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Help kids in age of entitlement  
  First published: Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Grandparenting just got tougher.
  
It's not enough anymore to baby-sit, to love, to encourage, to share, to attempt to instill values and ideals.

Now you have to be up-to-date on the new parenting methods.

But educators and researchers are struggling to define new parameters of parenting, circa 2007, says Jeff Zaslow in the Wall Street Journal.

The problem: Years of telling kids they are "special" is backfiring.

Excessive parental doting has created a culture of narcissism among college students, according to a study by a San Diego State University psychologist.

Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld, a Manhattan-based child psychiatrist, says everything is child-centered today. He says children are not learning how to be adults.

There is an age of entitlement going on," says my son, Andrew, who is the assistant principal of Conant High School in Jaffrey, N.H. He deals with 500 students on a regular basis. He knows from where kids are coming.

"But I don't know if it is just kids," he says. "It's almost a societal piece. Look at the litigations going on. People feel they're entitled to be reimbursed when something happens to them. They feel they are owed as opposed to working to get ahead."

Andy says kids live in Youtube.com and myspace.com and everybody is special there.

"There are no heroes anymore. We can all be a superstar," he says.

He says parents aren't much help.

"There's a message we are sending our children and it is to circumvent responsibility. If they don't do their homework and their grades suffer, the parents are in here fighting for them. Even in sports. Many kids feel no responsibility to be part of a team. Everyone wants to start at the top. No one wants to work their way up."

Andy says he and other teachers and administrators are trying to develop a curriculum that addresses individual uniqueness but at the same time holds kids responsible for their actions, to help youngsters learn to make choices, to understand they have the right to fail. But education, Andy says, can't solve everything.

"It starts when they are very young. Look at T-ball for little kids.

"Everybody gets a hit and everybody gets a trophy. There are no losers anymore," he says.

Jane Glenn Haas writes for The Orange County (Calif.) Register. E-mail her at jghaascox.net.