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In this episode, Scott and Jess discuss raising resilient children who are not entitled, a common concern they hear from people who are skeptical about the style of parenting Jess teaches.
They explore how allowing children to experience natural disappointments and frustrations - while providing emotional support - actually helps develop crucial coping skills. Through practical examples like saying no to extra juice boxes and managing screen time boundaries, they demonstrate how parents can validate feelings while still maintaining limits.
Key takeaways from this episode include:
* The importance of letting kids engage in appropriate risky play
* Avoiding the trap of constantly trying to make children happy
* Understanding that building frustration tolerance is a vital life skill
Jess and Scott also challenge the narrative of "entitled generations," highlighting how modern kids face unique challenges that require parental understanding rather than judgment.
Get 10% OFF parenting courses and kids' printable activities at Nurtured First [https://nurturedfirst.com/courses/] using the code ROBOTUNICORN.
Learn more about the Solving Bedtime Battles course here [https://nurturedfirst.com/courses/solving-bedtime-battles/].
We'd love to hear from you! Have questions you want us to answer on Robot Unicorn? Send us an email: podcast@robotunicorn.net.
Credits:
Editing by The Pod Cabin [https://thepodcabin.com/]
Artwork by Wallflower Studio [https://www.wallflowerstudio.co/]
Production by Nurtured First [https://nurturedfirst.com/]
Join me, Jess VanderWier, a registered psychotherapist, mom of three, and founder of Nurtured First, along with my husband Scott, as we dive deep into the stories of our friends, favourite celebrities, and influential figures.
In each episode, we skip the small talk and dive into vulnerable and honest conversations about topics like cycle breaking, trauma, race, mental health, parenting, sex, religion, postpartum, healing, and loss.
We are glad you are here.
PS: The name Robot Unicorn comes from our daughter. When we asked her what we should name the podcast, she confidently came up with this name because she loves robots, and she loves unicorns, so why not? There was something about the playfulness of the name, the confidence in her voice, and the fact that it represents that you can love two things at once that just felt right.
Welcome to Robot Unicorn.
We are so glad that you are here.
As always, let's start the show with a question from Scott.
So the question today is
for you to answer for me, but I think a lot of other people wonder this as well.
How do we raise children that are not entitled?
It's a huge question.
Go.
No, I'm just kidding.
Because I think there is I don't want to say misconception, because I think can be correct, but there is the idea that let's say if you do
a style of parenting that aligns with the way you or we teach things here at Nurtured First, that you'll end up raising entitled children who think they deserve everything, whatever.
But I think just in general, that's always been the case that people think that the next generation is entitled.
So I wanted to have a discussion on that
I've wanted to have this discussion for a while.
Finally I broke you down.
He has been a well, you don't have to break me down, but you have been asking to talk about this for a while.
So I want to start by throwing the question back at you.
How would you define entitled
Yeah.
I should have found a definition for it, but off the top of my head, what I would think is that it's someone who
Thinks the world owes them everything, and they don't necessarily owe the world anything in return.
Interesting
So they think that they need to be given things and not return the favor to anyone else.
So they feel like they're owed everything and they don't have to give it back.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
No.
That's the way I think.
It's just I've heard this so many variations of this question over the years.
Jazz, don't you think this style of parenting overates entitled
kids and I think people when they say entitled kids they're talking about kids who act bratty, who act like they deserve everything, who don't feel like they ever have to wait to get something that they want.
If they want something they just get it
So along those lines I also get asked, Jess, how do we not raise snowflakes?
How do we not raise spoiled brats?
You know, and so I think that all those questions are kind of
aligned.
To be honest, I kind of get it.
I think there's a fine line maybe.
Let's say, for instance, in my situation, coming from the childhood that I grew up in.
I want my kids to have a better life than I ever had.
And I think a lot of people would agree that that's kind of the goal is to do things a little bit better for their kids.
But I think what often happens is parents then decide, you know what, I'm going to give my kids everything that they could ever want, that I could never have.
instead of thinking about what's truly important for their children to receive or develop?
I would put it simply and we don't like black and white statements, so we can dive into the nuance after this, but I think very simply
if you don't want to raise an entitled child, you can't raise your child with the goal of having them happy all the time.
And I think in terms of what you're saying, a lot of parents are like, I want to raise my kid better than how I was raised.
So better to them equals I want them to have everything and I never want them to have to wait for it and I want them to be happy.
And so then our goal becomes raising happy children.
And of course we we all want our kids to be happy.
We don't want to raise sad children.
So I think the goal it doesn't come from a hard place, but I think what can happen then is if our only goal is to keep our kids happy all the time and we never let them sit with discomfort and we never let them have a chance to
struggle or build resilience, then they learn to expect that the world should make them happy all the time.
And if they can't have the thing that makes them happy
they don't have the tools to cope with it.
