Bloggers

‘People need to get over their own sense of entitlement’

Jun 22, 2018

Cathy says people need to get over this sense of entitlement they have. Source: Shutterstock

If you are on social media, no doubt you would have seen the occasional funny images and posts about what life was like for baby boomers growing up. The often refer to how tough we were back then. How we’d fall out of trees and break bones; how we’d stay out with our friends until the street lights came on; we would drink from the hose (I still do); and most of our parents would let us explore and play outdoors without too much of a care for what we got up to.

Anyone who went to Sunday School knew what being a ‘good person’ was all about, and just the threat of a smack on the legs or the withdrawal of our privileges was enough to keep us in line. Mum and Dad’s law was gold. We didn’t want to mess with them. When they would tell us ‘no’, they certainly meant it.

Of course the underwritten message of these images and posts is that such an upbringing didn’t do us too much harm at all. Most of us would tend to agree. No doubt there were be a few in our midst that would shy away from such an acknowledgement because in their circumstance the discipline was taken too far and what they suffered was abuse. I don’t want to make light of those situations, but the truth of it is we were resilient, we were able to stand on our own two feet, we treated people with the respect that we expected to be treated with, and as we got older we willingly accepted responsibility for such things as our possessions and our jobs.

I look around today and wonder if we have somehow gone wrong. There are so many people with a sense of entitlement today, and it’s not just the children or younger generation.

Some might say that it’s because there has been a wearing down of the authority figure (i.e. parents) in family units. Children know that ‘no’ can mean ‘maybe’ with enough persistence. There are also those parents and grandparents who shower their children and grandchildren with attention and gifts and bunde them up in cotton wool; constantly informing their child of how utterly wonderful they are, which is a misrepresentation of how the real world works. What about those people who go around with their hand out, waiting for someone else (the government perhaps?) to solve whatever problem they might have. This isn’t exactly leading by example.

I’ve seen children throw tantrums over the smallest of things. I’ve seen adolescents struggle to make a decision. I’ve seen adults become abusive because they didn’t start their entry level job earning the same salary as the person sitting at the top of the corporate ladder. They want the great job, the big house, the expensive car, but they don’t have the skills to earn it and they aren’t willing to put in the hard work to develop those skills.

I’ve had a number of salons and one of the reasons I now work from home is because of the large number of young people that are entitled — they don’t want to work or not for a low income (apprentice) even though they are being trained. There have been those who can’t fill out a form for super (at the age of 23!) and needed to take it home for Mum and Dad to fill in. There have been ones who, wehn asked to make a cup of tea or coffee for a client have said, “I don’t know how.” I spent so much time teaching these young adults life skills that they never got a chance to learn what they had been employed to do. I have even had staff steal from me!

I’ve read many articles about entitled children, but what interests me more is what the parents are thinking when they decide to raise their children in this manner. When we were young and starting out driving, we needed a job to buy the car and pay for the license. Remember how great it felt when you got in that car knowing you had purchased it with your own money? There was a real sense of accomplishment. Parents these days give the kids a car — and a good one at that — and forget about all those crucial maturing steps, which are so important to a person’s feel good mentality and sense of ownership.

I shake my head at the workers today who can’t seem to hold on to a job because they struggle with being given instruction or provided with feedback from their boss. Don’t even get me started on the guy I saw crying on a television talent show recently. He burst into tears because no one picked him. I thought, ‘Twenty years ago this guy would have had a couple of kids by the time he was 30, a mortgage, and would have had far more concerns than whether or not someone recognised his talent (or lack thereof).

Just what is going on with the world today? Is it that we have money more freely available? Is it that we are told we can have anything or be anyone, but we’re not told that it takes hard work and dedication to get there? Is it lazy parenting? It could well be a combination of all of these. One thing I do hope for is that the pendulum swings back to a more balanced approach, but I’m afraid there will be lots of victims of this era and sadly society will pay for it.