Article Five

Raising Children to be Loyal to Their Parents and Courteous to Adults

Do you ever see children yelling at their mom? Have you seen a little child pull back and punch their grandmother in the arm? Have you gone to the mall lately and heard a young teenager telling her mom to “Shut up and quit hassling me”?

When I heard this last one, I stopped dead in my tracks and stared in shock at the mom, waiting for her to let that young lady have it right there. But nothing happened!!
I was amazed.

Then I heard a mother asking her daughter to go to across the store and bring back a gift card. The girl told her mother to go get it herself; she did not feel like it. This one about knocked me over. I just could not believe what I was hearing; young daughters refusing to obey or to perform a simple favor for their mothers!

I could not help but think the girl would have done that little favor for her girlfriend without hesitation. But how did these girls come to refuse to help in such small things?

The first way we learn our behavior is by watching and imitating those closest to us; not necessarily those closely related, but those most important to us. When we’re very young the world is filled by our parents and family. But teenagers often believe- or pretend to believe- their peers are their role models.

Don’t let yourself be dismayed by this attitude. Most of us are well aware of the phases we grew through, and kids are pretty much the same now as we were.

They have bigger, faster toys, and play War Craft instead of Monopoly, but their basic emotions and reactions are as young people’s have always been.

Since our kids learn first by watching us, we need to watch ourselves. Some adults are conscientious about visiting their elderly parents, then on the drive home they talk about the elders’ “old-fashioned, out-dated ideas.”

“They just can’t understand the world today. It all moves too fast for them.”

That might be so, but why teach your children that the next-older generation is too slow to keep up with the modern world?

The truth is that your child doesn’t have any grasp of age and time. When the longest time a person has lived is 6 years or 16 years, how can they comprehend 40 or 60 years? To a kid, anyone over 20 is old, and grandparents are just REALLY old. A child divides ages into babies, kids, big kids, grown-ups, old people, and the ancient. You might do better not to ask a small child which group you are in; it can be daunting even to ask a teenager that question!

We have children who hear that older folks don’t get it, and although in my head I’m a very young 35, in a child’s eyes I’m as old as Grandma. And Grandma’s don’t get it; old people don’t understand that kids are different, and don’t think the way people did back in the Old Days. The truth is that kids think the same way, they are just dressed differently, own more gadgets, and can design web pages even if they cannot recite the multiplication tables through the twelves.

So to teach children to be loyal to their parents, we must be loyal to ours. We can speak of our parents’ wisdom, their life experiences, how they’ve overcome difficulties and prospered. Our children need to hear that “No one in the world will love you as much as your parents. Parents love you no matter what; they may discipline you when you goof up, but they still love you.” (For that matter, we should tell our spouse; it’s always good to hear our family loves us). A family stays together by the efforts of parents, and hopefully the children will grow into that ethic and continue to stay close throughout life.

All the wonderful traits we have that we’d like our kids to see in us, we need to take notice of in our elders. It is good to have children grow up learning that adults are valuable. Our society tends to lose sight of the wisdom of our elders, and we can enrich our children’s lives by teaching them how to appreciate the valuable resource of their aunts, uncles, and grandparents, and the old people who live in our neighborhoods. There are many wise people and excellent role models in our lives; we do our children a good service by extending their respect to include other adults.

Loyalty to family is vital in keeping a family together, and courtesy and good manners are the WD-40 of family communications. Watching their parents being courteous and well-mannered is the first step to having our children be courteous. The second step is to remind them.

Some kids will see and imitate, but some will see and ignore, or be so busy they don’t even see. These kids need to be engaged in the action, to be asked to hold a door open, say please, thank you, etc. It’s natural for children to focus on themselves; we all start out that way, but then expand our attention to the family, then friends, neighbors, and so forth. The trouble is that some people do not do this automatically; they need a gentle push to expand their focus and thoughts beyond themselves.

Like the girl in the mall who would not help her mother, some kids are allowed to grow up believing they are the only ones who matter. A parent who does everything for the child, asking nothing of the child, is a parent who is teaching selfishness. Kids need to do tasks for parents whether they want or not. Have you never had your own parent say, “I did not ask if you want to do it. I just said do it. So get going...”

Of course that was always followed with “Thank you.”

Those basic, consistent lessons do work, even in a world of WebKinz and the X-Box. The games have changed, but the minds have not. There’s an anti-drug campaign that says “talk to your kids, they hear you.” That is true. Our kids hear us when we tell them we love each other, we care for each other, we are a family and we watch out for each other, we’re loyal and we’re kind to each other. Then we as parents act this way, and we require the kids to act this way.

Is it easy? Hey! This is Real Life; of course it’s not always easy. Sometimes you treat someone kindly and they slam the door in your face. But never give up on courtesy; tomorrow someone will hold that door open for you!