Re: kids and their furniture?

eliz_reid@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Ericka Kammerer wrote:

eliz_reid@xxxxxxxxx wrote:


What I would find weird would someone being that uptight about *my*
possessions, since, in my own house, I'm way towards the casual end of
the spectrum. I would always honor and respect any house rules I was
aware of when visiting, nor insist that anyone allow me to break their
stuff. I would hope, though, that if I were to visit someone who had
standards that differed significantly from the range of behaviors
that's considered the norm that they'd give me some warning that that
was the case,

So, for your system to work, everyone has to examine
all their behaviors and grade themselves on whether their
behaviors are "close enough" or "not close enough" to the
mainstream, and then based on that, they're to inform their
guests at the door of the things where they're "not close
enough" to the mainstream to avoid misunderstandings. On
top of that, the visitors have to check their expectations
to see whether they're in line or not in line with the
mainstream so that they can figure out how to behave in
this home in the absence of explicit directions from the
hosts. Doesn't this sound like a crazy system to you?
I design business processes for a living, and if anyone
proposed a process like that to me, I'd think they were
crazy. It's a house of cards that breaks down the instant
anyone doesn't agree on what is sufficiently "mainstream."


Yes, that's how I'd describe it, and I honestly think that's how a lot
of people do it.

I think it's pretty close to the legal 'reasonable person' standard. I
understand that a lot of people don't jump on their furniture, so even
though I let my son do it, I frequently bring up the fact that other
people don't do that and we don't stand on their furniture. However,
I've never before heard of anyone not wanting people to write on the
pads that come with games expressly for writing, so I've never
instructed my son not to write on those. In my opinion, reasonable
people understand that not jumping on furniture is the societal
standard and consider their own behavior exceptional if they do it;
reasonable people understand that wriitng on writing pads and sitting
quietly on furniture is the societal standard and consider themselves
exceptional when they *don't* do it (as in the case where the family
had a couch that was never to be sat on) and warn guests accordingly.

I think there's a big difference. In legal terms,
we use "reasonable person" standards *very* conservatively.
In other words, the only behaviors defined as "unreasonable"
are those that virtually everyone would agree on as
unreasonable. That leaves a *lot* of territory as
reasonable. It makes sense to use that standard in
those kinds of situations. But here, "reasonable" is
being used in a *very* different way. If the standard
is that anything that is different from what you
perceive as "normal" is being marginalized.
I would agree that one doesn't necessarily need
to anticipate the "three sigma plus" behaviors, but
I think most of the things discussed here (with some
notable exceptions) have been well within the
reasonable range of variation, and thus *should*
be anticipated.
I also think that, as I said above, it's way
too much work to reason one's way through every single
behavioral issue, so it makes a *lot* of sense simply
to have a pretty high standard for dealing with other
people's stuff.

You are creating a false impression that you
can't hold yourself to this standard without grilling
everyone about every little thing and coming across
as "creepy." I don't think that's true. It certainly
hasn't been true in my experience.

Well, is it possible that you wouldn't have to grill people about what
they want you to do because your personal settings are at 'uptight' in
the first place?

What makes you think that my personal settings
are "uptight?" They're actually relatively casual in
most respects. I do treat my things with what I consider
to be reasonable care, but my kids' Matchbox cars are
in a big tub. Nevertheless, I believe it appropriate to
hold myself to a higher standard when it comes to other
people's stuff because I don't believe I have any
right to impose my personal expectations on them.

Since my settings are at 'extremely casual', it is
much less obvious to me where the difference between 'appropriately
uptight' and 'ridiculously over-meticulous' are. You may think this is
silly, but others have said the same thing - they literally wouldn't
have given the original situation a second thought.

I just think that if that's the case, the solution
is for one to develop a more robust rule for interactions
that doesn't rely on one's own personal sense of what's
appropriate, since there's clearly a lot of variation
from person to person. A system that doesn't keep you
out of trouble in the vast majority of reasonable (not
*common*--reasonable) situations is a system in need
of a change.

Best wishes,
Ericka
.

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