Nothing is ever their fault, there are a million excuses/blames of others for any mistake/failure/rudeness/hurt. Mac has a lot of this despite it not being fed to him at all. He would sooner eat his own face than admit wrong and take responsibility for failures.

How I raised a child like this, I'll never know. It is frustrating as hell and I don't know what I should have done different, not that I have a time machine to go back and "fix" it.

Took my car into the dealership this morning and had to have one of those dreaded "It's making a noise, but not consistently" conversations. Turned out to be a known issue, so I'm thrilled not to have to do three rounds of "No, it's still making a noise" and "No, I can't make it happen" and "No, it's more a clunk than a clang."

My own kid is super sensitive and falls apart when she gets caught doing something wrong - so we are careful in the sense she is punishing herself quite a bit so we don't have to come down on her like a ton of bricks -- but we don't back down on an announced punishment (esp a pre-announced one).

I just got assigned to chair a thankless task committee. What, I ask you, did I do to deserve this?! Speaking of punishments.

Probably did some other thing well. That's how that works.

So those children will probably not be told they did anything wrong, until they start their first job after college. Then what?

I can't imagine one of these can-do-no-wrong kids actually making it through college successfully with that attitude. Professors should have a lot more power in the dynamic with helicopter parents than teachers in a state-run primary or secondary school do.

Starbucks War on XMas report - my lunch and scones were put in a bag for me - it's brown with the Starbucks logo, some leaves in chalk and red berries. Not holly leaves, but it does look seasonal to me.

So much for my good day -- have just discovered that our clinic of doctors doesn't accept my insurance, which we had to switch to when husband lost his job. So not only do we need to find a new internist, I have to find a new neuro.

Oh, that sucks Dana.

I never bothered checking, because it's fricking Aetna! What giant health care conglomerate doesn't accept Aetna? Apparently they had a spat in 2012, in the period we weren't living here, so we never knew they stopped accepting it.

Ugh Dana, that sucks!

"with some children, you just can't tell them they did anything wrong because they are too sensitive."

I don't get how that's something you'd want to feed or encourage. And I say that as a mom of one of those kids who is prone to outbursts when he's been told he's in the wrong.

We all know these people, right? At work. In relationships. Nothing is ever their fault, there are a million excuses/blames of others for any mistake/failure/rudeness/hurt. Mac has a lot of this despite it not being fed to him at all. He would sooner eat his own face than admit wrong and take responsibility for failures.

So does Isaac (see above), although it's more like he alternates between blaming his behavior on others and earnest soul searching in an attempt to learn and grow and do better.