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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was reading the Jobs and Careers forum when this question popped up:

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1194239.page

TLDR: A 22 year-old girl from a wealthy family is bemoaning how "everyone in her life has abandoned her" because... She has the privilege of ending up with a Computer Science degree from an excellent college. But still, she can only focus on the negatives in her life and not the wonderful blessings she has!

My sister is like this; my mom calls her an "injustice collector" as she regularly comes to family gatherings and blathers on about how "abusive" my mom and dad were to her as a child (spoiler alert: there was no abuse at all). Because of her extreme sensitivity, inflexibility, selfishness, and lack of empathy, my sister has had a middling career and a divorce (with no kids).

How do I avoid raising such selfish, entitled kids? My parents mostly raised my sister and I the same way, and we ended up totally different. My biggest fear would be for my kids to end up as "injustice collectors" like my sister or the post in the Jobs Forum that I linked above. [/quote]

I think it's worth looking at what's making that poster unhappy. She's spent four years hopped up on drugs to earn a degree in a field she hates because her parents made her. She's got no friends, no hobbies, nothing she does to make her happy. I don't think her issue is that she's entitled, it's that her life is kind of miserable. You can't control your kid's life enough to make sure they don't end up feeling that way, but do what you can.[/quote]

+1, there are a number of things about that OP's experience I have empathy for and are directly related to parental actions:

- Her parents moved across the country in the middle of her high school experience, destabilizing her social life right before she left for college. That's tough.

- Her parents pushed her into a major she has zero interest in based on earning potential, which both made her miserable during college and is setting her up to have zero enthusiasm for her career post college. She even has empathy for why her parents did this, understanding they fear her falling into the poverty they experienced as kids. But they were incorrect-- she would have been better off with a degree in a less lucrative but stable field she actually likes. This is someone who could be happy as a teacher, office administrator, medical technician, etc., all of which are stable, in demand careers her parents pushed her away from because they wanted her to be a "top earner."

[b]- Her parents clearly don't know how to offer emotional support or encouragement, which is a major reason she comes off as whiny and engaged in a lot of black and white and catastrophic thinking. You can teach kids emotional resilience by showing them how to weather difficult feelings and experiences. But you have to show up for them and let them know they aren't totally alone in their bad feelings, and definitely don't pile on with judgment and reprobation ("you have no reason to be unhappy, you have a Computer Science degree from a great school and should just stop complaining and get a job"). Empathy and being people your kid can come to with even petty problems can give them the support they need to work through those issues and then be more resilient out in the world.[/b]

Also I think that PPs college experience regarding Covid must have really sucked and her ex-bf was really harsh during their break up, it is no wonder she's struggling.[/quote]

Are we reading the same post? You seem deluded.

If you offer a kid (yes, maturity wise, she's a kid, not the 22 year old she actually is) as whiny as this "emotional support" or "encouragement," they will become even more self-pitying and won't do anything. [/quote]

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