Gratitude & Kindness (5 page)

If our kids say they “need” something, we have an opportunity to teach the difference between a
need
and a
want
. A questioning response, such as, “You
need
those new sneakers or you
want
them?”, is a subtle cue to help our kids to understand the difference. That, and the reality that we need to make a commitment to ourselves to not meet our children’s requests when they say they need something unless the something is food, shelter, or essential clothing.
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For now, remind yourself that we should allow our children to experience hunger, thirst, tiredness, and hurt feelings (within reason). This is part of the art of parenting: knowing when to protect and do for our children, versus when to stand back with love and encouragement and allow our children to do for themselves. As we explore these issues, we hope to help you find your own balance between the two. We want you to be confident that, more times than not, you are in order to allow your children to be their most emotionally strong, resilient selves.

Entitlement Crushing Action
The next time your child says, “I’m BORED!” and they look to you to solve the boredom problem, redirect them to find their own solutions even if it takes them the entire day to figure it out. It is not okay for your child to have this expectation of you to fix it for them. This is entitlement in the making.

The Praise Trap: Do You Do This?

Parents love to praise
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their children—we are told that it is an essential part of support, love, and being a good parent. But did you know that many parents over praise their children? This misguided praise can cause serious issues in the lives of our children.

Misguided praise comes in a variety of different forms:

• “Wow, this is the best picture in the world. You’re a little Van Gogh!”
  

  This praise is not valid because your daughter is four, and her art skills are age-appropriate, i.e. it looks like she drew it holding on to the cray
  on with her toes. You are missing the opportunity to value your daughter’s effort and instead have mistakenly focused on the need to compare herself to others and be “the best.”
  

• “You are the best basketball player I’ve ever seen, and
  I watch NBA!”
  

  This praise is not based in reality if your twelve-year-old son is not actually a child prodigy.
  

• “Your science project should have won. It destroys the other projects!”
  

  This kind of praise is delivered quite independent of the
  merit of the project, and is focused on a “my child should win because he/she is my child” philosophy.
  

These types of praise teach our children that they are superior to others, and that they should be superior to others. It also teaches them:

• That they need to be the best to get our love and attention.
  

  Nothing he/she does will ever be good enough for us but perfection and first place.
  

• That life will always be to their advantage,
  no matter what.
  

  It does not matter whether they put in effort or not. Your child should win just because. This does not help our children focus on the positives of their effort or the fact that they are worthy of love and respect whether they win or not.
  

• It negatively impacts their trust in you.
  

  Real life is not stacked in their favor. Eventually our children will realize this, and they will be confused and blame us for teaching them otherwise.
  

There are definite dos and don’ts with regard to recognizing and encouraging our children. Praise does not exist as an emotional crutch; it is a legitimate way to express congratulations when they are due. But praise is always earned, and children that have become entitled do not tend to respond well to the concept of having to earn anything.

The best kind of praise involves recognition of the actions and intentions of your children that reflect the values, actions, and words that your family believes in
(reflect back to your answers on the Parenting Values Checklist in Chapter 1)
. Real praise should involve specifics and a true celebration of the child’s achievement or effort.

• Good Praise:
  Nice helping with your brother, buddy!
  
• Better Praise:
  When I see you helping your little brother tie his shoes, I feel proud watching your kindness and leadership within the family. Awesome!
  

The Modeling Trap: The Grass Is Greener

One of the reasons a child develops entitled behavior is because they have modeled elements of their behavior on their parents’ behavior and values. We have volumes of research on a child’s tendency to learn by imitating their parents
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. Interestingly, some demonstrated that children will follow
unnecessary
steps in a process (like stirring their juice with a spoon because they have seen their Dad stirring cream into his coffee) just to mimic their parents.

This is modeling at its best. As our children grow up and become pre-teens and teens, they will begin to model others’ behavior in
addition to the family’s behavior. Friends, teachers, and other adults suddenly become influences. The child who has become entitled takes this a step further. They also want what these others have. If a child has internalized the belief that material possessions are necessary for comfort, that they indicate superior self-worth, or that they are owed things, they learn to envy and covet the possessions of others.

A child that has become entitled generally feels that they are not functioning at their best if they do not have everything—and more —than those they admire. It is the way they were raised, especially if parents wittingly or unwittingly spoke in front of them about:

• What kind of a car, home, vacations, etc., they wish
  they had.
  
• What kinds of consumer brands they buy or
  wish to buy.
  
• How much money they wish they had, etc.
  

The
entitlement bug
will leave anyone feeling unsatisfied with what one has (no matter what it is) and envious of others. This is one of the reasons why children who have become entitled get so upset if they are told that they cannot get the expensive new tablet computer because it costs too much money, or because they have not earned it. They are programmed to want more.

A child who has been bitten hard by the
entitlement bug
feels that they MUST have the new tablet computer in order to be seen as an equal by their peers. They have a tendency to believe that what others have (even models in commercials) is superior. They must have it in order to be acceptable, worthy and okay.

