I believe that you shouldn’t expect respect if you don’t give it. Especially when it comes to children and adults.
You treat others, the way you want to be treated. Being older doesn’t give you the right to kick someone younger under the road and disregard whatever he was saying as unimportant.
11, or 110, you treat others with respect. Basic respect is not earned, it’s given.
I myself consider basic respect being saying please and thank you, listening to others, not talking while others are speaking, etc. It shows respect for that person.
Higher Respect- I consider being addressed as Ms. and Mr. or Sir.
When I was in Highschool, our teacher made known when he developed a respect for us. If we were good kids, who did work,etc, he’d call us Mr.
I consider being a grandmother at least somewhat of an achievement if she is still on active talking terms with her daughter and grandchildren, so she gets a littel higher level of respect in my house and the kids learn that very young!
It doesn’t give her the moral right but it does allow her to get away with it. Be assured the kids are given a pat on the back for putting up with granny but they still have to put up with her within reason. My mother crossed the line more than once and was put in line privately. In most cases they are not even remotely aware they did anything wrong.
Respecting children is important, and if it’s rude to cut off an adult then it should be rude to cut off a child. As a snapshot of behaviour, it seems like the grandmother and the mother were wrong. I don’t think you can really judge that one incident though; you don’t know what external factors were at play.
When children are dealt a minor injustice in life it is a good opportunity for a teaching lesson. I get angry just thinking of an 11 yr old correcting grandma. As I said above it would never fly in my house.
I think it’s a little unfair to expect an 11 year old to grok social subtleties a 60 year old woman can’t. If grandma suffers from cognitive issues, I would remind a kid to cut her some slack, but kids tend to think in terms of black and white. “Do as I say and not as I do” is not an effective method of teaching manners. But I suspect those who employ that method also add “or else”.
My step daughter is 45 and my son 37. Both are very successful, happy parents who have always maintained a close relationship with myself and their mother. 90% of our discipline was before age 2. The only issue we struggled with was keeping their rooms clean, parents lost kids won. My daughter needed some prodding to do her homework on a regular basis but that was about it.
It seems to me that parents should be authoritative toward their kids not because they’re younger, but rather because they don’t yet have the skills to participate in properly in polite society. The whole point of teaching them manners should be to bring them up to a level where they can interact on a largely even field with adults. They should be afforded a level of respect commensurate with the level they show to others. From the very brief encounter we glimpse with this kid, it sounds like the adults did not reciprocate his manners, setting a poor example. Of course, we don’t have enough context to render a sound judgment.
I have always been dissatisfied with “life isn’t fair” as a parenting approach. That just seems to encourage complacency. Just because life isn’t fair doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to make it fair. I feel like a better lesson would be the value of humility and “you need to understand why things are the way they are before you can improve them.” Though admittedly, that doesn’t have much of a ring to it.
Parenting is complicated. What should the mother have done? Berated her mother for interrupting the child? btw, only a fool would judge any family based on 20 minutes in a restaurant.
Did you consider that the visit with the grandmother was relatively rare and for that reason she was given deference over the child, with whom the mother spends plenty of time? Could the grandmother have been hard of hearing? Many elders, particularly those who live alone, don’t pay attention well. It is also possible that this mother was doing the admirable task (IMO) of raising her son to have respect for his elders. Not so many families are emphasizing that lately. Did yours?
I assume that you have no children of your own and the greatest rudeness in this thread is the one you’ve committed by invoking your uninformed judgement on a family in a restaurant. Of all the things I resented about parenting my three grown kids, the worst thing was having everybody from age 9 to 99 constantly telling you how to do it. If I were you, from this moment on I would pledge to see to my own manners instead of worrying about somebody else’s That’s what a well-mannered young adult should do.
There are actions between allowing rudeness and berating. Maybe she could have said, “Mom, I’d like to hear what Johnny has to say about trains.”
Maybe the grandmother was going to die tomorrow. Maybe she’s a vampire. Who knows? I do know that the kid patiently waited until his elders has stopped speaking before he started, something the grandmother didn’t do.
My grown kids are adored by their boyfriends parents. Even after they broke up. But my mother and my mother-in-law would never have interrupted them in this way, even when my mother-in-law was 90. That would be impolite and it would set a bad example.
Looked informed to me. The grandmother keeps this up and the kid is going to think “in10 years you go into a home, bitch.”
I see nothing wrong with what the kid did. He was polite, waited his turn, and asserted himself when he was spoken over unfairly. I’d say the onus is on the grandmother.
I agree that the “life isn’t fair” paradigm is bogus. Kids are naturally inquisitive since they are still trying to piece together their frameworks for understanding the world. If you do something arbitrary and simply handwave it with “Well, life isn’t fair,” the kid is going to be confused. Is it unfair because the situation was just tough nuggets, or is it unfair because you’re trying to skirt social responsibility out of self-importance? Not exactly a consistent message.
It’s why I never really understood the whole “respect your elders” thing. I think respect is something that is earned on its own merits. My father would punish me when I was a kid for “disrespecting” him when really it was just a form of “do whatever I say without question even if I’m being selfish/unfair/inconsistent/sketchy.”
“Respect” isn’t a free-pass card to do whatever you want and not get called out for it. Respect is contextual, or it loses its value in definition. So, in this case, Kid: 1, Grandmother: 0.
Just because Grandma is old she has the right to talk over everyone?
Look, let me tell you again, I came from a family like this. Time and time again every time I spoke I was told “The adults are speaking, so be quiet.” Yet I was expected to behave like an adult and spend all of my free time with the adults and be respectful and mannerful to them - but no one was expected to be the same with me.
And what happened? I stopped respecting them. You don’t automatically warrant respect just because you’re old. I’m with olives; expecting the child to have to shut up and have no rights or feelings is archaic and barbaric. And whoever said the child should be the mature one, it is to laugh.
Perhaps mom could have said, “Let Grandma talk, and then you’ll have your turn.”
Not very civilized to me.
Being an elder does not give you the right or authority to disrespect children.
In the case of the scnerio, I would have not said as the mother “She’s the adult and your the child”
What does that teach him?
Children learn best by example. Elders are suppose to have wisdom and knowledge,to pass down to the younger people, well she and the mother set a bad example.
I heard somewhere years ago that our degree of sanity or insanity is in direct proportion to our ability to accept that life is difficult. Have you ever wondered why people have road rage over minor infractions or perceived inconsiderate actions? Learning patience and tolerance will be a much more valuable lesson to a child than him winning his turn to talk over his grandma.
There are plenty of opportunities to learn that life is difficult. When an unexpected disaster hit. When parents are short of money and can’t buy you what you want. When your dog dies. This is not an example of one of them - grandma is not a natural force. What this teaches him is that adults have a double standard - patience and tolerance are good for him, but not for them. Patience is okay in its place, but not when it makes you a dishrag. Someone never learning how to assert himself will never get anywhere. Those who never speak up in meetings for fear of interrupting or inserting themselves before others who might have nothing of interest to say will never get recognized and will never get promoted.