Hindsight - "life isn't fair"

The other day after a particularly frustrating argument with my teenage son, I asked my mother where I went wrong. How had I raised such ungrateful and spoiled children? Don’t get me wrong; for the most part my kids are kind, loving and generous to a fault (except of course towards each other). But there are times when I wonder where the entitlement came from. Where did they get the idea that life was supposed to be fair? I’m certain I never said anything resembling those words, given that my upbringing was filled with the “life isn’t fair” speech that I’m sure has been handed down through the generations since caveman times. You know, the same one from “Father knows best”.

So my mother, in that smug way that only mothers can pull off, looks at me and says “remember all those things you didn’t have growing up? You gave them to your kids”. I know smug right? But she was right, of course when is she not? The thing is, I did want to give my kids what I didn’t have, but not all of it was material. Of course I did give them more material things, but I like to think that I also gave them more of me. How can that be bad? But that too could be part of the problem. By giving them more of me, I didn’t give them as much of an opportunity to be independent. So are we doomed to either repeat our parent’s mistakes or swing so widely that we make the 180 degree mistake instead? I think it’s interesting that as my actual vision gets worse with age, my hindsight is improving exponentially.