Next Segal provided an environment for his plaster effigy. The chair was moved up to a table, to which was nailed an old window frame. The result, entitled Man Sitting at a Table, marked the discovery of a new sculptural technique and a turning point in the artist's career. Segal has never looked back.

I'm totally vulnerable to all conditions of existence all the time, no matter where I go or how good I am. Really getting this deconditions me from illusion and entitlement. It’s a fast track to letting go of the ego. To say yes, to the conditions of existence liberates me. I face them directly rather than F.A.C.E them, with fear, attachment, control, and entitlement.

The ego is not dragged kicking and screaming to the feet of the higher self; it leaps for joy into its waiting arms. The ego is relieved to know there is an alternative to the pain it has known and its fear, attachment, and entitlement.

You are entitled to your childhood, Eric. All boys and girls are, and it is the adults’ responsibility to protect those childhoods. When you are grown up, then it will be your job to protect the younger ones.

There is nothing wrong with being a child; in fact, it is far more important than you know. You are entitled to your childhood, Eric. All boys and girls are, and it is the adults’ responsibility to protect those childhoods. When you are grown up, then it will be your job to protect the younger ones.

But a child is entitled to quit piano without the entire world asking why she doesn’t practice anymore. She’s also entitled to nurse a passing crush that may end badly and take it all back without ceremony or official decree. This is obviously true for announcements of sexual identity as well—gay, straight, trans, whatever. A teenager may believe she is merely announcing herself an adult, but she’s also sending up a flare to actual adults who will immediately contact her and offer “support,” primed to take advantage. Send prom pictures in an email if you must, but don’t post them for the content-hungry eyes of internet strangers. Find some other way to stay connected with those you care about.

Entitled kids turn into entitled adults who continue to want the world handed to them on a silver platter. Except they’re not so cute anymore.

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.

have observed that being raised in an invalidating family can create the risk of a person’s feeling as though he or she is not enough, and either observed or participated in denial of problems within the family. In their adult relationships, people from invalidating family systems may then transition into playing the role of rescuer and caregiver with the goal of “winning over” his or her unwinnable partner (a replay of trying to win over the unwinnable parent).

Mean-spirited barbs, insults, or even smack talk amongst family members can take a toll. A toxic sibling can bring a family system to its knees and find you stuck in petty arguments that feel more like twelve-year-olds arguing than adults.

Life is not fair. Life is not just. And, if you are coming to this insight only as an adult, consider yourself lucky.

Few people have received messages of unconditional and genuine love—and, if these messages finally do arrive in their adult lives, they are not able to accept them and integrate them.

even though my boyfriend has confronted them about it. What can I do to get them to accept me? Acceptance is overrated! So are birthday dinners, good health, and, frankly, having parents. I killed mine while I was still a teen, because I knew that if I didn’t, my adult life would be ceaselessly tormented by the insurmountable demands of my overbearing mom and dad, people who couldn’t be bothered to teach me how to balance a checkbook but would nevertheless feel entitled to weigh in on my choice of career and life mate and Internet service provider. Neither of them lived long enough to suffer through the indignity of an introductory meal with someone I was sleeping with, and thank goodness for that. My parents have been dead for twenty-two years and even now my insides churn at the very thought of my father scowling at my wife over his leather-tough tri tip at the Sizzler like, “You’re a what now?

In cases in which the benign narcissist is a parent, there may be some unresolved resentment about the parent’s immaturity, and as an adult, it may feel as though the parent is emotionally stunted, while you have progressed and leapfrogged your parent into adulthood.

In families, this can play out in a tragic manner, especially when a parent covets what a child has earned or achieved—it can sap the enjoyment out of it and can also result in feelings of guilt for the child, whether that child is an adolescent or an adult.

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.

Sadly, some people coming from this situation will find that they have numbed themselves and cut off their emotional worlds, and are now unable to connect to others as adults, often feeling distant and disconnected.

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.

The scapegoated child may be very untrusting as an adult and may find it difficult not only to trust in intimate relationships, but also to trust other systems. There can be real fear that, within groups of friends, in school, or in work settings the scapegoating dynamic may replicate.

Learning to be disappointed and to tolerate the discomfort associated with it is key to becoming a well-regulated adult.

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,

If you want to blame your parents for your own adult problems, you are entitled to blame the genes they gave you, but you are not entitled—by any facts I know—to blame the way they treated you.