And so I think that's where what you're trying to say, I think of gentle parenting, quote unquote, we don't use that, but like that's where that can get difficult if parents are only validating their children's feelings and only
doing the things to make sure that their children, you know, feel seen and feel heard, which are all important.
But they're not also holding boundaries and allowing their children to experience disappointment and letting them be frustrated about things
I think then we can get into a difficult spot with our kids feeling entitled.
It makes me think of and you can interrupt me at any time, because I'm just gonna go on a Jess rant right now.
But it makes me think of the other day
I shared the story on Instagram on Nurtured First.
But our daughter wanted to watch the movie Wild Robot.
They're reading that book in class right now and she's very interested in it.
She likes it a lot.
She knew the movie was coming out
And so she said, Mom, can we see if we can watch it?
And I didn't know if it was out on like a streaming platform yet or not.
So we looked.
It wasn't on any of the streaming platforms that we have.
And
it was on let's say Apple TV or something where I could purchase it.
And I said, no.
She goes, Mom, it's right there.
Just buy it.
I want to watch it.
And in that moment I knew I had a choice.
So I could either buy it
to keep her happy and to avoid her being disappointed about not being able to watch the movie she wanted to desperately watch, or I could give her an opportunity to experience being disappointed and having to wait for something.
And I chose that option
And I think that's the exact kind of circumstance we're talking about, right?
So if I didn't want her to be disappointed or sad, so I just bought it for her.
so that she would avoid that feeling, I actually would have had a missed opportunity to help her experience disappointment.
And I think
in today's day and age, it's so much easier to make our kids never be disappointed because it's easier to access things.
And that's kind of where this conversation had started stirring up between you and I this weekend.
It's something you've been talking about for a while, but I told you that and we were talking about how we used to go to Blockbuster and if you go and the movie's not there, well too bad
Two weeks later, when you come back, then try that time.
Maybe the movie will be there.
And that whole process of even going to Blockbuster as a kid and having to be disappointed when the movie wasn't there and going home being like, well, I guess
You know, next time.
That was important for us and building resilience and helping us learn how to cope with being disappointed.
And our kids don't have those opportunities quite as free
Frequently.
Yeah.
It's much more difficult.
I mean you buy something on Amazon and for whatever reason lately in our area, now it's same day shipping.
Like if you order it before noon, you can get it before you go to bed in the evening
Which is crazy.
Right.
And even that, there was something one of our kids wanted and they were like, Well, can't you just order it on Amazon?
And I just was thinking to myself, man, like we didn't even have online shopping when we were kids
I think my mom would get the Sears catalog at Christmas time and then you could maybe circle a couple of the things you wanted.
You had to bring it into the Sears store and then wait.
for it to get shipped in and then my mom had to have like a mail-in thing too in the center fold maybe it was like there's that uh yeah you could choose what you wanted and then mail it in and then you go to the Sears store and then you pick it up from there
And that was I would spend hours just looking through the Sears catalog.
Yeah, or yeah, I would look
through it for hours and then my mom says no to everything and then okay, well now I have to experience that disappointment, right?
Whereas our kids are growing up and like, oh my toy's broken, can you order a part to fix it?
And it can be there the same day.
Or a part to fix it.
I don't think that's very common.
Yeah.
That's common at our house.
Maybe it's more common at our house.
Yeah, that's true.
Scott's always known that's a side note as the good fixer.
Anything's broken and the girls are like, let's go to daddy.
He knows how to fix everything.
Yeah.
So in terms of rating raising entitled kids, I think it can be easy to do, especially when you're a parent
who maybe didn't have all these things when you were growing up and you want your child to have everything.
Yeah, like I would say for me, it would probably be easy to do that.
But I don't know, like because of say how hard I worked from a young age, I probably won't make them start working at like the age of eight at a local greenhouse or something, right?
Like I might let them wait a little bit, but on the other hand, they will have chores and things to do at the house.
And they won't be able to get every toy.
We personally don't believe that more toys is better
We want them to have time outside and exploring and coming up like this morning before we left, our two youngest daughters were talking about going to the moon this morning, so all of a sudden we
catch them in their room and the two of them are s one the youngest is sitting on the middle one's lap and they put their helmets on and they're
pretending to be on a rocket ship going to the moon, which is the light in their room, and then they get out and they're jumping on the moon and there's no toys involved.
That was just imaginative play.
And I think and tell me what you think about this, but I think a deeper rooted issue is
in a lot of these parents who are giving their kids everything to keep them happy is their own inability to sit with their children's disappointment.
So when your child is upset at you about something, that feels so uncomfortable for you, that your child's upset with you.
Right.
That you're like, I have to fix this right away.
And I can't have them upset with me because of whatever feeling that stirs up deep within yourself.
