Oh teenagers. The fun age.
My 13YO son last night freaked out over some fruit flies and went on this diatribe on how he found the house stupid, the kitchen was too tiny and there was too much wasted space in the foyer. Then he went on to ask why couldn't we live in a mansion (and no, he was not joking). Why were we so stupid to buy this house? I was about to serve dinner and told him that I wasn't going to sit down at the table. I didn't want to sit in the same room as somebody who was obnoxious and insulting because he was angry over a couple fruit flies. I told him that the fact that he was complaining about not living in a mansion underscored the sense of entitlement that he felt, and I wasn't going to support that. If he couldn't appreciate the fact that we were putting a roof over his head and food on the table so he could eat it I was going to step outside a moment and calm myself down before I said something equally as obnoxious and stupid.
So I did. And he apologized. And I asked him why did he wait until I was so mad I had to walk out on the front step before he listened to us? (We were trying to reason with him until the very bitter end.) I also said I was going to continue to call him out on his sense of entitlement, and if he hated me a thousand times over I didn't care - that was much more preferable than the alternative - the inability to appreciate the good life that he already had. If he continued with that attitude, he was going to end up with a pretty miserable life indeed.
This all ends after he turns twenty, right?