Every parent has watched another child melt down over not getting something and felt a flash of fear: I don't want mine to turn out like that. But that flash is aimed at the wrong thing. A meltdown isn't entitlement. It's a normal, undeveloped nervous system reacting to disappointment exactly the way it's supposed to at that age — kids melt down because they don't yet have the tools to regulate big feelings, not because they believe the world owes them something. Entitlement

There's a particular kind of clarity that comes from leaving home. Not the tourist kind of travel — shuffling between hotels and Instagram backdrops — but the kind where you sit in a community that has almost nothing by Western standards and watch how people actually live. I've spent time in countries most Americans would label "third world." I've seen families of six share a single room with walls made of corrugated metal and salvaged wood. I've watched mothers cook over ope