Re: What to do when your son tell you he hates you.

In article <e6KdndjcvLuD-4LanZ2dnUVZ_qGknZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxx>, Ericka Kammerer
says...

Stephanie wrote:

There really is not much good to be had by *treating* people disrespectfully
whether or not they have actually earned your actual respect. In action,
courtest and respect look a lot alike. The recepient does not even need to
know which they are being delt.

I think that gets you much of the way there, but I
still have a few reservations. For instance, there are times
when it is appropriate to ditch courtesy--but those are for
major violations. Second, the focus on having people earn
your (the general "your," not you specifically) respect is
problematic to me. That implies that we have
a role of sitting in judgment of everyone else--coming at
people with a "prove yourself!" attitude, and withholding
some measure of what is their due until they've proved themselves
to your satisfaction.
I think that all people deserve respect until and
unless they do something significant that demonstrates they
*shouldn't* have it--and by "significant," I don't mean that
they're just not the best at what they do, or they made a
mistake, or what have you. I mean that they have demonstrated
major flaws in character or judgment that ought to get them
demoted in the eyes of reasonable people.
So, for instance, a teacher who is truly incompetent,
lazy, chooses not to do well by his or her students, etc.
might deserve to lose the respect of students (but even then
the part about having to respect the position, if not the
holder, kicks in). Instead, when you have this "show me"
attitude, people seem to think it's ok to offer disrespect
just because they disagree with someone, or they think the
person isn't ask skilled as someone else. Well, none of
us are perfect. None of us are the best at everything we
do. If *I* were to step in front of a classroom (say, to
give a talk on something), *I* would deserve the respect
of the students, along with common courtesy, even if I
weren't the most entertaining speaker in the known universe,
and even if I didn't have fabulous classroom management
skills. We should expect at least a basic level of
competence from teachers, but it's unreasonable to expect
every teacher to be extraordinary. None of the rest of
us would like to be judged that way in our jobs.
So, I agree in principle that people earn respect,
and I agree in principle that children need to be taught
something other than blind obedience to authority (for
safety reasons, if nothing else), but I think we have to
be cautious how we approach it because children are not
necessarily developmentally ready to make some of the
distinctions we make as a matter of course as adults. This
is also why we as parents have to be very cautious about
what we say about teachers in front of kids. Judgments
that are fine for adults to make can really create problems
when overheard and internalized by kids who don't have the
maturity to deal with them appropriately. How much of the
disrespect teachers encounter is due to kids hearing parents
complain about all the things the teachers do wrong, in
their opinion?

Quite a lot, probably. And I think a lot of it though is about some parents
resenting anyone or anything that seems to intrude on their 'domain'.

I agree about respect. People mean different things by 'respect'. There's the
respect that all people should get except for a few grave transgressions.
There's the respect that an authority figure gets for their position or rank,
then there's the respect over and above these that people earn.

It takes some incidences of poor performance or character to take away my
respect for individuals. It's like a bank account - many small problems can
close that account; one or two huge ones. But, barring the case of someone
doing active significant harm (tangible, real harm), someone in a position of
authority gets the respect due that authority or rank, someone other than that
gets civility. One needn't go *beyond* that (do extra for that boss, or invite
that neighbor to a BBQ), and one may need to change one's situation. But
society as a whole just plain doesn't work if every teacher or cop has to 'earn
respect'.

Banty

.

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