Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here .

Dear Care and Feeding,

My close friends have several kids who are generally “OK” as kids. I’ve had some fun conversations with the kids as they’ve grown but my issue is one of the kids (“Alex”) was babied (parents acknowledged this) and her behavior has really gotten out of hand. Think weaponized incompetence, neediness, unhelpful most of the time accompanied by extreme attitude and yelling at the parents when asked to do something she doesn’t want to do, often relies on their other siblings to do things for them—and she’s the oldest!

I guess it’s good that her parents acknowledge the problem and where they went wrong, but somehow are unable to course-correct. That being

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