Entitled Kids Quotes

Instead of communicating "I love you, so let me make life easy for you," I decided that my message needed to be something more along these lines: "I love you. I believe in you. I know what you're capable of. So I'm going to make you work.

Resolution, like responsibility, is a product of ownership, and kids can't resolve a conflict until they figure out how they contributed to it.

Hey, great idea: if you have kids, give your partner reading vouchers next Christmas. Each voucher entitles the bearer to two hours' reading time *while the kids are awake*. It might look like a cheapskate present, but parents will appreciate that it costs more in real terms than a Lamborghini.

Well, I’m an abridger, so I’m entitled to a few ideas of my own. Did they make it? Was the pirate ship there? You can answer it for yourself, but, for me, I say yes it was. And yes, they got away. And got their strength back and had lots of adventures and more than their share of laughs. But that doesn’t mean I think they had a happy ending, either. Because, in my opinion, anyway, they squabbled a lot, and Buttercup lost her looks eventually, and one day Fezzik lost a fight and some hot-shot kid whipped Inigo with a sword and Westley was never able to really sleep sound because of Humperdinck maybe being on the trail. I’m not trying to make this a downer, understand. I mean, I really do think that love is the best thing in the world, next to cough drops. But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn’t fair. It’s just fairer than death, that’s all.

Great. Okay. That, uh... was easier than I thought." Jack cocked his head. Wait a second... He couldn't decide if he was pissed or really impressed. He hooked a finger into the waistband of the workout pants she'd changed into and pulled her closer. "Did you fake me out with those tears, Cameron?" She peered up at him, defiantly, seemingly outraged by the suggestion. "Are you kidding? What, after the day I've had, I'm not entitled to a few tears? Sheesh." Jack waited. "This wedding is very important to me--I can't believe you're even doubting me. Honestly, Jack, the tears were real." He waited some more. She would talk eventually. They always did. Cameron shifted under the weight of his stare. "Okay, fine. Some of the tears were real." She looked him over, annoyed. "You are really good at that." He grinned. "I know.

Children, as persons, are entitled to the greatest respect. Children are given to us as free-flying souls, but then we clip their wings like we domesticate the wild mallard. Children should become the role-models for us, their parents, for they are coated with the spirit from which they came- out of the ether, clean, innocent, brimming with the delight of life, aware of the beauty of the simplest thing; a snail, a bud....

We find these joys to be self evident: That all children are created whole, endowed with innate intelligence, with dignity and wonder, worthy of respect. The embodiment of life, liberty and happiness, children are original blessings, here to learn their own song. Every girl and boy is entitled to love, to dream and belong to a loving “village.” And to pursue a life of purpose. We affirm our duty to nourish and nurture the young, to honour their caring ideals as the heart of being human. To recognize the early years as the foundation of life, and to cherish the contribution of young children to human evolution. We commit ourselves to peaceful ways and vow to keep from harm or neglect these, our most vulnerable citizens. As guardians of their prosperity we honour the bountiful Earth whose diversity sustains us. Thus we pledge our love for generations to come.

When entitlement’s poison begins to infect our hearts, gratitude is the antidote.

Today’s generation didn’t want to watch ancient actors reciting the same tired lines. They wanted to see themselves reflected onscreen –rude, raw, entitled. These kids needed to believe that they themselves were only one daring, controversial act away from being up on that screen themselves.

We can hardly complain about prayer being taken from the public schools if we are not praying in our Christian homes.

Parents who want to raise grateful kids need to start by living grateful lives.

Parenting is a marathon, and we have to remember our long-term goal of raising beautiful people who love God and others.

I am a millennial. Generation Y; born between the birth of AIDS and 9/11, give or take. They call us the global generation. We are known for our entitlement and narcissism. Some say it’s because we’re the first generation where every kid gets a trophy just for showing up. Others think it’s because social media allows us to post when we fart or have a sandwich for all the world to see. But it seems our one defining trait is a numbness to the world. An indifference to suffering.

This politically correct world is spawning a generation of lazy, disrespectful, and entitled assholes. By trying to do the 'right' thing, we're doing the wrong thing. We're not doing our kids any favors by teaching them that they can get away with everything.

Just 'cuz a kid is crying doesn't mean it's a conversation worth crying over.

Eli smiles at me, easy and open. "You know, you're almost tolerable when you're not acting like an entitled dickbag." “Adorable? You’re fucking kidding, no?

Toddlers are adorable, but taking care of them doesn’t really get easier. Whoever came up with the term “terrible twos” must have felt very foolish after their kid turned three. Three-year-olds are just rude. They are still supercute, but now they are supercute and they know it. They have gotten supersmart, and they are not afraid to show it. It’s like living with a child emperor. They act really entitled, bossy, and outspoken. They think the world revolves around them.

I’m saying pay attention to when it makes sense to say something,” Vann said. “And pay attention to when it makes sense to hold it in for the moment. I get that you’re used to saying what you think to anyone, anytime. That comes from being an entitled rich kid.

