Coach Brown on the Sense of Entitlement

Coach Brown wonders discusses sense of entitlement that seems so prevalent amoung today's youth:

However, the question of entitlement with young adults has come up more and more among the leaders in business. Managers are struggling with workers coming up after working for two months and asking for paid vacation time, less hours, and perks that rival executives. Now the Wall Street Journal has had a couple of articles on the entitlement problem with young adults. The results are interesting.

Mr. Rogers spent years telling little creeps that he liked them just the way they were. He should have been telling them that there was a lot of room for improvement. Nice as he was, and as good as his intentions may have been, he did a disservice.

Yep, Mr. Rogers is to blame for the entitlement problem. Ok, maybe not totally, but Jeffrey Zaslow writes that the idea that every kid is special has created a generation of kids that expect everything, from grades to a better paycheck. Instead of a culture of hard work, it created a culture of enabling.

Coach Brown blames the parents much more than Mr. Rogers. Parents begin the "toleration" by allowing toddlers and young kids to run around and speak disrespectfully to their elders, saying "they're just being kids." But the behavior just worsens and parents excuse it, "they're just being kids (or tweens or Teenagers)" so that by the time they reach high school and worse, college and beyond, these kids have a sense of entitlement based solely on effort or attempted effort. Coach Brown notes:

What I find is that parents don't like that I don't accept the same crap they accept, and I feel that self-esteem is built when a student actually accomplishes something. That means that an "A" student needs to do excellent work, or it isn't an "A". That means that when I say that I'm going to drop you from the class after five cuts, I'm going to drop you. That means that "no late work" means "no late work". And for all those parents that think that I'm unfair, let me ask you something.

-If you hand in a project for your manager and it is completely wrong, what will happen?
-If you constantly show up late for work, or call in sick often, what will happen?
-If you show up for the presentation four hours late, what will happen?

And yes, I've thrown out assignments that I don't think I explained well enough. And yes, I allow two free tardies per semester. And yes, I do accept late work with an excused absence. And yes parents, you take advantage of it!

This is the one area of parenting where my wife and I clash. I expect my nearly six year old to address people properly (which she usually does), so say please and thank you (which she sometimes forgets) and to behave properly in public and at home (which is a spotty record). My wife says I am too harsh sometimes, but I want my daughters to understand that everything they have comes from hard work (mine and my wife's) and that they need to earn and appreciate all they have. My wife and I have butted heads about the giving of gifts that don't follow from proper behavior. I have nothing wrong with a treat or a toy when my girls have behaved well, but I no longer want to use bribes to generate proper behavior.

Many parents with whom we are friends, I fear, are raising children that Coach Brown decries--full of entitlement and themselves, with self-esteem not built on accomplishment, but on undeserved external praise.