Prudence is working hard for her teenage daughter’s tuition in another state when she receives a shocking call from her school—her daughter has been skipping classes for an entire week. Prudence suspects something is wrong, and when she goes home, a baby in her teenage daughter’s room confirms her worst fears.

Katie tossed her school bag on the living room couch and stormed past her mother to the kitchen. Opening one of the wooden cabinets, she pulled out her low-fat, low-carb crackers and sat at the kitchen counter, grumbling.

“Seriously, I hate my life!” she muttered as she ate a cracker.

“What’s wrong, honey?” Prudence asked, joining her daughter at the counter with a glass of juice. “Here, have this. Did something happen at school?”

“Stop it, Mom!” Katie snapped. “You don’t need to act like you care!”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t like what you’re doing right now, OK?” she growled. “So just…stop!”

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“Well, young lady, don’t forget you’re talking to your mother. And I do have the right to ask my daughter if something’s bothering her.”

Katie was silent for a while, not uttering a single word. Then she realized she needed someone to talk to, so she spilled out everything in front of her mother. “I hate it all, Mom!” she said, softening a little. “I hate why we’re so…poor.”

“What? We never let you miss out on anything! We do our best for you, honey. How come you’d say that?”

Katie sighed. “My classmates are literally the richest people I’ve ever met, Mom! Like, their parents gave them their own apartments, and they get to spend their birthdays on yachts, and why am I never invited to those wonderful places and occasions? Because we’re poor, Mom! We can never match their status!”

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Prudence could see where the topic was going as Katie continued explaining her wealthy classmates’ lavish lifestyles. She knew her daughter too well. Katie had this sense of entitlement that the whole world revolved around her and that she deserved the best.

Being the only child in the family sometimes did that to you, so it wasn’t entirely Katie’s fault. She never recognized her parents’ sacrifices to give her the best. She was always dissatisfied and grew up ungrateful for what she had.

Prudence, 51, had undergone tons of fertility treatments and endured a C-section to bring Katie into this world. But after that, Prudence didn’t have the money to raise her daughter, so she and her husband, Frank, lived at her parents’ house. Only when Prudence was 43, she moved out with her family.

As Prudence listened now, she was worried about how she’d break the news to her 13-year-old daughter about their present financial situation. Frank was working extra shifts, and Prudence had asked her boss to send her to a different state to a bigger factory so she could make more money and Katie wouldn’t have to miss school or college.