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.

She set the kid on the floor, and George gamboled about the room, making high-pitched, chirping bleats. "He prances. Sideways. It's adorable." The kid attempted to admit it was rather adorable. Especially the way the newborn goat made its way to him from across the room, stopping at his boots to issue an entitled bleat. He was a demanding little thing already. Gabe bent to give the kid a scratch between the ears.

For me, it’s standard. I don’t feel irresponsible for telling kids not to vote; I feel like I deserve a Blue Peter badge for not telling them to riot. For not telling them that they are entitled to destroy the cathedrals of tyranny erected to mock them in the heart of their community. That they should rise up and destroy the system that imprisons them, ignores them, condemns and maligns them. By any means necessary.

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

Your daughters will leave this school as confident, resilient young women." Ms. Byrne was off, delivering the private school party line. Resilience. What crap. No kid was going to go to school in a place that looked like freaking Buckingham Palace and come out of it resilient. She should be honest: "Your daughter will leave this school with a grand sense of entitlement that will serve her well in life; she'll find it especially useful on Sydney roads.

I had told our kids in a thousand ways, “As you go through life with us, you will need a lot of things. You’ll get what you need — things like love, food, shelter, safety, values, structure, faith, opportunity, and an education. We are committed to seeing that you get what you need. But we also want you to know that you really don’t deserve anything. You can’t demand a toy, a phone, a laptop, or a car. That attitude won’t work with us. Need, yes; deserve, not so much.” The

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,

At fourteen, Gale, the eldest of the kids, became the main supporter of the family. He was already signed up for tesserae, which entitled them to a meager supply of grain and oil in exchange for his entering his name extra times in the drawing to become a tribute. On top of that, even back then, he was a skilled trapper.

Entitlement is a double- edged sword (or a double-jawed trap) for kids. On one edge it gives kids all that they don’t need—indulgence, dullness, conceit, and laziness; and on the backswing, it takes from them everything they do need—motivation, inde- pendence, inventiveness, pride, responsibility, and a chance to really work for things and to build their own sense of fulfill- ment and self-esteem.

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?

You worry too much. You think you have to do too much. Like you think you’re always just about to make some terrible mistake. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to learn to dump the tanks. There’s nothing wrong with making coffee for me or walking the dog. It’s nice. But I get a feeling you’re doing it because you always feel like you need to do more. To be more. Like if you don’t make yourself useful, you’re not entitled to the air you breathe. Why not just relax and be a kid on vacation?” Seth’s

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.

It doesn’t help that I’m famous for a thing I started when I was a kid. I think of what it would be like if everyone was famous for a thing they did when they were thirteen: their middle school band, their seventh-grade science project, their eighth-grade play. The middle school years are the years to stumble, fall, and tuck under the rug as soon as you’re done with them because you’ve already outgrown them by the time you’re fifteen. But not for me. I’m cemented in people’s minds as the person I was when I was a kid. A person I feel like I’ve far outgrown. But the world won’t let me outgrow it. The world won’t let me be anyone else. The world only wants me to be Sam Puckett. I’m aware enough to know how fucking annoying and whiney this all sounds. Millions of people dream of being famous, and here I am with fame and hating it. I somehow feel entitled to my hatred since I was not the one who dreamed of being famous. Mom was. Mom pushed this on me. I’m allowed to hate someone else’s dream, even if it’s my reality.

My huge generalities touched on millennials’ oversensitivity, their sense of entitlement, their insistence that they were always right despite sometimes overwhelming proof to the contrary, their failure to consider anything within its context, their joint tendencies of overreaction and passive-aggressive positivity—incidentally, all of these misdemeanors happening only sometimes, not always, and possibly exacerbated by the meds many this age had been fed since childhood by overprotective, helicopter moms and dads mapping their every move. These parents, whether tail-end baby boomers or Gen Xers, now seemed to be rebelling against their own rebelliousness because they felt they’d never really been loved by their own selfish narcissistic true-boomer parents, and who as a result were smothering their kids and not teaching them how to deal with life’s hardships about how things actually work: people might not like you, this person will not love you back, kids are really cruel, work sucks, it’s hard to be good at something, your days will be made up of failure and disappointment, you’re not talented, people suffer, people grow old, people die. And the response from Generation Wuss was to collapse into sentimentality and create victim narratives, instead of grappling with the cold realities by struggling and processing them and then moving on, better prepared to navigate an often hostile or indifferent world that doesn’t care if you exist.

If I had been born in the 1700′s, presumably children had a bigger vocabulary than I had which means I wouldn’t have been able to recite fairy tales to kids because I’m not smart enough. You know…? I’d have to be like…..uh: In time passed, though not long ago, there lived three pigs in stature, little in number, three, who being of an age both entitled and inspired to seek their fortune did set about to do thusly. When they had traveled a distance, pig numbered first spake saying, “Harken Brethren, head this impetuous realm! Tarry me far from hearth and home I fear we shall fair *snort* not well!” And so being collectively agreed, but individually impaled, the diminutive swine sought each to erect himself an abode.....

