A long-standing friendship of ours abruptly came to an end when we had a couple over who has a teen daughter the same age as our daughter. They’ve been friends since pre-K. The two were engrossed in a Youtube video and chose to ignore a call for dinner. My daughter knows better whereas her friend, an only child, has never been disciplined. Twenty minutes later, when my daughter and her friend decide to join us, my daughter instantly removes her younger brothers’ (age 8) plate out from under him and kicks him out of his chair to optimize the seating arrangement to her advantage. We punished her for both not coming to table AND treating her brother like dirt when he was completely innocent AND did the right thing in the first place. The punishment included not eating with us, as is our punishment for not coming to the table. (My wife is not running a restaurant, and is not a short order cook. I’m sure your mothers told you the same when you were kids.)
The next day, we received an email that our guests felt uncomfortable and chose to end the friendship. Huh? A long-term friendship tossed out over this fiasco? It’s much ado about nothing! Just because we chose to discipline our child in our house for being rude and ignorant? Do I ever, ever tell you maybe you should discipline your only child – after years and years of dealing with her crap? You’d think they’d be adult enough to understand, but perhaps this cuts to the core of their upbringing that they really don’t understand the value of good manners…that ESPECIALLY should be exhibited in front of company WITHOUT a lecture. And, my daughter is pushing 16 years old now, and knows better! (Since I know her friend has no upbringing to know better, I have told my daughter [as I have said many times in the past] that she needs to encourage her friend to do the right thing. In this case, she should have taken the initiative to say “I think we should go to dinner now.”) It’s a sad, sad statement on her upbringing - typical of today’s society devoid of values.
What a world! Wrong is the new right! Apparently, disciplining your child is so out of style that now we’re the ones vilified for maintaining a standard on values and manners!
Your ex-friends *do *sound clueless, but it’s hard to fathom that a long standing relationship could be ruined by such a non event. Are you sure there hasn’t been some other issue bubbling beneath the surface? Have you ever had any disagreements or even discussion regarding child rearing? Just seems odd to me that anyone could get that hissy over something that is actually none of their business. You didn’t hit the kid over the head with a frying pan or anything, did you:dubious:
I second that this is most probably a long-standing difference of philosophy that they felt finally reached the point of no return.
I will also say that in such a situation, it’s the words that were exchanged, not the practical punishment, that would make me uncomfortable. Did you reproach her in front of them? I would find that extremely uncomfortable, especially if my daughter did the same thing (implying that you feel whatever criticism you were leveling at your daughter you feel applies to mine, and worse to me for not enforcing it).
After the age of 10 or so, my parents would not have dressed me down in front of company any more than they would have attacked each other in front of company. It’s rude and uncomfortable for everyone. So I would look to the words spoken, not the punishment, as the cause of the discomfort.
Im not sure why you didn’t just go to where the girls were watching the video and tell them it was time to come to the table. Sometimes it takes a second “call” to get teenagers attention.
Making a scene over a relatively innocent transgression probably made your friends very uncomfortable and perhaps they got the vibe that you were making a point to show strict discipline in front of them as some sort of “lesson” in child rearing for their benefit. Im getting that vibe, and I wasn’t even there.
You should save any disciplining you have for your kids until AFTER the guests are gone. And I agree that teenagers missing a call to dinner isn’t worth such a dust-up. Go get them and turn off the TV/video game/whatever if you have to.
I’m sure they didn’t want to get involved in the ugly business of your family drama.
We should expect everyone to handle their children as if they were on Downton Abbey.
The thing to do is tell them that there will be a letter of reprimand waiting for them in their chambers.
Yeah, that was my thought, too. If the OP told the girl it was time to eat and she ignored them, why not punish her then? Or if it was a “call” for dinner, maybe she didn’t hear, in which case why not go make sure they heard?
Why did you wait twenty minutes? So you could make a public scene?
Was that the only punishment? There was no scolding?
Odd. My dad had no problem scolding me in public, nor in front of guests. Most of my dads relatives and friends understood that kids sometimes misbehaved, and needed a scolding.
Maybe there was another reason they wish to stop their relationship with you.
Wait… either it’s a “fiasco”, or it’s “much ado about nothing”. How can it be both?
Ho’kay. You didn’t happen to mention any of this during your meteing out of “punishment”? Did you mention the other girl in any way?
It might be about the way you disciplined your child (words matter), not the mere fact that you did so, that your former friends found distasteful. If you equated your daughter’s (and, by proxy, her friend) rudeness with the collapse of Western Civilization, it’s possible that you may have come off seeming a tad unbalanced.
Your daughter is 16. She’s way beyond the age where she requires immediate punishment.
The OP excudes sanctimony and parental snobbery. I’m guessing your guests are well-acquainted with this tone, and they’re sick of it. This incident was simply the last straw. It could be that they are indeed lax disciplinarians, but they’re probably taking comfort in the fact that at least they respect their daughter enough not to embarrass her in public. Rudesness is not just what children do.
And I have to give them some credit for writing you a note. A lot of people lose friends and never find out why.
How about close to 15 years of hundreds of some of the most idiotic and thoughtless threads started in GQ and virtually never coming back to thank the people who took the time to answer you? You’re a fine person to complain about the manners of people today. Dinner at the Jinx’s must be one of the most annoying things imaginable.
Another possibility is that you bitch to your daughter about her friend’s lack of manners and discipline. In turn, your daughter tells her friend that her parents think she is an ill-mannered little shit. In turn, friend tells her parents exactly what you think. Resentment and ill-will simmer until a seemingly trivial event becomes the proverbial last straw.
I would agree that the OP overreacted…except for one thing. Why does her 8-year-old brother have to absorb his sister’s disrespect toward him? No doubt he felt humiliated…and publicly humiliating him deserves a public humiliation in return.
Why does the reaction of one couple towards your weirdo family fights get the rest of us “people” reprimanded? Leave the us out of this. Unless it happens every weekend, with all the people you know.
This is what I was thinking too, and maybe it’s not an isolated incident.
It’s also possible that the friends have thought over the years that OP and his wife’s definition of discipline was excessively harsh, or maybe even abusive, but continued to associate with them because they liked them, and their side of the story indicates that they’d had enough. Maybe they even wondered if they were safe around them? I don’t know, and can’t know; I wasn’t there.
Why did you wait twenty minutes? So you could make a public scene?