The Entitlement Trap

So I pre-ordered the book "The Entitlement Trap", hoping I would have won one of the prizes for pre-ordering :), but mainly because I had read some of it while we were at Bear Lake and loved it. Sure, i might be a little bit bias, but i really do think Rick and Linda have really great ideas on parenting.
So it came today and I have read throught the first chapter and a half, and it has really got me thinking. Of course it has gotten me thinking a ton about parenting and the little things I am doing with my little kids that is already breeding them for entitlement and how I want to change them and try to do better. Over the past week or two i have been thinking about teaching my kids responsibility. And it has been conflicting in my mind: being really strict about taking care of things vs. not putting too much amphasis on the material things. I have been trying to figure out how i want to handle it. Like the most recent things I have been thinking about is taking care of things in the house, especially furniture. I want my kids to respect things and show that by taking care of them, but I also really like it when they do imaginative play and use the couch pillows for landing pads, and our couches are very well worn, to put it lightly, so i don't want to make a big deal about keeping them pristine. But on the other hand I want my kids to know that furniture is very expensive and needs to be taken care of. That is really simple example of some of the things that have been swimming in my head about teaching respect, but not wanting to put too much of an emphasis on the importants of "things" in general.
But the main thing I have been thinking about while reading just these few pages thus far in the book is the theories of teaching p.e that were so ingrained in my head from my classes when i was getting my master's degree. In a nutshell, it was taught over and over again that it is SO IMPORTANT for kids to have a good experience in physical activity, i.e. P.E classes. So as a teacher you needed to be sure kids liked P.E. Now some professors taught you to praise kids, and really give them positive affirmations. Other professors taught you to make the kids work really hard with fun activities for physical education, but be sure the kids were always moving and working and, hopefully, sweating. And while reading this book, I keep relating the ladder to parenting. Every class i taught, and team I coached, that I made work extremely hard, almost to the point of over-exhaustion, came out on top. The students and the athletes that tried hard and stretched themselves loved it and achieved so much.
I need to remember this in parenting. I wasn't always the nicest teacher, or the most friendly coach, but by golly my kids (volleyball players and students) learned a lot and loved it. (Although, they didn't love it all that much when I made them sweat before they had another class to go to right afterwards, or my teams didn't love it when they were having to fulfill their consequences of a lot of dive lines.) But by the end of the semester, or the end of the season, they loved it. And more importantly they respected me and believed in themselves.

And that is what I want for my own children.

So I may not be the "nicest" mom along the way, or the mom that always gives praises and flowers at any trivial effort. But hopefully through the years, as I implement some of my coaching philosophies into my parenting, my kids will come out on top. Meaning they will believe in themselves, they will know that hard work brings joy and setting goals and accomplishing them, even when they are hard, stretches us and makes us strong.
And they won't feel entitled to every little thing.


Yep, I hope someday I will be as good of a parent, as I was a coach.