It is clear that the left is winning the battle of ideas with America's young people, and doing so with some decidedly mediocre political dogma. If our children are both demonstrably uneducated and measurably indoctrinated, and if we're fully aware that these things are true, we can't just stand around clucking and griping about all that is wrong. We need to offer more of what is right. If we want our children to experience the liberty and opportunity uniquely available to us as American citizens, we need to raise a new generation of leaders who will shore up the republican form of government handed down to us by our Founders. We need to counter the Left's messages about dependency and entitlement with a vision of patriotic citizenship to which our youth can aspire.

Britain is a country that, since World War II, has been on a managed decline. The men live vicariously through their favorite soccer team, celebrating its success with “a few pints” and commiserating over its failings with “a few pints.” And the women—walking muffin tops. Yet they stride around with a terribly misplaced sense of entitlement. Even their TV shows are emblematic of their mediocre mentality. EastEnders and Coronation Street are all about fat, dumb, ugly, poor people. And there begins the vicious cycle of complacent underachievers. Maybe I’m biased because, despite being born in England, I grew up in the US. At least our equivalent TV shows are full of good-looking rich people doing big business deals and dating glamorous women. I wouldn’t mind my kids growing up wanting to be J. R. Ewing, but who the fuck wants to be a pub landlord in Essex?

Another delegate in the House had this to say: “Oklahomans are tired of being ruled by federal bureaucrats and judges, none of them elected. They decide everything from what can be taught in the public schools to what can be served to kids for lunch and whether the kids can have a prayer. They decree that welfare recipients are entitled to a color television and cell phone, all paid for by the working families of Oklahoma, some of whom can afford neither. They claim they have the right to regulate every creek, farm pond, mudhole, and wet spot in America, including here in Oklahoma. We have to pay for their crackpot regulations based on crackpot science, or no science at all. We have to pay the salaries of the bureaucrats and put up with the endless delays and mountainous paperwork. It’s high time to put a stop to bureaucrats and judges running our lives. Let’s take back control. Independence today, tomorrow, and forever.

Often, men simply feel more entitled to take leisure time. A University of Southern California study of married couples found that at the end of a workday, women’s stress levels went down if their husbands pitched in with housework. No surprise there—but the mind-boiling part is that men’s stress levels fell if they kicked back with some sort of leisure activity—but only if their wives kept busy doing household tasks at the same time (an effect I term While You’re Up, I’ll Take Another Cold One). When study author Darby Saxbe started looking at the data, she says, “We sort of thought it would probably be all the more relaxing to have leisure time if you have a spouse that’s doing that leisure with you,” she tells me. “So it was kind of surprising that we found the opposite effect—that the more leisure time dads had and the less leisure time wives had, the more men’s cortisol levels dropped.” The somewhat dispiriting conclusion: a man’s biological adaptation to stress is healthier when his wife has to suffer the consequences.

His feeling of having crashed did not consist of envy, exactly, or even entirely of having outlived himself. It was more like despair about the world's splinteredness. The nation was fighting ugly ground wars in two countries, the planet was heating up like a toaster oven, and here at the 9:30, all around him, were hundreds of kids in the mold of the banana-bread-baking Sarah, with their sweet, yearnings, their innocent entitlement - to what? To emotion. To unadulterated worship of a superspecial band. To being left to themselves to ritually repudiate, for an hour or two on a Saturday night, the cynicism and anger of their elders. They seemed, as Jessica had suggested at the meeting earlier, to bear malice toward nobody. Katz could see it in their clothing, which bespoke none of the rage and disaffection of the crowds he'd been a part of as a youngster. They gathered not in anger but in celebration of their having found, as a a generation, a gentler and more respectful way of being. A way, not incidentally, more in harmony with consuming. And so said to him: die.

Tim Finnegan’s Wake by Dr. Thom Dedalus When God reeled in good auld Tim Finnegan, And looked into his green Irish peepers, Said He, “Now, what was I thinkin’? Poor lad, he ain’t one of the keepers.” To hell Tim descended without any fear, To the devil, whom not much is lost on, Said he, “I’m sure you’ll be comfortable here, Among all your old friends from South Boston.” Tim’s jokes night and day caused Satan to swear, As migraines crept behind blood red eyelids, “An eternity with you is just too much to bear. You’re going home to your wife and your nine kids.” So up pops Tim at his wake from his casket. “It can’t be,” went a howl from his wife. When he belched the sea from his own breadbasket, Said she, “Someone, hand me a knife.” Now Tim’s fishing off George’s Banks Catching codfish, haddock and hake. The happiest folk in town to give thanks, Is John Hancock for Finnegan’s wake. Finn’s now a legend among life underwriters, In Beantown and all over the States. In him beats the heart of a fighter. Sad to hear how they increased his rates. Finn’s tale is best told with a dram of Jameson. You’re entitled to whatever sense you can make. Just cause you’re dead, it don’t mean you’re gone. You may take comfort in Finnegan’s wake.

