Kids These Days...

I feel like I'm an old fart or something, but more and more younger folks that I meet online these days seem like they didn't have a good upbringing. Their parents did a terrible job if they let them grow up to be such self-centered, uncaring people.

It seems like a lot of kids were brought up with the idea that they are entitled to happiness. It's almost as if their parents catered to their every whim and spoiled them until they could no longer comprehend not getting what they want without putting forth effort.

A parent's job is not to provide kids with everything they want. Parents are supposed to provide for their child's needs, but another big part of their job is teach their kids the right lessons. Happiness is not something people are entitled to. Happiness is something people work hard to achieve.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that much of the value in things that make a person happy comes from the effort in achieving it. Isn't it much more rewarding to work hard to achieve a goal and then eventually achieve it?

Without this basic lesson, these spoiled kids end up being emotionally unable to understand how to find happiness in life. Everything in their life that doesn't go their way defies their whole world view so is incomprehensibly shattering. Everything that does go their way provides minimal happiness because that's merely the way things should be.

It makes me sad how clueless so many parents are. I wonder if they even comprehend that they are ruining their children's lives. I consider myself lucky that I have great parents.