Just when you think you can’t be shocked by anything kids do these days, there’s this story in our own state: Rachel Canning, a high school senior in Lincoln Park, is suing her parents to force them to pay the remainder of her private high school tuition and college beyond. Oh, and she wants them to pay her legal fees so she can sue successfully. This story has gone hugely viral and as always, there are two sides, but at the heart of it is a tragedy about a parent-child relationship that has gone wrong, very wrong.
Since when did Canning figure that going to private school was a right and not a privilege? When did parents in general have an obligation to pay for any kind of school? Canning is a spoiled, entitled brat who is setting new standards for bad behavior. I feel sorry for her but even more sorry for her parents, who are feeling the fury of a child scorned. Even sadder is that they raised this monster whose behavior has to be a reflection of some of the values they imparted in their upbringing. Where did they go wrong?
Every family has its own approach when it comes to deciding who pays for what. Some parents feel kids should pay for all of college and even the shampoo they use in the house; others feel that it’s their responsibility to educate their progeny. Others set conditions: get straight As and we’ll pay the whole kit and caboodle; anything else and you’re on your own, kid.
Canning claimed her parents kicked her out of the house; her parents said that she left on her own because she didn’t like their rules. It’s not the first time this kind of she said/they said drama has been played out, but never before so nakedly in public with a worldwide audience thanks to social media and a voracious 24/7 news cycle.
So many kids today have an exaggerated sense of their importance when they really don’t have any context about the real world. Have we coddled them so much that they can turn on us in such a vicious and self-centered fashion? Don’t they understand that actions have consequences? Do they appreciate what they have or take everything for granted? Adults, even the best intentioned, can feed this sense of entitlement.
Case in point: the recent “affluenza” case in Texas, where a judge literally gave a teenage drunk driver a get-out-of-jail-free card, even after he killed four people in an alcohol-soused joyride. The argument was that he couldn’t be held accountable for his actions because he was raised by wealthy parents who never set any limits for him.
Ethan Couch was sentenced to a residential treatment facility and probation. To this I say send the whole lot of them to jail: the boy, his parents, AND the judge who had neither empathy for the victims’ families nor any sense of how justice should work.
I understand that our children are adorable and it’s really hard to see them suffer, especially by our own hands. I have been accused by my older two children of being much easier on the youngest child, the baby, the princeling, the heir to the throne. I say all of this tongue-in-cheek, but I do find it harder to be the enforcer with Will.
Still, I try, understanding that kids need to understand that their behavior has a ripple effect, and actions have consequences. So when Will tweets out something he’s not supposed to, we have the social media talk — again — and then I take his phone away. I always threaten a week, and then somehow, it’s back in his hands again in a day or two because he convinces me that he needs it to communicate about homework, school, and practice. I believe him, but I admit that I’m often a pushover. I need to change this.
Molly recently learned the sting of paying the consequences for her actions. I needed help picking up Will from school. But she was tired and couldn’t Katie just accompany her or even go herself and gee, it had been a long time and she couldn’t even remember how to get to school in the first place.
I responded to this hemming and hawing and hesitancy with growing fury — and then I launched:
“With everything I do for you, driving you to and from the airport, allowing you to live in Paris for the entire year abroad and travel all over Europe and you can’t figure out how to navigate the way to Princeton? Have you heard of MapQuest and Google and helping out? Have you lived here your entire life? Well, then, if you can’t drive your brother, I guess you can’t figure out how to drive to school in New York to visit your friends for spring break, so no car for you.”
That explains why she ended up taking the train both ways for a total of 12 hours travel time, instead of the highly efficient five-hour round trip by car. I’d like to think that the next time I ask her to drive somewhere for me, she’ll jump.
I relate this tale to illustrate that being in a family means knowing that it’s about the give-and-take. Ultimately, most things are privileges and not rights, and parents hold the power. Most parents do things because they want to, not because they have to.
So far, the judge in the Canning case has ruled in favor of her parents: they don’t have to pay high school tuition or her living expenses. The ruling on college tuition comes next month. But in that family, with its screwed-up sense of right and wrong and responsibilities, no matter who wins in court or the court of public opinion, in the most important sense, they’ve already lost.
