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My kids deal with entitlement. There, I said it. I think just about every one of us cringe when we get around someone who’s fully convinced the world owes them something. The last thing in the world we want as parents is for our children to become those people, unable to thrive in the real world as adults. Besides, we want our children to live for God and to practice the type of stewardship that honors Him. When entitlement raises its head, we try training it out. When that doesn’t work and we’re feeling a little desperate, we try shaming it out. Simple interactions escalate. Even when they comply, we feel a sense of dissatisfaction because we have a sense that their compliance sometimes hints of resentment. We see the look in their eyes and the meager fruit before us. This is not working.

Can you relate? Here are 3 steps we’ve taken to start the entitlement turnaround in our own home.

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As you probably already know, books are kind of a big deal to me. I. love. them. And if you’re like me, you love great book recommendations. That’s why I’ve decided to start sharing our Bookworm Family Faves every month. You’ll essentially be joining my family in real time. I’m not curating these off a library database or based on someone else’s list. All the books you find here are books we either read (short books) or finished reading (longer chapter books) this month. I hope you find this bookworm snapshot a fun way to find books that may interest or bless your family. Now on to the books!

I’ll be honest. When I was a mom facing all the rigors of working full-time outside the home, I was a bit naïve about what it would take to keep me thriving when I finally had the chance to stay at home. You could say I’ve been schooled over the last 6 years of stay at home – and now homeschool – life. I’d love to share with you some of the sanity savers I’ve learned mostly the hard way. Hopefully they can be of value to you in your own journey. (No time to read? Watch a video version here.)

Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. Luke 9:58

Jet-lagged from my trip back to Houston, I lumbered my squeaky suitcase up to the large wooden door. The adrenaline that had pulsed through my veins over the last several weeks of life-changing mission trips was now muted by the apprehension of finding a new job and a new home now that my parents were relocated back to Oklahoma. The relief of a friend’s invitation to stay with her for a couple of nights bought me time to consider my options and sort out logistics. I hoped I wasn’t imposing as I gently knocked on the door.

The air was thick with tension. My kids’ wet faces flushed with the evidence of the sibling squabble gone wrong. Hurt hearts burst out stinging words. I know they weren’t meant, yet they couldn’t be taken back. Their outbursts shocked me as I internally scrambled through my child-raising handbook for the winning recipe for this situation and remembered that my luck-of-the-draw canned response did not exist. I would need Holy Spirit for this.

There was a time the family culture I dreamed of seemed as though it would always be a dream. I found myself as a mom increasingly idealizing what I dreamed of for my family. My husband and I spent hours talking about what was important to us. What did we want our kids to leave home with? What did we want the atmosphere of our home to be like?

I dreamed of my intentionally cultivated home when it seemed like only a fairy tale. I was drowning in diapers and laundry; yet, I felt stirred and alive when I read authors like Sally Clarkson and Edith Schaeffer. I had always appreciated truth, but now I was starting to see that truth is most alive when accompanied by goodness and beauty.