Should parents be shown 'respect' by children?.. discuss

[unicorn]

I only pose this question having had various experiences recently with friends of dd (5-6 yrs) who IMO have been extremely rude.

We oldun's (me and dh) have just been chatting, and realised that we would have never in a million years spoken to other adults the way some of these kids do when we were kids.
For eg....
I would never have called mums by their first names, nor asked 'what's in your bag have you any sweets or drinks for us?' (then... why not?!!!)

I just feel that somehow kids have too much power, and too little respect for authority, but maybe it's just a generational thing, and our parents said similar?

I'm very interested to know what you all think.

Part of the reason I was so irritated is that quite a few of us f and blind on here. It is an adult forum after all. Most of us will agree that there is adult appropriate behaviour and child behavoiur.

A comment had been made along the lines of 'I hope you don't use language like that in fron of the children you teach'. I don't know if you know this, but you can be struck off the professional regester for that! So it was quite a cutting comment! and that made me mad.

Best to end this now I think.

"Most of us will agree that there is adult appropriate behaviour and child behavoiur."

Well yes - but I wouldn't actually take that to include fing and blinding. I wouldn't regard that as appropriate behaviour on this sort of forum or elsewhere. That is not to say I might not do it if sufficiently annoyed but I would regret it later. When my children come out with bad language they are told it is for people whose vocabulary is so limited they can find no other way to express anger and we practise a more appropriate response.

If we show children by example that bad language is appropriate when angry then they use it when they are angry. When I swear in front of my children - and I have done so particularly in the car - I apologise afterwards and tell them it was wrong to use that language. Unfortunately at least some of the parents of my childrens friends seem to regard swearing as part of normal speech.

very much agree with soapbox and tatt, here.

Just a general note about swearing... why is it becoming more and more acceptable? You can hardly buy a greeting card without rude innuendo (or reference to binge drinking, but that's another subject.) Of course everyone swears once in awhile but that just means you don't have enough vocabulary to think of something more intelligent to say. Dh and I are trying not to swear anymore after ds (who's two) has repeated them word for word!

Can I go back to the original question? I think the best way to teach children anything is by example. If I respect DH (especially) and others in my life then dd will grow up thinking this is the 'base line' of appropriate behaviour. I think that's true of most things eg if she sees us being kind and affectionate then she tends to mirror that behaviour. Sure we have the odd spot of trouble from tiredness etc but she knows what the norm is.

its fine when they are little, welshmum, but as they get older they see lots of examples of people who do not respect each other. There will also be people who you would not regard as worthy of respect. Children should not, imho, be expected to have respect for someone simply because they are older. However they should always be expected to be polite towards them.

Attitudes to teachers do seem to me to have changed for the worse. I remember teenage girls reducing one teacher to tears when I was at school - but they were very upset by that and apologised. I don't think that would happen now. If she found out the head would have gone to the girls parents and the parents would have stopped pocket money or something to stop it happening again. Teachers don't always seem to get that type of support now.

Most of the children of my friends do have nice manners. My stepdaughter, 13, has lovely manners, and I am trying to teach my three year old politeness too. He asked me why we had to look at people when we talked to them the other day and when I said, "why do you think?" he said "because it is polite" so something's going in. He seems a nice boy in general. But I do like to have a nice time with my children and not be stressed, I don't think that's incompatible with being polite.
My children use first names with my friends, except one friend loves being called Auntie X(she has no children and would have loved them) so that's what my three-year old calls her.