Entitlemania

I think we have reached a saturation point where, as parents, we have lost our way of using old rules to govern new ways of living.

Look at our kids. They are addicted to screens to the point that as parents we are the 'ughs' that inhabit their house. We have become those barking contradictory fools that demand they get home by midnight, driven by a friend because we are too drunk ourselves to drive our own car to go find them. Our credit cards are racked up with all sorts of app store spends and when we threaten them with 'grounding' they laugh and say ' well go ahead then because you are already standing in my room and this where I want to be anyways'.

So you wake up in the morning to them screaming at you as to why they are late to go out for a 'makeover', stumble into the kitchen to find empty four-litre ice cream containers, jello plastered all over the bench, and a string of ants eating their way through the honey smacko triple whipped cookie crumbs. The car is in for a service yet again from the countless taxi pickups you made as you ferry your ungrateful, unseeing being to and from soccer, football, basketball, party, after-party, shopping centre after shopping centre and guitar lessons home again.

You whine to your own parents that you are ignored, pushed, shoved, screamed, and threatened with "....you fucking touch my shit in my room again you CUNT AND I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU". All those lovely photo albums of that cute kid you once knew have disappeared into that unkempt, slovenly, obnoxious, jackass that now occupies your teenager’s bedroom. Your garden hose no longer reaches the end of the rose bushes as you trip over the empty bongs in the grass and that rank reek of male urine is what is killing the petunias.

Long gone are those dinners where you could at worst tell your child to 'shut up and eat dinner' and when you have threatened to smack them they have read you the riot act of 'indecent assault occasioning body harm' or 'you are one step away from a divorce'. You confide in your partner who has taken to rip their hair out in quiet away from the point of conflict and despite the years of their seemingly serene calmness they too have turned into the vice-Superintendent.

So what has technology taught you in the last decade that you thought you might avoid and unsuccessfully now live by. So the television wasn't that great a babysitter, was it? and your benign assumptions that your teenager isn't accessing porn largely went unfounded too. The idea that them having a mobile phone was your security of mind failed as you flick through the candid surveillance shots and video clips they had been sending through Snapchat without your knowledge.

So now you are standing there pointing your finger at me, the Internet and blaming me for your issues and lack of empathy for your situation. Well, it's like this folks. Your idea of security and well-being isn't valid anymore. Your kids entitlemania, need for consumerism, capitalist pig tendencies, insatiable greed for Youtube likes is where it’s all at. Long gone are the 'these are the house rules as we feed your kids all the shit that they could possibly need to turn your precious little bumpkins into the surly, selfish, and viperous soulless drones we need.

Entitlement is here to stay and the sooner you get used to the social surveillance you live within, the lock-step buy-this-then-that instructions and the countless ways we can turn your children against you then the sooner your lives will evolve from that sensitive new age generation blah rubbish you were fed the better.

Love, your entitlemania-ego-rendition-of-you as a fairy queen is long lost somewhere in there as you sob into your pillow. The only antidote to your sickness is wellness and no, Google doesn't have the answer and no amount of prescription drugs, yoga or clandestine flings with that nice person at work will help either.

This is where we as parents admit that it’s a tough road ahead and no tougher than the road ahead for our kids and what they have to face in life without their daily punching bag and foopie blanket to caress.

UPDATE: Here is a great article on the topic a couple of years later - https://hbr.org/2020/02/the-era-of-antisocial-social-media

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