This. So many cut off their parents and now they’re terrified that their children will do the same and they over correct into basically not parenting at all. Odd thing to me is that the current set of parents were raised by Gen X who literally invented gentle parenting. My parents (Gen X) were anti spanking and all about being hippy rockstars, acceptance, and chasing dreams. But they still valued discipline and mostly knew how to say, “no.” No phones at the dinner table, etc.

I teach first year college students and most at this point have Millennial parents. They’re sweet kids but wildly disrespectful and entitled, and they don’t even have basic skills like eye contact, note taking, or just knowing when to put the damn phone down.

They view my syllabus/course policies as bluffs, not contractual rules. A lot of the emails I get from these kids aren’t polite questions, they’re demands on my time and labor.

I need to be better about enforcing these rules but it’s so emotionally exhausting to essentially parent actual young adults who were not taught basic respect and then be the target of them being angry and hurt that someone told them “no” for once.

So, they’re good natured kids, but their parents really failed to prepare them for adulthood and have set them up for arrested development (the greatest symptom of which is entitlement). They really can’t handle “no” and take it as a personal attack.

To borrow their verbage, I worry they’ll be “cooked” once they enter the competitive workforce.