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.

My interest in comics was scribbled over with a revived, energized passion for clothes, records, and music. I'd wandered in late to the punk party in 1978, when it was already over and the Sex Pistols were history. I'd kept my distance during the first flush of the new paradigm, when the walls of the sixth-form common room shed their suburban-surreal Roger Dean Yes album covers and grew a fresh new skin of Sex Pistols pictures, Blondie pinups, Buzzcocks collages, Clash radical chic. As a committed outsider, I refused to jump on the bandwagon of this new musical fad, which I'd written off as some kind of Nazi thing after seeing a photograph of Sid Vicious sporting a swastika armband. I hated the boys who'd cut their long hair and binned their crappy prog albums in an attempt to join in. I hated pretty much everybody without discrimination, in one way or another, and punk rockers were just something else to add to the shit list. But as we all know, it's zealots who make the best converts. One Thursday night, I was sprawled on the settee with Top of the Pops on the telly when Poly Styrene and her band X-Ray Spex turned up to play their latest single: an exhilarating sherbet storm of raw punk psychedelia entitled "The Day the World Turned Day-Glo" By the time the last incandescent chorus played out, I was a punk. I had always been a punk. I would always be a punk. Punk brought it all together in one place for me: Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius novels were punk. Peter Barnes's The Ruling Class, Dennis Potter, and The Prisoner were punk too. A Clockwork Orange was punk. Lindsay Anderson's If ... was punk. Monty Python was punk. Photographer Bob Carlos Clarke's fetish girls were punk. Comics were punk. Even Richmal Crompton's William books were punk. In fact, as it turned out, pretty much everything I liked was punk. The world started to make sense for the first time since Mosspark Primary. New and glorious constellations aligned in my inner firmament. I felt born again. The do-your-own-thing ethos had returned with a spit and a sneer in all those amateurish records I bought and treasured-even though I had no record player. Singles by bands who could often barely play or sing but still wrote beautiful, furious songs and poured all their young hearts, experiences, and inspirations onto records they paid for with their dole money. If these glorious fuckups could do it, so could a fuckup like me. When Jilted John, the alter ego of actor and comedian Graham Fellows, made an appearance on Top of the Pops singing about bus stops, failed romance, and sexual identity crisis, I was enthralled by his shameless amateurism, his reduction of pop music's great themes to playground name calling, his deconstruction of the macho rock voice into the effeminate whimper of a softie from Sheffield. This music reflected my experience of teenage life as a series of brutal setbacks and disappointments that could in the end be redeemed into art and music with humor, intelligence, and a modicum of talent. This, for me, was the real punk, the genuine anticool, and I felt empowered. The losers, the rejected, and the formerly voiceless were being offered an opportunity to show what they could do to enliven a stagnant culture. History was on our side, and I had nothing to lose. I was eighteen and still hadn't kissed a girl, but perhaps I had potential. I knew I had a lot to say, and punk threw me the lifeline of a creed and a vocabulary-a soundtrack to my mission as a comic artist, a rough validation. Ugly kids, shy kids, weird kids: It was okay to be different. In fact, it was mandatory.

We are doing kids a tremendous disservice when we lead them to believe that just because they are special to us (their parents), the rest of the world will treat them this way. The best preparation they can receive is not narcissism or even self-esteem, but your love and support--and your message to them that hard work and perseverance are more important to success than self-belief.

Entitlement didn’t start with my kids. It began with me.

Here's the simple truth that isn't so simple: Raising kids to be different from the world really does make them different from the world.

... said them for my benefit as much as hers [daughter]. "Honey, it's okay to want things we don't have, but we also need to remember what we do have. If we are going to compare ourselves to those who have more, we must also compare ourselves to those who have less.

Research proves there’s a direct link between low self-esteem and materialism. We give our kids more because we think it will make us all feel better, but it actually places a higher value on things than on relationships. And often our kids don’t need more stuff or more freedom; they just need more of us.

There comes a point at which you have to let go and forgive. You can start your prayer with, 'Help me to forgive because I don't want to forgive. I feel entitled to be angry even though the anger is killing me, not them. And no one really cares that I'm angry. It's destroying my life, not theirs. I want to punish someone, so I punish my kids or I punish other innocent people who have never harmed me because it is my way of punishing them. So I really don't want to forgive because then I think all my hurt will be forgotten and that feels so unfair. But what is fair? No one's hurt is fair. I just think that justice should revolve around me. So, help me to forgive, one person at a time, beginning with _______.' That's your beginning. You take it from there until you have emptied your dungeon. Whenever you add new prisoners, you will have to revisit your dungeon.

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.

There is no difference between a barking dog with golden platter and barking activist with a silver spoon.

Kids born with too much ‘Entitlement’, and little deliverables, become Woke. That hold true anywhere in any Democracy. As is said in Hindi Idiom ‘ Fools Do Not Grow Horns’, applies to them.

