Trevor sounds a lot like my nephew. Nathaniel isn’t a bad kid, but he’s not well-socialized. He can be very rude, he’s very selfish, and he has real problems with impulse control and emotional outbursts. I think a lot of Nathaniel’s problems come from his parents, and they way they’ve chosen to raise him – when we first started to notice these issues, five or six years ago (he’s 10 now), he wasn’t nearly as bad when he wasn’t with his parents (he was better-behaved when he was only around my wife and me, or his grandparents).
But, lately, his behavior’s gotten worse, and it’s gotten to the point where we really don’t enjoy spending much time around him. It’s a shame, because when he was a little kid, he and my wife were very close.
It doesn’t help that he’s allowed to eat whatever he wants, whenever he wants, and has been allowed to become very overweight. But, at least, his parents have finally realized that they’re creating a little monster, and they’re taking him to counseling. We sincerely hope he’ll be able to turn things around.
If you felt somehow personally insulted by the kid asking what was in the cake, that seems odd to me. He’s a 10 year old, so he is by definition absolutely stupid about social niceties. This is to be expected. No insult intended.
That doesn’t mean you have to like the behavior or the kid of course.
When I encounter things like that in kids I interact with, I just straightforwardly tell them (with no aggravation in my voice) that they just did something kind of rude, that people won’t usually react well to that kind of thing, or something along those lines. It’s a “teaching moment” I guess. Then I hand them the cake and if they ask again then I ask them why they want to know and we go from there.
I’ll also note that, unfortunately, I think it’s not uncommon for kids to have bad manners today.
My wife is an elementary-school teacher, and she’s very firm about her students having good manners and speaking to people (especially adults, but even each other) in a respectful fashion. She tells me that, over the 20 years of her career, she’s seeing more and more kids who simply have no clue about manners; she suspect that most of them simply aren’t taught manners at home.
(OTOH, I think it’s a meme that’s been around for many generations – “these kids today are disrespectful / have no manners!” )
We have the biggest problem with this with our daughter. You see, we just got her a year ago and for the first 6 years of her life, she didn’t really have conversations with grownups.
Everything she would say would be in the most negative way possible. She would (seemingly) insult everything. Stupid things like, ‘we’re having pizza,’ said in the whiniest way possible to saying people were fat.
Turns out, she really didn’t know how else to talk and still get the grownups to listen. We promised to listen (or tell her when we can’t, cause if I am in the middle of something, my brain is sometimes off the hook) if she promised to say what she really meant (i.e. ‘Oh, good, we’re having pizza.’) and not to insult people or things. She will still do it sometimes (resulting in a raised eyebrow from me and a sorry from her) but at least she knows when she is being rude.
I mean, if the kid’s object was to get your attention (and for most kids, this is their objective in any given situation based on what our therapist says), it did work.
I think you did a fine job of directing the attention to more positive things.
(Though you could be in trouble, kids usually do the worst things to the people they like the most/feel the closest to.)
However, that was another one of my nitpicks this weekend. When I ask if you would like another taco, the correct answer isn’t “yeah”. It is 'yes, please." And when I say (in that Mom tone of voice), “Yes, what? Trevor? Shouldn’t you say please?”, the answer isn’t “Whatever”.
Do parents ever not like their kids? I mean, they probably love them but can they objectively look at their kid and say “this kid has no redeeming qualities?”
This doesn’t make any sense to me, because most of the 10-year-olds I have interacted with in the last 10 years have a fairly good grasp on social niceties, and don’t do/say things like this kid does. Hell, 4 or 5 years old is more than old enough to have a grasp on being polite to other people and respectful to adults.
However I can agree that it’s not part of parenting for many kids these days to be taught social niceties and to speak respectfully to adults, so more and more do not.
Agreed. A 10-year-old (who does not otherwise have developmental issues) is perfectly capable of being polite. If he doesn’t, either he (a) was never taught to do so, or (b) he actively chooses to be rude. If it’s the former case (and I suspect the vast majority of “rude kids” are in this camp), it’s likely that his parents never taught him, and may well be ignorant of such things themselves. If it’s the latter, well, he’s a schmuck.
Trevor’s brother at 5 YO has vastly better manners than his brother.
So, in this case, I am guessing it isn’t the parents. Little brother consistently says please and thank you (doesn’t always remember, but well over 70% of the time). Trevor chooses to be rude.
My vote goes to choosing to be rude, and maybe he just needed someone to call him out on it. Bravo to the SO for paying attention and nipping it in the bud! (Even if you did look like the “bad guy” at first.) Bravo to the father for the added input! I think all 3 of them got an eye-opener. Hopefully, it’ll stick.
But, if he says anything else about cereal, make sure you have a good one for him next time. Something healthy, like Grape-Nuts. :eek:
Next time he doesn’t say please, cut out that last sentence (“shouldn’t you say please?”) Just say “yes, what?” and have HIM say the “please.” (And don’t give him another taco until he does.) If you say “shouldn’t you say please?” it sounds like you’re merely suggesting that he say “please,” instead of insisting that he do so. It’s also feeding him the answer, giving him the opportunity to say what basically amounts to “yeah, that,” which is not the answer you want.
In fact, when you’re dealing with kids, and you specifically want them to obey you, cut the word “should” out of your vocabulary altogether. As I said in the paragraph above, “should” sounds more like a suggestion than a command. My mother learned this when she became an elementary school librarian–the teachers who had the best control over their classes said things like “sit down,” instead of “you should sit down.” There were other factors as well, of course, (like, say, an intimidating physical appearance) but direct, assertive language does help.
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