So whether that's something from your own childhood experiences, or just feeling uncomfortable with crying, maybe it's overstimulation, but
our own inability to allow our kids to be unhappy.
Isn't that just being a parent though?
Like, oh no, how can you be that uncomfortable with that that's literally having children?
They're constantly disappointed and not getting exactly what they want.
I agree, but I do think there is a common theme in the work that even we're seeing at the therapy practice of parents feeling like
And maybe it's like just too much parenting information that's overwhelming them, but feeling like they're failing their kids if their kids are disappointed or crying or unhappy with them
Right.
And this is why I'm trying to say, like I think there's so many different themes that can come up internally that can make parents feel that way.
So whether it's their own triggers, right?
Maybe they remember being a kid and not getting what they wanted and maybe their parents didn't respond as good as they're responding to their own kids, right?
Maybe they got
A spanking for crying or something like that.
And they just don't want their kid to ever feel the way that they felt.
Maybe they're highly sensitive and they're just like, I can't deal with your crying.
So I'm just gonna give you the thing that you want so that you stop crying
Okay.
So what did people say on that post?
Was there any negative feedback?
Because I know in the past when we talked about like we stayed
Over the weekend in Niagara Falls one weekend.
And we didn't get a milkshake for our one daughter and she was like
major meltdown because of it.
People in the comments just said, like, why would you not have purchased that for her?
Yeah.
You can, so why wouldn't you?
Yeah, that story really triggered a lot of
people.
I said how we went on a weekend away.
They had lots of treats and everything.
We are going into a store for something else, a free sample, because
I'm not buying a $15 milkshake.
I'm sorry, to Niagara Falls, but that's not happening.
And I told the kids, like we are not purchasing anything.
We have a coupon for This is me too, right?
This is our family values.
But we have a coupon for a free.
Chocolate, we're coming in for that.
Well, doesn't our four-year-old or three year old at the time see this giant picture of a milkshake just like
Oh and that's the only thing that she ever wanted in her entire life.
Yeah, she c she can't remember anything.
Like she can't remember anything else in her whole life.
It's just this milkshake.
And it was game over
And she was crying and she was upset and she was begging me for the milkshake.
What Scott and I also know is she's overstimulated.
It's been a long day.
Yeah, it was time to go home.
It was busy.
She was tired.
So we know it's not about the milkshake.
She feels like her whole existence now revolves around this milkshake.
And we said no.
We carried her out of the store screaming and we went to our van and like we were already going home, but then it was time to go home.
And I shared that story and people were so upset with me.
They were like, Jess, what do you mean you didn't buy her the milkshake?
Like you're there.
You should just get it for her.
You can, so why wouldn't you?
How awful to be your daughter and be in a milkshake store and not get a milkshake and
People were angry at me for that post.
And that's exactly what we're talking about here where we sometimes fear so much our children being upset with us.
that we never give them an opportunity to be disappointed by something.
Where I actually think her being disappointed by the milkshake and we narrated it, we stayed really calm.
Lots of hugs.
Lots of hugs.
I get it.
So hard.
You really wanted a milkshake.
You couldn't have one today.
And she had an opportunity to feel
disappointed by something.
And now I'll say that was almost a year ago, a year later.
She still gets like that sometimes.
But even now I can see her tolerance for disappointment increasing
Yeah.
Like she said something in the car the other day that blew us both away.
Like, I forget what it was.
We had said something that would normally have led to a huge meltdown and she's Oh, that's been happening a whole bunch lately.
She was just like, It's okay, Daddy.
That's fine.
And she just tolerated it.
And it showed us that, okay, those two years of really helping her cope with disappointment.
Yeah.
It's just slowly developing.
She's getting better and better at doing it's just with as her brain develops that's
Like you teach.
It makes sense that she's able to handle it more and more.
Like you don't want to do the opposite.
Like I think on one hand people say, Oh, well just buy it for her.
That's what they want, so just get it Which is not necessarily helpful when that was not our plan.
That's not what we were going in there for.
But on the other hand, I think some people can be very harsh about it too.
And then you're like crushing them.
Get crushing their spirits.
Yeah.
That's her whole life revolved around that.
Like only
A year and a half before was she not even really talking all that much.
Like she was not that far off from being a baby and now all of a sudden the expectations have changed for what they should be able to do and understand
And I will say that story is where some people will be like, see, that's an entitled kid because she's crying over not getting a milkshake.
Or that's a bratty kid.
Or that's a kid who can't handle anything.
And so I knew I was going to get to this point because in the conversation, that's why I asked you what your definition of entitled is
Because we also have to look at the brain development and see I wouldn't even consider a child that young to be entitled.
Yeah, but they're basically That's because you're logical.
Like the way I talk about her toddler now is she's essentially a golden retriever.
Like she's mostly happy go lucky and then she kind of bites
at you at times and like get too close, she'll bite bite at you a little bit.