Kids born with too much ‘Entitlement’, and little deliverables, become Woke. That hold true in all Democracies. As is said in Hindi Idiom ‘Fools Do Not Grow Horns’, applies to them.

I adored my best friend. Reyna Vargas was the most genuine, kindhearted person I’d ever met. I’d felt an urgent need to take her under my wing the first day she joined our school at the start of senior year. She was so soft-spoken and delicate that she would need protection if she was going to survive the hallways of Xavier Catholic School, where privilege was the backbone of the curriculum and the air itself was infused with the fresh leather scent of entitlement. The kids at my school were carbon copies of their CEO fathers and corporate counsel mothers. They’d been trained since birth to smell blood in the water from a mile away. Xavier bullies could teach the CIA innovative new torture tactics. Reyna had been a brand-new shiny target in a plaid pleated skirt until I took her in my arms and claimed her. No one at school had dared touch her after that.

The sexuality of the character I played in Dog Day Afternoon is a complex thing. What I interpreted from the screenplay was that he is a man with a wife and kids who also happens to be in an affair with a person who identifies as a woman, and who today we would understand is transgender. But knowing this about him didn’t excite me or bother me; it didn’t make the role seem any more appealing or risky. Though I may be a kid who started in the South Bronx, I had been living in the Village since my teens. I had friends, roommates, and colleagues who were attracted to different people than I was attracted to, and none of that was ever rebellious or groundbreaking or unusual. It just was. Perhaps at the time of Dog Day Afternoon it was an uncommon thing to have a main character in a Hollywood movie who was gay or queer, and who was treated as heroic or worthy of an audience’s affection—even if he did rob banks. But you have to understand that none of that enters into my consideration. I am an actor portraying a character in a film. I am playing the part because I think I can bring something to the role. As far as I was concerned, Dog Day Afternoon was just cool, a continuation of the work I had been doing my whole life. It was inevitable that an audience would have certain feelings about me because of the choices I made, and the slings and arrows were going to keep coming either way. I try to stay away from things that are controversial, and I find myself in controversies anyway. If people think that I helped to advance a particular issue of representation, that’s fine. If there is credit or blame to go around, I don’t feel entitled to any of it. All I know is, I play a role to find as much humanity as there is that I can portray.

But I will go a step further. Not only are many true serial killers perfectly capable of functioning in society, and not only are their actions usually not the product of childhood abuse, in my experience many of them grew up in circumstances that were the exact opposite. Many of them, to put it lightly, were spoiled rotten as kids. They had every advantage and opportunity in life and came from a psychological position far closer to extreme entitlement than victimhood. They kill because they want to. They kill because they sexually get off on it. They kill because, to them, killing is fun.

it undermines personal

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?

So try to reveal your plan on a Friday night before you’ll be dropping both kids off at friends’ houses Saturday morning, for instance. When your kids start getting unruly, quietly pull over to a safe place (the side of the road, a parking lot, etc.). Turn off the car and pull a book or magazine out of the glove compartment. Don’t say a word. When it’s quiet, start up the car and pull back onto the road.

Oy! Kids These Days Kids these days lazy coddled immoral impatient narcissistic feel entitled less virtuous dumber than ever don't believe in God even marry outsiders! Signed, Ἀριστοτέλης Aristotle 322 BCE

Parents of middle- and working-class kids have many of the same worries about materialism and entitlement, given that all kids are exposed to the same acquisitive culture.

Not every ten-percenter is an excellent sheep, but a sufficient number are for you to think very carefully before deciding to surround yourself with them. 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.

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.

Well, then here we are,” Beth said. “We’ve got a couple of kids with a couple of kids on the way, and they clearly love each other. What are we going to do?” Susan took a sip of her martini. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to rest until I see them married.” Beth threw back her head and laughed loudly, earning a glance from Jack. “I love an ambitious woman. So, I have a favor to ask.” “Sure.” “I know you’ll be zipping down here the second the babies come and I know the mother’s mother gets special privileges. Let me come soon, please. I promise not to crowd the cabin and I’ll do all the shit work without getting in the way.” Susan looked up at the ceiling, thinking. Then she glanced back at Beth. “Give us three days. And I’ll split the snuggling and shit work with you.” Beth put a hand on her arm. “You are a good woman. I made my son-in-law’s mother wait a week.” They both laughed loudly. “Do you think we stand a chance of getting them married before the babies come?” Beth asked. “I don’t know. They seem to have made up their minds about certain things, not that they’re sharing. And Abby’s very stubborn when she’s made up her mind.” “She seems to be perfect for him. Everyone’s entitled to a mistake here and there. Not to mention they have babies coming. Any second…” “Maybe if we put our heads together….” The door to the bar opened and in came Ed Michaels, Chuck McCall, Abby and Cameron. They stood just inside the door and stared at Susan and Beth who had a couple of empty martini glasses apiece sitting at the bar. “Just what are you two up to?” Cameron asked. The women grinned largely and Beth said, “Just getting to know each other, Cameron.” Abby tugged on Cameron’s sleeve to bring his ear down to her lips. “I never once thought it might be worse if they liked each other,” she whispered. “They’re going to be a pot of trouble.” He grinned and slipped a kiss on her lips. “Nothing we can’t handle, baby. Stick with me.” *

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.

