Is there anything less attractive than a young person who believes they’re “entitled” or a parent who unintentionally fuels that belief in them? Would we even notice it happening? I’m honestly not sure.
This isn’t about tarring everyone with the same brush. But trying to make sense of what might sit underneath this perceived entitlement feels genuinely worth exploring. Having travelled widely recently, visiting everything from schools to performance programmes, the word seems to be cropping up more than ever.
James Clear draws a useful distinction here: ambition is expecting yourself to close the gap between what you have and what you want. Entitlement is expecting everyone else to close it for you.
“Ambition is when you expect yourself to close the gap between what you have and what you want.
Entitlement is when you expect others to close the gap between what you have and what you want.”
– James Clear
Most parents wouldn’t want to see entitled attitudes take root in their children. Coaches find it genuinely frustrating, and the behaviours that come with this sense of privilege rarely help a positive culture, team unity, or cohesion.
The tricky thing about privilege and entitlement is that they’re almost always built out of love. Children get rewarded for things they haven’t earned, because a parent wants to smooth their path and give them something better than they had themselves.
The trouble is, encouraging that sense of entitlement, and stripping away the chances to build real resilience, removes exactly the sense of competence and autonomy we know is essential to healthy sporting and emotional development.
I didn’t grow up with things being handed to me. I had to work hard.
— Serena Williams
That approach simply doesn’t serve our children well when it comes to long-term development in sport. Young people need to go through disappointment, learn to problem-solve, fight some of their own battles, adapt to different situations, and learn to rise to a challenge. We might see short-term wins from being more involved than we perhaps should be, but we’re not necessarily setting our children up for success further down the line.
We need to be brave enough to let our children work hard for their own goals. The payoff might not be sporting success but it will be children of stronger character, better equipped to thrive in whatever they choose to do next.
Sport thrives on mastery, personal development, and effort. Supporting a sense of entitlement, or fighting every battle on our children’s behalf, chips away at exactly those opportunities for growth.
People with a strong sense of entitlement tend to believe they deserve what they want simply because of who they are. Their expectations often go unmet, and in team environments they struggle to build genuine relationships with teammates, everything becomes about them, and when things go wrong, it’s always someone else’s fault.
I was recently discussing this with a coach at a public school, in a non-sporting context. Their reply to my concerns was blunt: “They all live on estates and in mansions, get the best educational opportunities, what do you expect?” My response was simple: none of that means we should be condoning the behaviour. It means we should be helping young people understand how it might be showing up, and how they could go about things differently.
It’s worth being careful not to label too broadly here, too — plenty of young people in these environments don’t behave this way at all, and make the most of their opportunities in genuinely positive ways.
In sport, young athletes are sometimes given access to extraordinary environments, incredible coaching, amazing trips, and a great deal done for them so they can simply focus on performing. That’s understandable. But helping them build real self-awareness matters just as much, because without it, some genuinely negative behaviours can quietly attach themselves to those opportunities.
A video of Erling Haaland that did the rounds recently is probably what pushed me to finally write this down, his approach to his kit man stood in sharp contrast to a number of players before him who, whether they meant to or not, showed real disdain toward someone doing their job. Did they simply see it as beneath them? Only they know. The viral clip may well be an unfair snapshot of a much fuller relationship. Either way, it’s a far cry from the All Blacks’ idea that better people make better players and that standards set off the field are what shape standards on it.
Did they just think that was his job?
Did they see the kit man as someone beneath them?
It also reminded me recently of this quote:
It is a good idea to be ambitious…but it is a terrible mistake to let drive and ambition get in the way of treating people with kindness and decency.
— Robert Solow
My other worry, for those given these opportunities young without the right support alongside them, is what happens when they eventually leave that environment because the real adult world rarely looks anything like it. Think of young footballers released from top academies, suddenly training and playing in the lowest divisions as adults. Or the privately educated child used to the best facilities and comfortable, high-quality coaching. Step into adulthood, and suddenly nobody’s washing your kit, nobody’s chasing you to training, and nobody particularly cares about your background, you’re just another athlete competing, often in facilities well below what you’re used to. For some, that adjustment is simply too much, and they fall out of sport altogether.
We already know mental health issues in athletes are on the rise. Does privilege play some small part in that? Plenty of these young people live genuinely unrealistic lives, sometimes with unrealistic goals, under enormous pressure and everyone around them believing they need to do everything possible for the athlete, which only deepens the sense of entitlement. What happens when all of that is taken away, and they’re no longer in the sport, or no longer performing at the level they once did?
In the long term we know mental health issues in athletes are escalating.
Does some of this privilege contribute in a small way to this?
Many of these young people live unrealistic lives, in some cases with unrealistic goals and are often under enormous pressure and strain and those around them believe that they need to do all that they can for these athletes only adding to their sense of entitlement.
What happens when this is removed, and they are no longer in sport or performing at the level that they once were?
To be clear, this isn’t about removing opportunity. We want as many young people as possible to have incredible opportunities. But we all carry some responsibility for how those opportunities are managed.
A few signs of entitlement worth watching for: resistance to feedback, treating any critique as a personal attack rather than a chance to grow; an athlete who wants instant gratification and expects the coach to simply deliver it; a pattern of taking without giving back, arriving with the wrong attitude, thinking only of themselves; impatience with a process that’s naturally long, messy and complicated. Plenty of coaches tell us they see the same pattern in parents too, expecting results while their child’s own attitude gives them little real chance of achieving them.
There’s a lot here worth sitting with. So what can we actually do, as parents, to make sure the opportunities we give our children don’t tip into the kind of entitlement that holds them back, in sport and beyond?
Set consistent boundaries, and stick to them. This isn’t always easy, but making sure your children don’t get away with poor behaviour is a genuine starting point. Build clear boundaries and consequences, keep healthy expectations, stay true to your family’s values, and don’t let poor behaviour slide. The more small things you let go, the harder it becomes to re-establish those boundaries later on.
Don’t feel you need to respond to every demand immediately. For smaller things especially, help your children understand that not everything happens instantly.
Try not to do everything for them. Encourage real responsibility such as chores, roles at home, packing their own bag, helping plan their own week. It shouldn’t all fall to you.
Don’t fight every one of your child’s battles for them. Our instinct as parents is often to step in and protect, especially when things go wrong. Take a step back first, and ask yourself: am I actually needed here? Will this resolve itself? Is this simply a disappointment my child needs to go through? Could they solve it themselves by talking to a teacher, coach or teammate? Encourage them to problem-solve, offer guidance and suggestions, but let them take ownership wherever that’s genuinely possible. That said, when something is truly out of order, don’t hesitate to speak up and step in.
Help them become process-driven, not outcome-driven. Try not to fixate on outcomes you have very little control over. Instead, help them focus on the process that gets them there, and celebrate the traits underneath it such as determination, resilience, creativity, being a good teammate, adaptability, good decision-making, strong communication.
Help them understand that disappointment, failure and mistakes are simply part of life. This is one of the hardest things to sit with as a parent, especially in sport. But if we can get comfortable with the idea that these moments are an inevitable part of the journey, and help our children respond to them positively, we go a long way toward helping them see the world clearly.
All of this is a far easier thing to shape while children are still young, rather than trying to unpick it later with teenagers whose habits and thinking are already firmly set.
Much of this may not apply to your own situation. But our own self-awareness, as sports parents, around how our children experience their sport, remains essential and this is simply one more thing worth adding to that ongoing reflection.