Of course, once they have the new computer, they will quickly move on to the next that makes them fit in better, or gives them status among their friends. Being unsatisfied with what one has, and always coveting the possessions of others, is a downward spiral toward life dissatisfaction. It’s also a problem that tends to intensify with age.

Gratitude Action
When an entitled child feels that their situation is inadequate, they will always look for a better situation, believing that one will come along. Teach your child how to be grateful for what they have and where they are, now.

In adulthood, those that were bitten by the
entitlement bug
as a child may skip from one job to the other — missing the opportunity to appreciate the experience while they have it. According to their belief system, there is always something better, they just have to wait until the world gives it to them. The trouble is, as we know, the world does not work that way.

The Truth about Entitlement

Where does entitlement come from? Surely there are many factors that affect how entitled a child feels? We ran a survey between 2012 and 2013 to find out exactly where adults believe entitlement in children comes from. The results were not what we expected.

Participants rated movies and TV as one of the leading causes, with 20 per cent of the blame, with peers at 14 per cent, teachers at 2 per cent, and “other” at 11 per cent, respectively. The main culprits, however, were PARENTS, who came in at a shocking 52 per cent. It seems that at some level, even we kn
ow how much we affect our children.

The truth is that YOU and I are the most likely cause of any of our children’s entitlement issues. That is the truth, but it is not the end of the story. We can always change our children’s behavior by adapting our own. (Sure, if your child is 17-and-a-half, you may have more limited success with beginning this program and having a huge impact. But you can certainly change how you act and react, relieving your strain and guilt, and provide the atmosphere for positive effects for your young adult—especially if they respect your judgment at some level.) It is never too late to stop, learn, and try something different.

Here is what you need to avoid in the coming days:

• Your child is YOUR LIFE:
  It is good to make your child a top priority, but you should never devote the majority of your time to meeting their every need and desire. The world does not revolve around them, and it is important that they understand this. It will benefit our kids if they realize that we are more than child-satisfaction delivery agents.
  
• Not allowing your child to FEEL FRUSTRATED:
  When your child feels frustration, it builds character and strength and shows them that they can be okay even when they do not have everything that they want, and when theyau are not as comfortable as they desire to be. Allow your child to feel bored, irritated, or dissatisfied—it will teach them how to cope with this state, to meet their own needs, or to make do with less.
  

Gratitude Tip
Yes, we want your child to feel frustration, but we are not suggesting that you abandon your child. We are trusting that you have equipped him/her with fantastic coping skills to deal with frustration, but if you have not done so yet, now is the time. You are already taking steps by reading this book.

• Being too involved with their EMOTIONS:
  We all love our children, and it is difficult to know the difference between being empathic and tuned in to their moods and emotions, and being over-involved. We are all affected by their joy and pain, but when our ability to be okay is affected deeply by their moods each and every day, that is likely a sign that we are too involved.
  
• Avoid OVERPROTECTING:
  Parents that are overly involved with their child’s feelings find it tough to tolerate the sound and words of their distressed or disappointed child. This incites those parents who tend to fuss over, and fix the problems of their children.
  
• REWARDING certain behaviors:
  Do not reinforce negative behaviors such as disrespectful voice tone, whining, complaining, or staged temper tantrums by attending to their discomforts.
  

We will go into more detail on how to shift your approach from an
entitlement–encouraging
family atmosphere to a
gratitude–encouraging
family atmosphere in the coming pages.

In the meantime, here’s a quick
Entitlement-Crushing / Gratitude-Boosting
exercise to get your super-amazing, epically-fantastic parenting juices flowing (and so you know that we are most certainly in favor of attachment-oriented parenting, and we do not endorse chaining your children up outside in the winter to fend for themselves!):

Quickie Entitlement-Crushing/Gratitude-Boosting Exercise

How to Steps

St
ep 1:
Meet your children’s needs for love, connection, food, clothing, and shelter.

Step 2:
Teach / show your kids to communicate well:

If your child says, “I’m thirsty,” coach them to switch their words to something like: “I’d like a drink. May I have some orange juice, please?”

Step 3: Express empathy to your child:
“I hear you that you’re super-mad that I said you couldn’t go over to your buddy’s house.”

Step 4: Teach them / show them how to take action:
To meet their own needs and desires (whenever that is feasible): “If you’d like to invite your friend over, after you check with me about the dates, how would you like to contact her to see if she can come?”

To ask for help if they cannot / do not have the resources to do it on their own:
“So you say that the bowl to put your cereal in is up too high for you to reach. Do you want to ask for help from someone taller to get it down, buddy?”

Step 5: Teach them / show them:
To cope with any discomfort if they do not get satisfaction:
“What do you want to think about that can help you feel a bit better about this, sweetie? Do you think it will help to think, ‘This is so rotten! Why is my life horrible?’ or something more along the lines of ‘This is a huge disappointment, but I’m not going to let it ruin my day’?”

“What do you want to do that can help you feel a bit better about this, dude? Would you rather sit in your room and think about a bunch of bad stuff that has happened to you, or do you think it would help to play your favorite music playlist and read that joke book that always cracks you up?”

