A friend recently told me that when his son was fourteen, he declined to buy him a $50 lobster roll at dinner. He wanted his son to understand something that can be surprisingly difficult to teach a child raised in a comfortable home: the world doesn’t owe you much of anything, let alone a lobster roll.
I don’t know what goes into a lobster roll that costs $50. Presumably lobster, although at that price I’d like to think the lobster helped pay for parking. But the price isn’t really the point. My friend could afford it. And that, in a way, was precisely the problem.
Children get acquainted with their parents’ standard of living long before they understand what supports it. The house is simply where they live. Vacations are what happens during school breaks. Dinner arrives, the electricity stays on, and somebody replaces the tires on the car. They experience the results of earning a living without having much occasion to consider the earning.
This is understandable. A seven-year-old shouldn’t have to review the mortgage statement before asking for a snack. But somewhere between childhood and adulthood, an important distinction needs to take hold: being raised by people who can afford certain things doesn’t mean you’ve acquired a permanent claim to those things yourself.
It’s an easy distinction to miss when comfort is all you’ve known. What begins as a treat becomes familiar. What becomes familiar becomes expected. And eventually, being told “no” can feel like having something taken away, even when it was never yours to begin with.
Parents contribute to this, of course. It’s pleasant to give your children things. You love them, you enjoy seeing them happy, and if you’ve worked hard to afford a comfortable life, you probably want them to benefit from it. Maybe you’re also giving them things you wished you’d had growing up.
But each time you say yes, there’s a chance the lesson received is a little different from the one intended. You think you’re saying, “I’m happy to do this for you.” They may hear, “Of course this is yours.”
Eventually, somebody has to explain the difference. Sometimes over dinner. Whether the explanation takes hold that evening is another question. At fourteen, it’s probably difficult to appreciate a lesson about gratitude when you were hoping to appreciate a lobster roll.
But time has a way of supplying illustrations. That same child will someday have a job, a mortgage, a car that needs tires, and children of his own. He’ll work hard to give them a comfortable life. He’ll enjoy treating them. And, inevitably, one of them will look up from a menu and casually request something that makes him put down his own.Then he’ll hear his father’s words coming out of his mouth.
His child will find the explanation unconvincing and likely frustrating; his father will find it almost amusing. The cycle will continue for many generations, but in this instance, the lesson will have landed. He’ll remember the meals, the vacations, and all the things his parents quietly paid for that he never thought to notice, much less thank them for. Now finding ample opportunity to provide those things himself, he may finally understand what his father was trying to tell him over dinner.
And if he’s fortunate, he’ll still be able to call his father and say, “I get it now. Just because you could’ve afforded a lobster roll doesn’t you owed me one, and neither does the world.”