Being a good parent means making sure your kids know they deserve the world but they’re not entitled to it. This coming from a very entitled baby of the family who threw fits when she didn’t get her way or a certain stuffed animal in a Colorado gift shop (which I still have btw).

I was a brat. Plain and simple. Although if you ask my mom now she’ll say I was an angel. Ah, how the passage of time erases the bad and only holds onto the good. I can’t wait to reach this stage of parenthood.

I will be damned if I’m raising bratty children though. Sure, they’re spoiled beyond all reason thanks mostly to their grandparents, but hopefully they’re learning to be grateful for all they have.

We give our children everything because they are everything to us. But at some point we have to make sure they understand why we’re spoiling the crap out of them. It’s a hard lesson to teach when all we want to do from the moment they’re born is make them happy. So while I want to give them the world, they must learn that the world doesn’t owe them anything. The sooner they learn that, the better. I want them to be grateful not greedy, thankful not thankless, appreciative not oblivious.

The only thing I want them to be entitled to is happiness and it’s my job to teach them that it’s not found in a Colorado gift shop, or any gift shop for that matter, and it’s certainly not found wrapped up in glittery paper under the Christmas tree. But it’s found in the moments between. Those unpredictable moments of shared laughter and ear-to-ear smiles that turn into the memories we treasure most.

If this reformed brat can learn that happiness isn’t anything we hold in our hands, it’s what we carry in our hearts, there’s hope for them yet. And sometimes we’re lucky enough to do both.