I want my kids to know that they’re entitled to be miserable without their mother falling apart.

There are no dots in Tee's Or cross in eye's There is no connect in child neglect

The opposite of envy and entitlement is gratitude. Gratitude comes from the feeling of freely receiving things, not because we deserve them, but because someone has graced us with them. We feel a thankfulness grounded in love,

The two states—envious and grateful—have little to do with what a person actually receives. They have more to do with the character of the person. If you give something to entitled, envious people, it profits them or you nothing. They just feel that you have finally paid your debt to them. If you give to grateful people, they feel overwhelmed with how fortunate they are and how good you are. Parents need to help children work through their feelings of entitlement and envy and move to a position of gratitude.

PETA itself has been exposed for killing, literally, tens of thousands of animals in its care. Dating back to 1998, according to records provided by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to the Center for Consumer Freedom, the animal rights group kills hundreds of household pets every year in facilities it ironically calls “animal shelters.” In 2014, PETA took in 2,631 animals in Virginia. Thirty-nine were adopted. A shocking 2,324 were killed. The rest were transferred to other facilities. Between 1998 and 2014, according to the records, PETA killed 33,514 household pets.25 In one Norfolk, Virginia, branch of PETA, documents disclosed the organization killed almost all of its animals—that’s according to a report in the reliably liberal Huffington Post, which was accompanied by a graphic entitled “For An Animal Rights Organization, PETA Kills A Lot Of Animals.” No kidding.

Prayer and Action Go Hand in Hand     “Prayer and action go hand in hand” (Nehemiah 4:17).     I remember the frustration experienced in my home because of homework. Each day my kids would return from school, we would argue over when and where and how to do their nightly assignments. The ordeal stressed us and caused family strife. I decided to take it to God in prayer. I hoped that God would change my childrens’ attitudes so that they would look forward to doing their homework.This, however, was not the case.   I learned that although I can pray to God and ask Him to help I must also be willing to be part of the solution.   I can’t just pray and then throw up my hands and carry on with my day. I can ignore the fear and worry but I still need to be willing to take action. I believe it was Joyce Meyer who said, “Don’t react, act.”  So I don’t need to react with ranting, raving, whining and nagging. I must rely on God’s guidance and proceed with a solid plan to resolve this homework issue.   God often answers prayer through people. He can and will divinely interject but usually He uses people who are willing and obedient. I can pray for wisdom and knowledge but I must also act upon that knowledge and “do” something. It’s not enough for me to say, “Dear Lord, help my child to do homework” without listening for His answer and being open to His guidance.   We devised a homework system through listening to the wisdom of others and spending time in quiet reflection with God. I realize that although my plan is working well now, I may need to change it in the future. As our family’s needs change I can ask God for His guidance and His wisdom. Then I must be open and listen for it. God wants to answer our prayers but He wishes to work though His creation, not impose His will upon it.       Prayer is intimacy ~ Elsie Montgomery         How Does God Reveal Himself?     “Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near”(Revelation 1:3).     At my church, we worked through a Bible study by Beth Moore. A video series, entitled “A Heart Like His”, Beth invited us to join her on a journey to know King David, a man after God’s own heart.   Beth explained that when we ask God for something we shouldn’t be expecting Him to talk to us through the clouds. Instead, God speaks to us through His Word, the Bible. If we have a concern or problem or issue, we need to read the Bible to “listen” for God’s voice and His answer. Before opening the Bible, we need to pray that God would reveal Himself to us through the words on the page.   Beth gives the example of how God revealed Himself to Samuel through His Word, the Bible. Samuel 3:21 says, “The Lord continued to appear at Shiloh, and there he revealed himself to Samuel through his word.”  

Whoever came up with the term “terrible twos” must have felt very foolish after their kid turned three. Three-year-olds are just rude. They are still supercute, but now they are supercute and they know it. They have gotten supersmart, and they are not afraid to show it. It’s like living with a child emperor. They act really entitled, bossy, and outspoken. They think the world revolves around them. I realize I’m describing myself, but somehow it works better for a three-year-old.

As long as I’m your first priority, I won’t make a fuss about what you do outside of being my lawyer.” My eyebrows slammed together. “You’ve known me longer than any of the women who will ever come into your life. Don’t let your dick keep you from handling business.” Lauren’s sense of entitlement behooved me. She laughed. “I’m just kidding.” We both knew she wasn’t. Grinding my back teeth, I let her have that. She was already an emotional wreck. My mouth would push her over the edge.

I gave you everything you needed. But not everything you wanted. I didn't want you to grow up to be an entitled brat. A lot of kids, their parents get them everything and the kids do a new kind of math: I want equals I get.

