March 21, 2017
Interview with Richard Watts, author of the book Entitlemania
Mike Carruthers:
Parents today parent differently than before. What happened?
Richard Watts:
At some point the baby boom generation, which is our generation, decided that our parents were not really spending enough time with us, they were not going to our football games, they were kind of letting us live our own lives -and somewhere they made the decision that is was not going to happen to their kids.
Richard Watts, author of the book Entitlemania…
They were going to be these incredibly loving parents and love translated to attention and attention to dominating. And all of a sudden you’ve got kids that are basically friends and best friends with their parents.
As a result parents do a lot more for their kids and protect them from failure – and there are consequences to that.
The consequences are that they never really gain their own personal life experience. Much of what you gain in terms of knowledge and appreciation and success stems from failure. And if somebody’s taking away or stealing or robbing you of your opportunity to really hit barriers you really never get to identify what it is you like and what you don’t like.
Richard believes a good parent is willing to make the following statement to their child…
I do not want to be your friend. I choose to be your parent and as a parent I’m going to have to do things you’re not going to like and I don’t care. But I’m going to do it because I love you and I want to equip you for the days ahead.