Yeah, that's kind of like how she operates at this point.
And her I can't remember what it's called.
The upstairs and downstairs brain, the lizard brain, whatever you wanna call it.
That's like mostly in control versus her upstairs brain.
Which is where logic and reasoning is formed.
It's developing and it will take a long time to fully develop.
Hey friends, so at pickup last week our daughter asked Scott a truly kind of tricky question in front of her younger siblings.
Scott was telling me that when he heard a question like this, he used to panic, but this time he had a plan.
And he said to our daughter, thank you for asking.
Let's talk tonight when we've got privacy.
And that's a line that he learned straight from our new body safety and consent course at Nurtur.
So this new body safety and consent course is taught by me.
So Jess, if you listen to this podcast, you know me.
I'm a child therapist and a mom of three, and I have taught body safety and consent education for years.
This course takes all my years of experience teaching this education and gives you calm, age-appropriate language for body parts, consent, and boundaries.
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safe touch and you'll even teach them about their uh oh feeling.
There's guidance inside this course for the real life stuff like tickling that goes too far and even the difference between a secret and a surprise.
We made this course at Nurture First because research shows that body safety education helps kids speak
sooner and we want that for our family, for Scott and I, but also for you.
So check the course out at nurturefirst.
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And just full disclosure here, we are the creators of this course and we're so proud of it.
So I heard a story.
This is why I'm I'm thinking about this.
I heard a story.
It was a grandparent's story.
And their grandchild was having a huge meltdown because this child's sister broke her tower, right?
Okay, so the little sister breaks the three-year-old's tower.
three year old starts crying and hitting the sister and the grandparent comes up and goes, You're such a brat.
You always get what you want and see?
And they start yelling at the parents, see, this is what happens.
Like
You always give her what she wants and you always are validating her feelings and now look at her, she hits her sister.
And I think a lot of
People who maybe don't truly understand the style of parenting that we're teaching and that you are doing if you're listening to this podcast
see all the validating of feelings and stuff like that when the kids are like two, three, four, five and they're still having those huge tantrums and they're still hitting and they don't see it as quote unquote working.
Yeah
And then they start getting angry at their own kids or whatever, right?
Being like you're raising entitled kids.
But what they don't understand is that
they are doing what they need to do.
Like children have to have tantrums around these kind of things.
Our daughter had to have that big meltdown.
She was overstimulated and she wasn't getting what she wanted.
And that doesn't mean she was Braddy.
It means she was three.
And so I find myself getting a little bit frustrated hearing that Is that fair though, to get frustrated at people who don't understand?
No
It's probably not fair, but I just feel like I hear these stories all the time.
Yeah, I mean you're getting thousands of messages daily, right?
So then And w people are getting mad at three-year-olds for doing things that three-year-olds should be doing
Yeah.
And calling them entitled brats when their whole job at age three is to have big emotions and maybe I've just never heard people say that.
'Cause I feel like that is not at all where my mind would go.
My mind would go towards like older kids and teenagers and whatever And definitely that too.
I hear a lot of stories about that age group as well.
Which I don't know, that's I w wouldn't even consider children that are like preschool and younger I wouldn't even think that people would consider that them entitled.
'Cause they're just little.
Maybe like an old grandmother or something like that.
But I don't know.
That doesn't really make sense to me.
I can understand it as kids get older.
So our oldest child is getting close to well let's say seven and a half now.
I could foresee her age group and older.
Yeah
People starting to talk about them.
Yeah, because if we look at brain development and the five to seven shifts that we've talked about on this podcast that happens, so that's where their brain starts to be able to access logic and reasoning a little bit more
we start to see that integration of the prefrontal cortex to the rest of the brain.
If they haven't had the opportunities when they're young to express their disappointment, learn how to cope with it
learn how to tolerate discomfort and be angry in healthy ways.
Now they reach age eight, nine, ten, but they don't have those tools.
And so I can see that that's where you're saying, well, now they look a lot more entitled because at age eight, nine, ten, they're bigger and now they're asking for
things like phones or devices and their tantrums that maybe they had at age two that we could cope with and they're cute.
Maybe now they're bigger and they can actually hurt someone and they can actually throw things that could cause real damage
So I see what you're saying in that those kids can seem more entitled because they're older.
And I feel at the same time that once again they just they haven't developed the skill yet.
So
I guess the question I'm thinking is, let's say as parents, like for us, the two of us, our goals for our kids are to help them
Make friends to excel socially as well as academically and with their abilities and all that.
Like
So because we value that for them and we want to help them develop those things, teaching them to tolerate frustration and building some resilience, we understand the value of
But I can imagine some parents thinking like, well, they're kids, so they don't deserve to deal with negative things yet.
Let them be innocent.
Let their lives be cushy until they're older.
