This is a very different type of post for my blog. I'm thinking about making it a weekly series {Talk About It Tuesday}, but I'm not sure yet. Let me know what you think. It would be one day to bring up a topic related to education {or children} and open it up for discussion.
Today's topic....The Entitlement Generation.
I saw this wonderful blog post being shared on Facebook this weekend called
9 Things We Should Get Rid of To Help Our Kids and I loved every single word of it.
It really hit home to me because a couple of days ago I had JUST been talking about "The Entitlement Generation" with a friend of mine.
It makes me very, very, very sad to see this generation. You know it, too. The kids who, when given something special at school, ask "Can I get more?" or "Is that all we get?"
Or, the kids who destroy the things that you spent your hard-earned money on to make the classroom a warm, inviting, and fun environment for them. But, they don't even think about it because "you can get another one."
They have no sense of what things cost, or how hard one has to work to earn money. Everything has been handed to them...and I mean everything. 2nd graders with iPhones and iPads??
My favorite parts of the post were, #3 The Birthday Party Goody Bag Mentality - this is SO true!!! Birthdays are about GIVING. You know, to the birthday boy/girl. It should be THEIR special day! Those adorable little goody bags that we spend hours slaving over (thanks, Pinterest!) are really creating an "everyone deserves something special, even though it's not even OUR birthday" kind of thinking. Don't worry, I'm guilty too.
But when I got to #4 Making Our Day-Week-Month - Our World - About Our Kids....well, that hit the nail on the head for me. And, it reminded me of another article that I had read YEARS ago that intrigued me.
I have no idea where that article is, but I did find one similar. The original article that I read years ago made such an impact on me...it talked about why America has so many children diagnosed with ADHD and European countries (such as France) do not. {See this
ARTICLE for a view on how ADHD is diagnosed differently in theses two countries.}
The gist of it was that American parents make their children the CENTER of their world, while French parents teach their children to be a PART of their world. It starts as babies. Instead of instant gratification, French parents let their babies "cry it out" after four months of age. As toddlers, if they're out shopping and they pick up a treat, the child must wait until snack time (4pm) to have the treat. Through the small moments, from babies throughout childhood, children are taught patience. They are taught to entertain themselves, to wait things out, to adhere to routines. Meanwhile, American children are learning to be entitled, to need instant gratification, and are filled with anxiety.
Here's the
similar article that I found....I'll still be on the lookout for that original one, because it had a lot of research listed to back it up.
So, what are your thoughts? Do you think this is a cultural norm that we can "fix?"
Has anyone ever read this book?
Summary: After becoming used to the stereotype of screaming, ill-tempered
children, an American mother living in Paris was amazed at how
well-behaved French children were. In this book she explains how parents
can make their lives less stressful by taking some pointers from the
French art of child-rearing.
"I'm criticizing myself. I'm, I think, maybe the more extreme example of
an American parent," Druckerman says. "So, I guess the book is really a
memoir. It's my own story of how I partially became converted to some
French ways of doing things but also held on to the things that I like
about America."