The final obstacle to sleep is my rage. Goddammit, I’m not sixteen anymore. Sleeping on a treadmill? Are you fucking kidding me? The person being interrogated is none other than myself. I’m not furious at my brother. Nor am I asserting some entitlement to the physical comforts that might reasonably be due a man who has achieved a certain maturity and has shouldered certain responsibilities. It is a question of autonomy—of being in the world on one’s own terms. It is a question of my failure, yet again, to ensure that I am where I want to be, in the company of the people I want to be with, in circumstances of my choosing. If there’s one thing I have learned over the years, if experience could be reduced to a single bitter apple of knowledge, it’s this: self-rule must be exercised with a tyrant’s purpose. And yet here I am in a strange home, at the mercy of the toothbrushes and toilet seats of strangers. I brought it on myself. I knew that no good would come of leaving home. I knew, dammit, that it was— “Markie?” “Mm?” “You all right?” “Mm.” “Listen up. When you meet Julie and Tony, just tell them that you’re just passing by, OK? You’re in England on business, and you’re just dropping in on your bruv.” “Why?” “It’s a delicate situation, bruv.” “Got it,” I say, although I don’t get anything.

Can you believe that woman? What a Karen. Talk about entitled. Well, for all they knew, Karen had a kid who’d raise holy hell if his mother ran out of raisins. None of these people clucking their tongues, feeling superior, had a clue.

Everything about this place made my skin crawl. The power plays and posturing. The snobbish cliques and haughty entitlement. I’d had an idea how things would be when I arrived, but living it was another story. Walking into the school cafeteria, I felt like I was cast in an over-the-top coming-of-age movie where each character had its very own stereotype to portray and not a single person was multidimensional. I’d only ever been to public school before, where kids bought square slices of generic pizza or brought brown paper sack lunches of PB&J and a bag of chips. Not at Xavier. There was a fucking sushi station, for Christ’s sake. How could any of these people be substantive when they’d never even stepped foot in the real world?

we parents give our kids things instead of time, spoiling them as we add fuel to the entitlement flame.

In the name of love, we give our kids ✽ indulgence rather than consequences; ✽ instant rather than delayed gratification; ✽ laxness rather than discipline; ✽ dependence rather than independence; ✽ and entitlement rather than responsibility.

Give your family greater depth, greater permanence, greater individuality, and give your kids a bigger identity and a bigger sense of inclusion and belonging. This is how you give them real ownership and equity in their own family!

Of course, ownership of education is about much more than grades. Helping children to love learning itself, and to see education as a process of self-discovery and of recognizing their aptitudes and gifts so they can build on them for their college major and their career—these are the real measurements of educational success and the real areas where we want our children to feel equity. So our task is helping kids to feel ownership

It doesn’t help that I’m famous for a thing I started when I was a kid. […] I’m cemented in people’s minds as the person I was when I was a kid. A person I feel like I’ve far outgrown. But the world won’t let me outgrow it. The world won’t let me be anyone else. The world only wants me to be Sam Puckett. I’m aware enough to know how fucking annoying and whiney this all sounds. Millions of people dream of being famous, and here I am with fame and hating it. I somehow feel entitled to my hatred since I was not the one who dreamed of being famous. Mom was. Mom pushed this on me. I’m allowed to hate someone else’s dream, even if it’s my reality.

Here is G. Gordon Liddy, the celebrated Watergate felon, telling us how it all works in his best-selling 2002 backlash book, When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country. There exists in this country an elite that believes itself entitled to tell the rest of us what we may and may not do—for our own good, of course. These left-of-center, Ivy-educated molders of public opinion are concentrated in the mass news media, the entertainment business, academia, the pundit corps, and the legislative, judicial, and administrative government bureaucracies. Call it the divine right of policy wonks. These people feed on the great American middle class, who do the actual work of this country and make it all happen. They bleed us with an income tax rate not seen since we were fighting for our lives in the middle of World War II; they charge us top dollar at the box office for movies that assail and undermine the values we are attempting to inculcate in our children.4

Kids need a place to engage, a place that makes them feel like they matter. It was such a gift and a blessing that those “enrichment” programs, rebranded “entitlement” by our cynical government officials, existed.

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.

There are a lot of mantras going around these days about how “other people’s feelings about you are none of your business.” There are mantras about not owning the feelings of others, or about not having to apologize. I get it. As a lifelong codependent I can see where I have spent way too many hours worrying about what others think or if someone is upset with me. I don’t think we need to concern ourselves with the opinions or feelings of every person we know. We don’t need to morph ourselves into being liked by everyone. However, I do want my kids to be concerned with how they are making the people in their inner circle feel. I don’t want them to have an entitled self-esteem that is unable to consider feedback. If their younger sibling feels they are a bully, I want them to be concerned with that. If their reputation among their close friends is for being a backstabbing mean girl, I want them to be concerned with that. We should all be mindful of how the trusted people in our inner circle experience us, because sometimes we need that mirror to see ourselves clearly.

