It starts, like most of my family dramas, in the kitchen. There’s sunlight streaming through the blinds, filter coffee doing its sacred morning duty, and the unmistakable presence of judgment, in the form of our orange male cat, seated on the dining table like he owns the mortgage. Which, in a way, he does. We pay rent, taxes, and internet bills. He pays us in fur and emotional unavailability. My 48-year-old husband, still half-asleep in a “World’s Best Dad” T-shirt, scrolls through cricket scores. I, his life partner, fellow soldier, unpaid therapist, and co-parent, am holding a planner, a pair of toast tongs, and the last remaining shred of my sanity. Our 15-year-old daughter strolls in with the confidence of Beyoncé and the helpfulness of a damp sponge. “Why don’t we have Nutella anymore?” she demands, her tone implying we’ve failed her at the molecular level.
“Because daily Nutella now costs more than my first car,” I reply. “Also, the planet called. It’s sobbing.” She sighs deeply, the kind of sigh only teenagers are licensed to use. It’s the sound of a soul burdened by housework, parental expectations, and a Wi-Fi speed drop of 0.5 seconds.
Welcome to Midlife Parenting. The Musical, now streaming daily in our household. Spoiler, the cat plays a prominent part.
The Great Entitlement Epidemic (and Laundry That Folds Itself)
Raising kids used to be about love, safety, and a decent lunchbox. In 2025, it feels more like managing a customer experience team where the customers live with you, eat your food, question your choices, and ask for a raise in pocket money every week.
My teen believes dishes should disappear after use and that her bed has a self cleaning mode. She’s currently developing what she calls “a personal brand,” which includes having strong opinions on almond milk, haircare ingredients, and why her mother is too obsessed with dish towels.
We’ve read all the research , that modeling responsible behavior is key, that setting clear expectations and limiting privileges help build gratitude, that chores instill empathy and responsibility. We’ve tried them all but some days, it feels like we’re just raising a very articulate customer who’s about to give us a 2-star parenting review on Google.
Our Parenting Toolkit (Includes Sarcasm and Snacks) We’ve started assigning chores, praising effort instead of outcomes, and encouraging gratitude.
Results so far, she can now fry an egg, she thanks Chatgpt more than she thanks us and she once said, “Love you, Mummy,” and I nearly wept into the dal.
We’ve adopted a new family policy, “Effort over entitlement.” That includes cooking one meal a week, handling her own school bag, and not screaming “WHERE’S MY WATER BOTTLE?” like a banshee five minutes before the school bus arrives.
There are days I think we’re doing alright. Then she asks, with a completely straight face, “Why do I need to learn how to sweep my room when I’ll probably just hire someone later?” Cue my husband’s nervous coughing. Cue me, Googling boarding schools in the Himalayas. Just to look.
Meanwhile, the Cat Has Opinions Our ginger Indie cat, Cookie, has seen it all. He came into our lives during the Bengaluru deluge 2022. Since then he has evolved into a a spiritual guide, alarm system, and sarcastic life coach rolled into one orange furball. He watches our parenting attempts with the disdain of a thousand emperors. He has zero patience for emotional meltdowns and even less for chore negotiations and will be seen perched on the tallest inaccessible tier of the house where he would safely nap through lectures. When he does decide to descend, he would have knocked over stored margarita glasses for sport, and with an accurate sixth sense have a cuddle session with the pile of freshly laundered clothes.
Then there are other times, when we’re sitting in silence, post-meltdown, post whining, post-Netflix binge , he curls next to us with a soft purr, as if to say, “You’re doing fine, humans. Feed me.”
Raising Royalty: Life with a Teen Who Believes They’re the CEO of the House
My husband and I didn’t sign up for parenting during the era of AI tutors and mental health reels on Instagram. We were just two kids who fell in love, watched Kal ho Na Ho ten times, and thought a baby would be cute. 20 years, 2 jobs, one business, and several emotional haircuts later, here we are. He does the school drop-off after his morning gym workout with the speed of an F1 pit crew. I handle emotional crises, lost socks, and the weight of everyone’s dreams.
We have strategic meetings in the car. We flirt via shared WhatsApp memes on the “next big hack for modern homes .
Now our Idea of romance is exchanging glances over the teenager’s eye-rolls. We are learning, the hard way, that raising a child isn’t just about shaping her future. It’s about reinventing ourselves, every. single. day.
Survive the Teen Years Without Faking Your Own Disappearance
The turning point came last month when I put up a “Chore Chart of Empowerment” on the fridge. It had glitter borders and everything. My daughter looked at it like it was written in Kanadda.
“I have to clean my room every Wednesday?”
“Yes.”
“Its “vocal training day”, I have to be in a spiritually free space, Not fair!”
“Then you can vocalise and explain yourself to the dust mites.”
She didn’t speak to me for 45 minutes. Bliss.
That week, she vacuumed while singing “Too sweet” and later was seen journalling “Adulting isn’t cute. It’s dusty.” Progress.
The Secret to Thriving (Not Just Surviving)
We don’t have all the answers. Some days, we run on caffeine, sarcasm, and the faint hope that our daughter will someday thank us in her Nobel Prize speech.
But here’s what we’ve learned. Model the behaviour you want to see. Even if your teen pretends you’re invisible.
Set boundaries and enforce them. Kindly. Consistently (With snacks).
Don’t overindulge. Gratitude grows in the space between “No” and “Let’s figure it out together.”
Empathy matters. So does laughter. And yes, praise the effort. Even when the mop was held so precariously it looks it like it might bite.
The goal isn’t perfection. It’s raising humans who know they matter and who know others matter too.
Epilogue: In Praise of Midlife, Motherhood, and the Mess
Tonight, we sat together husband, teen, me, and the cat. We watched an old sitcom. My husband fixed the curtain train motor for the living room. My daughter took the trash out (after being asked only three times). I made tea and didn’t cry once.
We’re not raising an entitled child. We’re raising a real one, messy, hilarious, moody, brilliant, and still learning. Just like us.
And somewhere in this chaos of spills, chores, hugs, eye rolls, and cat hair, we’re slowly building a legacy: not of perfect parenting, but of love, resilience, humour, and a family that never gives up on each other. Even if the nutella runs out.
About the Author
Ancy James is a former television producer who, after a fulfilling 17-year career, chose to step away from the relentless pursuit of output and certainty in favour of retiring from corporate life at age 37 to a slower and more intentional life. In what she calls her act of quiet rebellion, her toddler’s health scare ensured she followed through on this decision and she traded deadlines and huge pay packets for meaningful quiet personal life. Now over 10 years later, She truly believes that our identity isn’t something we prove, it’s something we shape with the decisions we take daily for our loved ones. She now keeps herself busy as an internationally trained Cake Artist and Chef Trainer with a culinary diploma and runs a FSSAI approved business “Ancy’s Sugar Art Academy, in Bengaluru, India. She discovered marathon running in her journey to reversing her bone health diagnosis at age 42. When she is not customising cakes or running, she is busy reading books across the spectrum or spend hours pouring her heart out in these personal memoirs. Through her weekly personal memoirs, she shares raw, honest reflections on grief, resilience, motherhood, midlife reinvention, and the quiet beauty found in overlooked corners of everyday life. At 48, Ancy writes not to impress, but to connect, believing that vulnerability is the birthplace of both healing and growth. In a fast and AI driven world she believes these memoirs are an honest attempt to stay real and relevant as a female writer who is a 100 percent invested in her journey of “Becoming”.