I teach in a small, private school where the average tuition fee of each student is around five months worth of a teacher’s gross salary. It is a school where expensive cars line up the street during family days, report card days, and Christmas programs. It is a school where some students get cars as their HS graduation gifts, where family vacations for the students mean going out of the country, where some students have a PSP, a PS3, a desktop, a laptop, an iPod, and such, ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

A lot of the kids nowadays are so used to getting what they want and most of the time they also decide how and when they want it. Some don’t do chores anymore because they have yayas and helpers. Some don’t study at home anymore because they are always online – chatting, browsing Facebook / Friendster, or playing online games, practically anything and (God forbid!) everything they can do online except school work (which is always their excuse for going online in the first place).

It’s not surprising that some of these kids end up failing in school when they don’t even bother submitting requirements. You’d think one or two failing marks should be enough to tell them to shape up and to get serious with their education. However, some of these kids put the blame on the school, on the teachers, on their classmates, on the subject, on the exam. They put the blame on anything and anyone but themselves. It makes you wonder where they get the attitude but when their own parents would come to school demanding to know why their child did not pass, why their child will not graduate, why their child did not get an award, you realize that the apple does not fall too far from the tree.

I often frustrate myself trying to understand how some children grow up like this – how they somehow come to the conclusion that they can always have their way; that they should always have it easy; that rules either can be bent or don’t apply to them; or that they can get things that they did not earn and do not deserve. I frustrate myself because I encounter kids like these and I hear about kids with attitudes worse than these. It makes me wonder whether they took a wrong turn somewhere or they were put on the wrong path from the start.

Ramil and I now find ourselves on the treacherous path of parents as well. Mateo now has his own mind and I realize that it is so much easier to raise a spoiled brat. It’s always easier to say yes to what he wants. It’s easier not to correct his ways, not to go out of my way to show him how to be patient and mindful, not to tell him right from wrong. It’s easier to buy things that he wants and to let him do what he wants than to endure his tantrums. I realize that it’s easy to raise kids whom I have just described above.

I am making a conscious decision now not to choose the easy way – to always take the time not just to correct but also to explain even if it means delaying the laundry; to be there to guide even if it means postponing my own enjoyment; to be a better person so that I can be a better example. Most of all, I’m trying my best to remember that I am not always right even when it comes to my child.