To be grateful / appreciative if they do get satisfaction:
“Wow! I hope you really feel awesome that you figured out how to talk to your friend about the problem the two of you have been having. I think that was a creative solution. I’m hoping you’re proud of how you said it.”

Entitlement-Crushing Action
Be extra aware that your child is always modeling and taking cues from your behavior. Giving in to their complaints will only fuel more complaints because you have taught the child that complaining leads to results.

Our Take on Generation ME

The media throws around the Generation ME term to describe the growing number of self-focused, low-empathy individuals who tend to value surface things, such as money, fame, and image. We want you to know that this is a trend that can be changed. Parents come into our office and raise their concerns about social media, wondering if there is a relationship between this self-focused behavior and their children’s online presence. They feel that parenting is different now because of the impacts of social media. They can’t fall back on parenting truths that their parents relied on. They are often fearful of the time and focus their children spend on themselves and expose or advertise themselves on their social media pages.

Parents see their children continually updating their status, following people they want to emulate, setting up profiles and photos that are all about themselves on various sites and social media apps. They observe that their children seem to be more easily prone to texting or messaging in insensitive ways and they wonder if their online behavior is bleeding through to real life behavior, further decreasing empathy with family and friends.

Parents are mindful of the barriers to empathy in many of our youth’s modern social connections. Unfollowing and unfriending is easy online. The personal element can be removed so easily behind a screen. The awareness of how social media can impact empathy is one step in a movement towards buffering the negative elements that can come with its use. Children need us to be involved in their social media experience. It’s parents’ responsibility to educate ourselves because it is the first generation where children’s knowledge frequently outpaces that of their parents. Remember parents, one way to increase our children’s empathy is to utilize social media to help them to reach the masses for positive change. Many youth we see use social media to raise money for their sport teams, schools and causes that are dear to them. It can also be used as a platform to do good—and pay it forward.

Parents consistently write into our website
realparentinglab.com
asking if it is “normal” that their adolescent does not show any empathy on a day-to-day basis. The answer: of course it isn’t.

Empathy —the ability to feel for and consider the expe
rience of the other —is a vital component in social situations and a step up the
compassion ladder
that leads to a positive action for others. When children are low on empathy, they are self-centred—sometimes almost completely so. The risk of children lacking empathy is a factor in becoming an adult who rarely considers the needs or feelings of others.

Empathy is a very important social trait to nurture
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:

• It makes people kinder.
  
• It reduces prejudice and racism.
  
• It makes for better marriages and friendships.
  
• It reduces bullying.
  
• It is effective in the workplace.
  

On every level, it is crucial that your child learns how to be empathic. Without empathy the connections in their lives will likely be fleeting and unsatisfying.

There are many empathy training programs available, but here are a couple of brief ideas to get you started:

You can promote empathy in your child by:

1. Reading fiction and encouraging them to get into the mind or experiences of the characters.
   
2. Watching movies on mute and having each family member take turns guessing what a character is thinking or feeling.
   
3. Going out and about on field trip to watch people from a distance and guess their feelings and thoughts based on body language.
   
4. Doing service work together in which your children can see the difference they make (reading to under-privileged children, delivering food bank baskets to needy families, etc.) and then discussing the experiences.
   
5. Sharing with your children the small and large things you do for those around you, and talking about how you feel about it.
   

Exercise: The Family Currency

Do you know what your
family currency
might be? This kind of currency generally does not have anything to do with money. It is simply the actions and efforts that have agreed-upon value within your family. Every family has some sort of currency, whether it is fairness, service, food, kindness for others, effort toward family values, or something else.

We would like you to think about what your family considers useful in trade with each other, and how valuable these things are in your family community:

• Does saying “please” and “thank you” receive High (H), Medium (M), or Low (L) value rankings in your home?
  
• How about preparing a favorite snack for another?
  
• Or one person driving another to a special event, or to a required school event?
  
• How about tidying up common areas?
  
• Or being quiet while another rests?
  

What about when one person gives as opposed to another? For example, is Mom cleaning up after her teenager given an (L) for Low value in our charting system below, but the teenager cleaning up after a family meal given an (H) for High value rating?

Does everyone in the family agree on the values of each
activity? Does a hug from the gregarious, touchy-feely five-year-old hold less value than the hug of the withdrawn, slightly depressed 14-year-old?

Please know that there are usually a thousand different ways to view each family’s
family currency
. Take a look at what you, as parents, value, and use it as a communication tool with your children. Many of the elements of currency will not be agreed upon between the adults and the children. This is normal, and your job is not to have the children see things the way you do.

This exercise is to further help you understand how your children value things and help you explain your own values to them. It should aid you in coming to a place of understanding, cooperation, and empathy, as well as expressing gratitude within the family.

• Notice which elements of currency are easily agreed upon by different family members.
  
• Notice which cause the greatest number of discussions and disagreements.
  
• Notice what you may have misunderstood about the value that your children place on things.
  

When you have a greater understanding of the various types of currencies in play in your home, you will be able to communicate your appreciation better to your family. You will also be able to provide your children with concrete examples about giving and receiving, making successful interactions more likely.