It slowly dawned on her that many of the behaviors of both students and parents that she found off-putting were expressions of white privilege. “I feel like there’s a way in which we upper-middle-class parents…want [our kids] to be unencumbered in their lives,” including, she feels, by rules. “It’s this entitlement. And it’s this feeling of…is there a rule? I don’t need to respect this rule. It doesn’t pertain to me.” By her children’s third year in the school, Ali realized, “ ‘I just can’t do this. This is not me.’ It just—I felt kind of disgusted by the culture.” It was everywhere, and yet she didn’t have a name for it until she became involved in an affinity group for parents choosing integrated schools. “The competitiveness, complete with humble bragging. The insularity and superficiality, the focus on ‘me and my kid only,

The Dark Cloud Is the privileged attitude of those who were born with everything Is the aggressive manner of people who want to rule as queen and king Is the weakness in coping abilities that spoiled kids have Is the obsession you have with finding your other halve

It's not that the kids are dumb; it's worse, much worse. They're entitled.

There were other kids at Ault I had a feeling about, kids who came from poorer families than I did and would probably grow up to make a lot more than I would—they’d be surgeons, or investment bankers. But making a lot of money didn’t seem like something I’d be able to control; I’d gotten as far as Ault, but I wasn’t sure I’d get any further. I wasn’t smart or disciplined the way those kids were, I wasn’t driven. Presumably, I’d always be aware of lives like these without living one; I couldn’t confuse familiarity with entitlement.

and I’m entitled to these benefits.

The bottom line is that kids learn to make good decisions by making decisions, not by following instructions. If we want them to take responsibility for making the world a better place, then we need to give them responsibilities. —Alfie Kohn, The Myth of the Spoiled Child

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.

More than three decades of research shows that a focus on effort—not on intelligence or ability—is key to success in school and in life.* —Carol S. Dweck, PhD, author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

There were other kids at Ault I had a feeling about, kids who came from poorer families than I did and would probably grow up to make a lot more than I would--they'd be surgeons, or investment bankers. But making a lot of money didn't seem like something I'd be able to control; I'd gotten as far as Ault, but I wasn't sure I'd get any further. I wasn't smart or disciplined the way those kids were, I wasn't driven. Presumably, I'd always be aware of lives like these without living one; I couldn't confuse familiarity with entitlement.

the only reason we have anything good coming our way is because God is good, not because we are. Be aware when you hear people touting rights. Often, what they call a right is really a gift to which they feel entitled.

Are you a bigot, Mr. O’Brien?” Joanna asked. The room grew still. Raising his bushy eyebrows, Ernie Carpenter shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. The silence lasted so long that Joanna wondered if perhaps she had gone too far, but David O’Brien didn’t appear to be especially offended by the question. In fact, he seemed to like the idea that Joanna was standing up to him and pushing back. “Are you aware that I’m from here originally?” he asked at last, favoring Joanna with an unexpected but grim smile. She nodded. “Not just from Bisbee,” he continued. “But from right here on the outskirts of Naco. My father, Tom O’Brien, died of a ruptured appendix when I was two. Growing up in a border town makes it tough for kids. On both sides. I didn’t transfer to St. Dominick’s in Old Bisbee until I was in the third grade. Before that I was one of the only Anglo kids in Naco Elementary. The Mexican kids down here used to beat me up every day, Sheriff Brady. Not only that, it was a Mexican driving the truck that killed my first family, smashed my legs to smithereens, and sentenced me to a wheelchair for the rest of my natural life. So believe me, if I’ve got my prejudices, maybe I’m entitled. That’s what I told Brianna, and that’s what I’m telling you.

This middle-grade graphic offering is the first in a proposed series (with a promised second volume entitled Tater Invaders). Writer and illustrator Fremont’s animation background is highly visible here, with fast pacing, quirky characters, and ample silliness. Driven by its jet-fueled plotting, young readers careen from one side-splitting scene to the next as the simply wrought, full-color cartoons rocket sequences along. ...those who want their humor to have a fast and furious velocity should be right at home here, making this perfect for fans of series like Chris Schweizer’s The Creeps or Jarrett J. Krosoczka’s Lunch Lady." -Kirkus Reviews

It is possible that, after a partner packs his or her bags, finds a new place to live, and moves out with the kids, the narcissistic spouse will go to therapy and change his or her behavior significantly—for about three to six months (nine to twelve with some luck). That is because narcissistic people will exert every bit of mental control they have to act differently—to be attentive, to put down their phone, to find different ways to react and tamp down the anger, to be more empathic and listen, to be mindful of their words.

Entitlement and disrespect are triggers for me. So I did what any good professor would do: I didn’t respond. Better that than writing something I’d later regret.

Society has shifted truth by bombarding us with an idea until it’s normalized.

Allowing kids to experience natural consequences and appropriate failure does not ruin them. It rescues them from an indecisive and entitled future.