So how do we teach kids to have some resilience?
or give them the opportunities to have some resilience and what is the benefit in doing so, right?
Because if you just say, hey, kids need to deal with frustration and they need to build resilience, you're not answering the question why
Right.
And I think it could be easy to take that and be like, okay, kids need to deal with discomfort or they need to build resilience.
For what purpose?
Right.
For what purpose.
And what I think about is being an adult, right?
So let's think about being an adult.
How many times in our day or in our lives do we have to deal with a situation happening that we don't like that makes us feel disappointed?
Or we have to wait for something, right?
Like you're in line for coffee and it's slow and you have to wait and you have to sit there, you weren't expecting to, it's frustrating.
Like frustration is just a part of our day-to-day lives and it is with our kids too.
And so I think when we're talking about building the tolerance for frustration for our children, it's not about
Adding in more things to their lives so that they have to feel frustrated and disappointed.
It's about taking the opportunities where naturally our child is gonna feel frustrated or disappointed.
And instead of fixing it for them and being like
No, no, I never want you to feel upset, so I'm just gonna fix this for you all the time.
Giving them that opportunity and then coaching them through it so that they learn how to cope with it.
So that as they get older and you're not there to fix their problems all the time, because you won't.
Eventually they're gonna go to school, they're gonna go to kindergarten or grade one.
And you're not gonna be there when a peer takes a snack from them and they're mad and they don't know how to cope with that anger, right?
Or they are doing a subject in school that they don't like and is hard and they're really frustrated by it
we're not gonna always be there.
And so if we spend their entire childhood, all the years that they're at home with us, or at daycare or whatever, but like those first four or five years, if we
take any opportunity where they could learn how to be frustrated in a healthy way away from them, then we're not equipping them to go off into school.
So that's why it's important for them to learn it.
But I don't think that parents have to go in and like add in more frustrating situations.
Yeah, right.
You don't have to specifically build resilience and like
push them so hard that you're like your trauma.
But they break.
Yeah, let's not break our kids.
That's old school.
We don't need to break their will or whatever.
Like but think about our toddler.
So some days I just laugh at her, not to her face obviously, but
She just acts like her life is just so tricky, right?
So she asks we often smile.
We smile to ourselves.
Yeah.
Raising a toddler is it is entertaining at times.
So she's allowed one juice box.
Let's say this is Saturday, we had some apple juice boxes in the fridge.
She's allowed to have one juice box in an afternoon, and then after that it's water.
That's the rule
So she adds her one juice box, barely finishes it, has like three sips, leaves it somewhere, and then an hour later she opens the doors to her fridge and she wants another juice box.
And I say, okay, where's the juice box that I gave you?
You have one in an afternoon.
That's the rule.
Doesn't know where it is.
Okay, well let's go find it.
Immediate meltdown.
Tears, laying on the floor, hitting her hands on the floor.
And in that moment, I have a choice.
Do I let her be disappointed about not having a juice box?
Or do I want to fix this so quick that I just give her another juice box?
I know the tears will stop.
I know I won't have to hear crying.
But what does that teach her?
Right.
So that's an example of just a day-to-day opportunity that our childs have to experience disappointment.
Why would she not want to?
And that's where my coaching comes in, right?
So then I get on her level and I say, Oh, you really wanted another juice box?
And I'm saying, No, that's tricky.
Yeah, that's so tricky.
She's like crying, right?
Like yeah I know.
Ugh sometimes I want a couple juice boxes too and I can only have one too and this is hard.
It is tricky
And she just cries and cries and maybe tries to hit me a little bit and I just hold her hands and say, Ah, you can't hit me, but you can be sad.
And I give her a chance to feel frustrated.
Right?
Same thing with our four-year-old.
She's maybe upset because I said you can watch one more episode of Elena of Avalor and then we're turning it off, and now it's time to turn off Elena and
She wants to watch another one.
Of course she does.
She's four.
She's watching TV.
She's gonna always want to watch more TV.
But I turn off Elena, and now she's mad at me
And she's huffing and puffing around the room and crying.
And I'm validating her feelings and allowing her to be disappointed about it.
It would be easier to turn Alina back on, but that's not giving her an opportunity for disappointment
Yeah.
And I think that's where to your point about the gentle parenting movement, maybe contributing to raising entitled kids, I think if you don't hold boundaries but you only validate feelings, you could get into some tricky territory there
Yeah, and I also think, let's say when it comes to and you might tend to do this more often.
Oh, here we go.
I was waiting for this.
Were you?
Yeah.
the term helicopter parent where you're kind of always making sure they're safe and they're never really traveling too far outside of the bounds and they're not really experiencing new things and learning from the mistakes that they make.
Like let's say if they're outside, you might be more tempted to go out there and be like, be careful girls, don't don't jump off the rocks and don't don't do this.
