Comments about ‘Linda & Richard Eyre: Mormon Parenting: The age of entitlement’

Elementary schools teach kids math using money. Kids have a totally different perspective about money and its value than we did growing up. This is a generational issue.

A kid who wants a cellphone is no different than a pioneer kid who wanted a bb-gun. Only cellphones don't kill small birds or shoot your eye out, but do give brain cancer. :)

All kids ARE special. We just communicate it wrong. Living in an ever more cooperative society, competition breeds a superiority complex that's not always a relevant social value.

Our kids are subjected to competitions. It's pretty cool when my kid's asked to participate in the state mathematics competition. Just being asked to participate IS a big deal to me. It tells me she's keeping her head above water and learning. Parents make competitions go bad by turning their kids into little competition drones.

Parents push their kids hard and theres little middleground.

Charity, tolerance, honesty, virtue, hard work, accountability and self-reliance are all relevant today, but we need better teachers for this generation--not bellyaching nostalgia.

Kids didnt get here in a vaccuum, this has been building for generations.

Thanks Granpa...

I'm not sure which is worse, kids who think they are entitled to everything, or parents who never seem to be satisfied with their child's efforts to gain their approval. Also, which is worse? Kids who view their parents as their peers, or kids who are so afraid of their parents they can't even look them, or any other adult, in the eye? I think you have to teach your children accountability while at the same time giving them credit where credit is due. Children are entitled to many things from their parents. A loving home, food, clothing, shelter. A child shouldn't have to earn those things. On the other hand they must be taught that we usually don't get something for nothing. On the other hand (I know I'm running out of hands), sometimes we do get something for nothing in the form of a gift, for which we should be graciously appreciative. There has to be a happy medium between the type of parenting that says you have to buy your kid a Lexus when she turns 16 and the type of parenting that says you can't give your kid compliments.

This is nonsense. The berating of the next generation is getting so old.

Excellent article.

I find the Church, or at least local leaders, often Moms enable this kind of thinking all the time. The primary has a special event with games and everyone wins regardless of actually winning or even participating, we reward kids and give out certificates for showing up to church, seminary, or reading scriptures. We stopped giving out trophies at Church sports in many areas because it might make the losers feel bad, or feel like losers for guess what? Loosing!

We praise kids and adults alike often for doing very little, we have canceled most activities, plays, and service that my generation did all the time in the church being told it's because we might alienate or discourage some people who don't want to do the work.

We may consider ourselves in the world but not of it, yet we are influenced by the world and often slide downward with them, just at a level the world has already slid past making ourselves feel like we are doing better than we are.

My three-year old grandson, frustrated that his mother wouldn't let him do something said to her: "You're not the Mom. Dad's the Mom!"

I M LDS 2 - stating opinions or facts is not berating the next generation. People now days have a thin skin, can't even listen to an opinion without cliaming they are being berated.