Are Our Kids Really Entitled, or Is It the Measurement We Are Using?

By now, you’ve probably seen it. A journalist visits a prominent school, gives a presentation on global politics, and then posts his disappointment on Instagram as he is walking out of the venue. The kids, in his opinion, were disengaged. Chatting to their friends. Not responding the way he expected. And just like that, an entire school – no, an entire generational cohort, really – was put on trial on social media.

The comments came fast.

“Kids these days…”

“No akhlaaq.”

“Entitled…. Spoilt.

And I sat with that for a while. Because as a mother of a teenager and a tween, and as someone who works closely with children, something about it didn’t sit right with me. Not because I think children are above reproach. Obviously, they’re not. But because I think we are having the wrong conversation.

We’re Using an Outdated Yardstick

Here’s what I keep coming back to: we are measuring today’s children against a version of childhood that no longer exists.

When we say “kids these days have no respect,” what we usually mean is “kids these days don’t behave the way we did.” But we grew up in a completely different world. A world without smartphones. Without social media. Without a 24-hour news cycle delivering images of war and suffering directly into young hands. Without a global pandemic that reshaped how children experience school, friendship, and safety.

These children are not worse than we were. They are different. And they are navigating a world that, let’s be honest, we created and handed to them.

So before we shake our heads and sigh, maybe we need to ask ourselves: are we frustrated because our children lack values, or because they don’t perform those values in the ways we recognise?

That Morning. That Presentation. That Judgement.

Let me set the scene that sparked all of this.

A group of children, early in the morning, were presented to (perhaps not engaged with?) by someone they had probably never met. And when they didn’t respond with the enthusiasm he was hoping for, he immediately told the internet about it as he walked away from the venue.

Now, I want to ask something:

How many of us, as adults, have sat in a meeting or a gathering – perhaps a work presentation, or a wedding speech, or a lecture at the musjid – and zoned out? Whispered to the person next to us? Checked our phones? I know I have. We all have. And nobody went home and posted about our lack of character.

So why are we holding children to a standard we don’t hold ourselves to?

Not responding to a presentation is not automatically rude.

Disengagement is not automatically entitlement.

Sometimes it’s tiredness. Sometimes it’s that the content wasn’t delivered in a way that reached them. Sometimes, and this matters, a child who just watched footage of Gaza on their phone the night before is sitting in that hall carrying something heavy, and a slideshow isn’t going to crack it open.

The Village Doesn’t Look the Way It Used To

We love to say “it takes a village to raise a child.” And it’s true. But the village has changed.

The village used to mean that a child could be corrected by a neighbour, a teacher, an aunt, or even the old man who sits on his balcony at the corner house… and the parent would back that up. Now? Many of us are uncomfortable with anyone outside our immediate family saying a word to or against our children. And I include myself in that. It’s a protective instinct, and it comes from a real place. But it has thinned out that communal layer of tarbiyyah that used to exist naturally.

What that means is that the pressure on individual families is now enormous. We are expected to raise children who are academically excellent, emotionally intelligent, digitally responsible, Islamically grounded, socially conscious, and perfectly behaved in every public setting.

That is a lot!

And perhaps instead of pointing fingers at children, we could acknowledge that the whole system is under strain.

What Islam Actually Asks of Us

Here’s what grounds me when I feel overwhelmed by all of this:

Islam doesn’t place the burden of character solely on the child. It places it on the community. On the parents. On the adults who are supposed to be the shepherds.

The Prophet SAW said: “Each of you is a shepherd, and each of you is responsible for his flock.” That responsibility doesn’t end when a child is being difficult. It doesn’t expire when they embarrass us. It doesn’t end when they sit through a presentation without raising their hand.

And the Prophet SAW himself – the greatest educator who ever lived – never stood at a distance and expected young people to rise to him. He came to them. He knew their names. He was curious about them. He corrected them with dignity, never with humiliation.

That is the model. And it asks something of us, as the adults in the room.

Correction Without Shame

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying children never need to be corrected. Of course they do. Mine certainly do. Regularly. Sometimes spectacularly.

But there is a profound difference between correction that builds and correction that shames. Public callouts – whether on a stage or on Instagram – do not build character. They build barriers. They teach a child to hide, not to grow.

When we correct our children, the goal should never be to make them feel small. It should be to help them see something they couldn’t see before, and to do it in a way that keeps the relationship intact. Because the moment a child feels written off – be it by a parent, a teacher, or a stranger on the internet – you have lost them. And that is when behaviour gets worse, not better.

• Get curious before you get corrective
• Ask what their behaviour is communicating
• Correct in private
• Follow up to show them that you haven’t written them off

Unlike apps, values cannot be downloaded. They are taught by example. A child learns integrity by watching an honest parent. They learn empathy by feeling heard. They learn respect by being respected first.

You cannot lecture a child into akhlaaq. You have to model it.

You cannot lecture a child into akhlaaq. You have to model it. Consistently. In the small, unglamorous, “nobody’s-watching” kind of moments. And you have to meet them where they are. Not where you wish they were. Not where you were at their age. Where they actually are. In the world they are actually living in.

So, Are They Entitled?

Some children are. Let’s be honest. Entitlement exists, and it needs to be addressed.

But an entire generation? An entire provincial cohort? Based on one morning at one school with one stranger and a slideshow?

No. That’s not a verdict. That’s a snap judgment dressed up as a cultural observation in the interest of storytelling.

Our children are growing up with access to more information than we had, more global awareness than we were interested in, and more emotional complexity than any generation before them.

They are watching genocide unfold in real time. They are grappling with questions of Islamic Identity and Belonging in a world that is louder and more confusing than ever. And many of them are doing it without the tools, the language, or the adult support they need.

They are not the problem.
They are the mirror.

And if we don’t like what we see, the most honest thing we can do is ask: what are we reflecting back to them?

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That’s all from me for now. Stay tuned for more… and remember: ‘Just Dua It.’

Waheeda, a.k.a Waydi

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