Don't climb the tree.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Versus I will be more likely to just kinda let them do those things within reason of course, but like to climb a tree.
That doesn't bother me with the trees that we have because they're quite low.
And they wouldn't hit the ground, they would probably hit one of the other lower branches which are gonna soften any fall that they have
So I'm not like I'm not too concerned about that because they're not very tall.
And I think the two different ways of doing it.
I think you're getting better at that.
I have to
Because I am a person who tends to be anxious.
Yeah.
You're worried about them getting hurt, which makes sense.
Yeah.
But what I do also know about child development and kids is that they need risky play to learn, right?
So there has to actually be some risk.
Yeah.
Not like not ever playing on the road or something like that kind of risk.
But like Well, even that sometimes though is okay, like I was driving through a subdivision close to us and the kids
That were playing there, they're playing road hockey, and they put out some of those like little pylon things.
Right.
Just to make you slow down.
So they were taught how to play on the road.
Right.
Yes.
It's not as though there's no risk, but they are being intelligent about how they play on the road because they were taught how to.
Yeah.
And like let's say in our backyard, there's very few things that are truly going to hurt our kids.
So let's say something a trimmer that I might use for branches or something like that is locked away so they can't touch these sharp things.
But they could fall climbing a tree and
walk away with some scrapes and bruises and that's okay.
Yeah, or they're running too fast and they trip and fall and they scrape their knee.
Like that's not I personally don't see a problem with that because I feel like that helps to
Maybe this is not the right way to say it, but like toughen them up a little bit.
Because when you have, oh we had the conversation about the bus.
Mm-hmm.
The bus, yeah.
You were worried because they had an over an hour long bus ride to get to school and they were complaining about it and we live we live in like a more rural area, just in case you're like, how does that the case?
And I said to you
If the thing that they have to complain about is the fact that their bus ride is too long and that's pretty much the worst thing for them.
I think their life is okay.
Yeah.
And honestly they like the bus ride now.
Yeah, they like it now.
It just took them some time to get used to something that was that long.
And it's making me think this conversation about allowing our kids to be uncomfortable or doing something that like leads to some frustration for them
If we also never allow our child to do something that feels uncomfortable for them or that might build some frustration, I think it can also lead to raising anxious children.
Yeah.
We can see that in the kids that we work with at our practice
Parents often are so worried, ironically, about their kids being anxious that they don't let their kids do any of the things that make them feel anxious.
And I could foresee that for our girls if
Like you aren't a helicopter parent, but like you kind of hover over them sometimes when they're doing more risky play outside.
Yeah, I'd say maybe that's my default.
Could be
When it comes to risky play or when it comes to things that I know I would have felt anxious about as a child, I can like over empathize with my kids.
And make it makes it hard for me to be like, no, wait, you need to make this mistake on your own or you need to do this for yourself and I can't do it for you.
I want them because I feel like you would freak out if they grabbed like a snake or uh
frog or something from our garden?
That actually wouldn't bother me as long as they didn't get near me with the snake or the frog.
Okay.
Okay.
I just don't want to be touched by a snake or the snakes that we there's
Or in Canada.
Nothing actually.
No, well at West they have poisonous here where we live in Ontario, there's nothing really.
We probably have like the safest.
Yeah, in terms of animals.
Yeah.
So
There's nothing concerning really for them to be playing with in our yard.
I'll need to fact check this research, but I think you'd find this interesting.
It came from something I was reading from Jonathan Hayde, who wrote the book The Anxious Generation, which Scott and I have yet to read.
But the fact check is that apparently the rate of broken arms
has significantly decreased in children in the last number of years.
I don't know how many years.
But now the rate of broken arms is equivalent to the rate of broken arms in like a 50-year-old man.
Whereas it used to be like children had way higher rate of broken arms.
And he was sharing that research and something that I was reading from him in reference to how little risky play kids have now
And how they're much more likely to be inside or on a screen and they don't have the ability to maybe be outside as much and break their arms or engage in that risky play that gives them the bruises and the scrapes
Anyway, I thought that was interesting, but I can I can look up some.
Seems to be correct.
Yeah.
It's also showing that apparently
Which makes sense.
COVID, the pandemic also changed the amount.
But yeah, age and activities, like outdoor activities and stuff.
has reduced.
Yeah we might have to look and and add to that but I just thought that research was interesting and we can just talk about that in a whole other episode but
bringing it back to entitled children.
So children who think that they're owed everything and they have to do everything themselves.
If we take away their risky play, their ability to be outside and we like make all the decisions for them in terms of like how to stay safe and
out of play and making sure they're never sad.
It makes sense that if we are so intensively parenting them and being those helicopter parents and never letting them be sad and making being happy the goal of being a kid
that they would hit the ages of eight, nine, ten and to no fault of their own, not be able to cope with frustration or disappointment.
