Parenting is a difficult job, and we often criticize ourselves for small things. One area of raising children that is significant is teaching them to be thankful and empathetic toward others. What you don’t want is for your kids to have a sense of entitlement. You want your children to understand how to be grateful. Parents want to avoid “spoiling” their kids, but what we don’t talk about is how to prevent children from acting entitled in the first place. In this article, we’re going to address the sense of entitlement in kids, and how to conquer it.
Basic Manners
It all starts with simply teaching your children to have manners. As a parent, you can make sure to take the time to teach your children how to be grateful and how to express that gratitude. A primary example of this is teaching kids always to say “please” and “thank you.” Everything that they receive, either from their parents or elsewhere, even the person that they are buying a bottle of water from at the deli, should be met with gratitude. Nothing comes for free in this world, so it is essential to instill in your child a sense of appreciation for everything that is given to them. As you raise your children, teach them to be thankful and to be mindful of the feelings of others.
It affects their future
Entitlement suppresses greatness. Life does not come with guaranteed success or appreciation. You need to work hard to get there. One of the ways that we achieve success is by caring about other people. Having a sense of entitlement will stop you from climbing your way to victory. It will halt the development of a proper work ethic and may cause kids to treat people poorly unintentionally. It is because a sense of entitlement can make you act as though you are better than other people. Highlight to your children that believing that you are better than other people differs from confidence and is going to hurt them in the long run. Paying attention to when your child behaves in a way that expresses a sense of entitlement gives you an opportunity to step in and teach them that this is not a way to act that will get them what they want.
Be an example
Be an example. Show that you appreciate the good things that come your way and how you care for the people around you. Express your gratitude for who your child is as a person, and hopefully, they will reciprocate this action and show appreciation for you as well. Teach your children to have empathy and compassion for everyone that they meet. When you think about it, compassion is the opposite of entitlement. Children are always watching, and what they see teaches them how to behave. From birth to the age of five, kids brains are described as being “like putty” because whatever they see presses into their mind and becomes part of their neural wiring. After the age of five, kids are like sponges, and they absorb what happens around them. No matter what a child’s age is, they are learning from your actions, whether you realize it or not.
Therapy can guide you
If you are working on parenting issues with a therapist, this is something that you can discuss during a session. Maybe your children are behaving in a way that you don’t approve of, and you want to instill better values in them. A therapist can assist you and support you in changing the way that you interact with your child to help teach these values. Or, if your child is in play therapy something that you can discuss with their therapist is how to change your child’s behavior. If kids express a sense of entitlement, it’s crucial that you do not ignore these behaviors because they will affect your child’s life long-term. The earlier that you work to modify this mentality, the more success you will have in curbing it.
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