And they would act entitled
and act like they're owed everything in the world because they've been given everything in the world up until this point.
Yeah.
And it's still possible.
So if you have a child that's
7, 8, 9, 10, and you're like, oh shoot, guys, this was me.
I've been doing all the validation, but I've been having a really hard time holding boundaries.
It's not too late.
You can still teach your kids how to tolerate the case.
It's holding boundaries, letting them have di disappointing situations, letting them get cuts and scrapes and bruises and that kind of stuff
Yeah, there's a whole bunch of different pieces to it.
Again, I think the idea is that it's within reason.
Like you're not letting them climb on top of the roof and hang off the side of the roof or something like that.
Mm-hmm.
But yeah.
Anyways, go on.
Yeah, I just want to give a message of hope to parents so that they know even if their kid is that age and
they're realizing that they don't know how to cope with discomfort, it's not too late.
Yeah.
And you can always start setting and holding boundaries.
And I think it's all it is kind of connected.
Like if you think about
that age and maybe the boundary that is not there is around screen time and they're not getting outside and doing that risky play because they're playing on an iPad for hours or something like that.
you're still the leader and you're still able to make those changes and your child is when whenever they have a boundary for the first time and they have to experience disappointment for the first time or frustration.
it's gonna be really hard for them.
So they're gonna need a someone who's right there beside them to coach them through it and support them.
And just like they did when they were toddlers, they're still gonna have tears and meltdowns.
It might look bigger 'cause they're older.
But being there to coach them through it and support them.
you can still make those changes and still give them those chances.
I've thought about this a lot with our girls and I personally
think that helping them build resilience and helping them understand that disappointment is okay and that it can be overcome, it will help them be
Not more productive, but like it'll almost be a superpower for them later in life.
Mm-hmm.
Because maybe it's true like
We as parents have so many things pulling at us that we have to help our kids with.
But if we can help them build some of that resilience and that mental strength.
to handle difficult situations and move on from it and keep going.
It's not the end of the world if something doesn't go our way.
I
truly think that that's a superpower that we're helping our kids with.
On top of, hey, we're helping them develop amazing relationships and they know what a positive and negative relationship looks like and they know it's safe and not safe.
And
Like all of these different things that we're helping them learn from a young age, when they get older, that in addition to having resilience
and a frustration tolerance, like it's going to stand out amongst everyone else.
Yeah, absolutely.
I I had an example in my head.
I was trying to see if I could make it work.
But I always get the question of like, well, how does this work in the real world?
You know, punishment-free discipline, let's say.
Because if in the real world, if something happens at work, they can't just yell at their boss if they're angry or something like that at work.
And be because the let's say the grandparents seeing the kid yell at their parent.
And I always say, Yeah, you're right.
Like we don't want our kids to grow up and think it's okay to yell at people and
to s resolve conflict through fights or through yelling.
And that is why we're helping them when they're young.
And that is why we're taking a yelling child and we're pausing with them and we're taking deep breaths and we're saying, is this what you're feeling?
Like does that sound right
We're giving them the words for their actions.
So that someday when they're older, if they're mad at their boss, they don't have to yell at them.
They know how to take a few deep breaths
They know how to self-reflect on this frustrated feeling that they have and they know how to speak those words back to their body.
Yeah, exactly.
They know how to have that because they learned that at an early age.
And I feel like
Hate to say it, but that's a gift.
A yuck.
Is it profound too?
It is.
Okay.
You know it is.
Interesting
Yeah.
Interesting.
Wow.
I was thinking about that recently with let's say in terms of punishment and like bribe-free parenting like we've talked about.
And how that relates to the real world.
I feel like the real world does not necessarily reward you or punish you fairly.
You get rewards and punishments kind of
Like it isn't necessarily related to how you perform in society.
Because some things you'll do well and you're not going to get rewarded for it.
You might do the right thing and get punished for it.
And
Vice versa, like you might do the wrong thing and still get rewarded for it.
So I just think if what we're trying to do is teach our kids to do things
through punishing them or rewarding them for doing the wrong or right thing.
You're not giving them the ability to just make decisions because they feel like that's
the right thing to do.
They know logically this is how something should be done.
Like maybe your child is going to grow up to be a social justice hero and is going to help solve a bunch of social issues that we have in the world.
I kinda doubt they're gonna be rewarded for that work.
Like you have to have an inherent like internal reward system to be able to do those things because
The world is not likely going to reward you for that.
I think you just hit on such an important point, like that internal reward system, where again, back to the topic of entitlement
another way I think to raise a child who can't function well as an adult is to like base their worth on the things that they're doing or praise.
from other people, right?
Because then you become an adult, you're right.
And you could do the best work in the world.
This is a terrible example, not to use myself, but
I was feeling kind of down and out last week because I felt like I was putting out so much content, like really, really, truly trying to support families.
And I opened like ten angry messages from Great Aunt Ruth in a row.
And it's like it doesn't matter, like, if I base my worth off those messages or off positive or negative messages.
I couldn't do this job.
Like you have to have that internal sense of I'm doing this for a greater purpose and I feel confident within myself
And I want to raise our girls to feel that same internal confidence and not rely on other people to make them know that they're worthy and that they're enough.
Mm-hmm.
So I I think well maybe that's a whole other episode on how to build that internal confidence.
I think there's a challenge
Maybe specifically in Western society, like growing up in Canada, and I'm sure it's like this in the US and other parts of the Western world too, but we're very individualistic.
And therefore everything is about bettering my life and even if that comes at the expense of someone else.
Mm-hmm.
Because why should I care about them?
I'm what's the term?
Pulling myself up by my bootstraps and it's me, me, me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I deserve this when again the world disproportionately rewards and punishes people not based on necessarily doing the right thing.
So I think, let's say in Canada, we are very individualistic.
We don't care that much about others.
So that can also lead to
If that's ingrained in children from a young age, like you are meant to make the right decision for yourself, it's going to benefit you, and you have a hard time helping them understand how their decisions affect others and
I don't know.
I just feel like that in itself, it's the culture kind of working against us.
Like you say, hey, you're an entitled child, but our society sort of
creates that.
Yeah.
And what are we modeling to our children too, right?
Yeah.
If we are entitled adults and we need to look inward, maybe, because maybe we're adults thinking that we deserve everything too, right?
And that could be for a variety of reasons, but I know that that happens too.
Yeah.
Well, it's just like with us doing this this work, we're under no illusion that we
deserve to be doing this.
We're gonna do it for as long as we possibly can.
We're gonna try and help as many people.
But we often talk about if this for whatever reason doesn't work out, what are we gonna do?
Mm-hmm.
Like 'cause we think we're kind of lucky to be in the situation that we're in and we want to help as many people, but the tides can turn and change and all of a sudden we have to find other work.
Well, and I also feel like the work that we're doing, we've always been focused on like we do try and focus on the collective, right?
Like I think even within our business at Nurture First or Robot Unicorn
it would be easy for us to just look at ourselves and be like, okay, how can we make the most possible money in this business?
Right?
And if that was our goal
To like get ourselves or like be the most famous or whatever and just kinda toot our own horns and make ourselves look great.
We could have done it
Like there's lots of people out there who would have helped us go around our morals and ethics to kind of get to that point, but we chose not to.
And that's important for us to model to our children as well.
That
Just because you can do something that maybe would make your life better or easier.
Yeah, for you personally.
But if it doesn't
help others in the collective group of people, then you really need to reflect on that decision.
And that's been something that's been really important to us always.
It's like always thinking back to who we're supporting and who we're helping and not making decisions just based on like what would benefit you and I the most.
And it's really important to me that our kids see that too and that they grow up realizing that they can help others and it's not just all about them.
And I think that that will help them grow up as well to not be entitled people to have that mindset and to have that modeled to them from an early age
Now one argument I would say for we being millennials, we heard it, and I don't know if people still say this now.
Maybe it's about Gen Z now, I don't know.
But that we are entitled and we think we deserve more than
were given.
But the flip side of that is, let's say for us as adults who are millennials, it's m far more difficult for us to purchase a house.
It's far more difficult for us to let's say
Have the life that even our parents did based on the amount of money that they made at that time.
And
We're also, I think, maybe it's our generation, maybe the kind of generation following us, but there's a much bigger focus on mental health.
as well, which I think is great.
I think there is another side to the story that people don't really think about.
It's more challenging to even do something like own a house compared to what it was
25 years ago.
Yeah, I see what you're getting at.
And I feel like maybe that's a nice part to end it at.
I think a lot of people say, Gen Z, they're so entitled, you know
entitled Generation.
And I think if you look at Gen Z and all they've had to go through, sure, okay, the global pandemic, so
For a lot of kids that means in and out of schools for like three years, in their most important time to learn how to socially develop and be with their peers
They are competing with technology and technology informs that we've never had when we were kids.
We had a home computer.
They have a computer on their phone with them 24 hours a day that they have to compete with.
They have to look at their parents who are on their phone and look at the back of their parents' phone and compete for their attention in ways that we never had to.
In terms of school, they have AI, like there's just so many things that this generation has working against them
And then for us to just label them entitled, I think is incredibly unfair and doesn't take into account all the things that they have.
And so I would love to see kids in a whole different light
and be like, how can we help them?
How can we help them build their frustration tolerance and their ability to cope with discomfort?
How can we help them build an internal confidence?
And I mean as a therapist that's what I do, but I would just love to see them in a different light and just stop calling kids entitled.
I think that would be a great change that we could make.
I agree.
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