"Children have never been very good at listening to
their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them."
- James Baldwin
Children
are mirrors; they reflect back to us everything we say and do. We now
know that 95% of everything children learn, they learn from what is
modeled for them. Only 5% of all they learn is from direct instruction.
Human beings are like tape recorders. Every word we hear, everything we
experience, is permanently recorded in our subconscious. Whenever adults
speak, we are being role models for the children in our presence. What
we speak is what we teach. Children record every word we ever say to
them or in front of them. The language children grow up hearing is the
language they will speak.
We often make the mistake of thinking that since children are smaller
than we are and have less information and experience than we do, that
they don't have all the same feelings we do. But they do. The same kind
of treatment that would embarrass, humiliate or hurt us, embarrasses,
humiliates and hurts children. When human beings are being hurt
emotionally, our thinking shuts down. When our thinking is shut down we
cannot learn, we can only record. When adults try to "teach" children by
criticizing, lecturing, shaming, ridiculing, giving orders, screaming,
threatening and hitting, it shuts down their thinking so they can't
learn what the adult intended to teach them to do or not to do; they can
only record what is being modeled.
The most common criticism I hear of young people these days is, "they
don't treat anyone or anything with respect." Ironically, adults often
try to teach children to be respectful by treating them disrespectfully.
Children learn respect or disrespect from how we treat them and how we
treat each other. When children live with disrespect, they learn
disrespect. We can teach respect only by modeling treating each other
with respect and by giving children the same respect we expect.
Since children have long been treated as second class citizens, as "less
than," most adults carry "recordings" of disrespect we recorded when we
were children. When children's behavior challenges us, it pushes our
recording's play button and we find ourselves saying the very things
that were said to us as children. Has any parent not had the experience
of hearing their parents' words coming out of their own mouths now that
they are parents? Most disrespectful responses are so automatic, we have
already said them before we even realize what we've said.
Learning to treat children with respect will require a change of heart,
that can come only from a major shift in consciousness of how we view
children and how we define respect. Children are born with human
dignity. To treat a person with respect is to acknowledge and preserve
their human dignity. To treat a person with disrespect is to attack
their human dignity.
Treating children disrespectfully is like using physical punishment as
discipline; it only "works" as long as we are bigger than they are. It
behooves every adult who wants to be treated with respect to treat
children respectfully. Whether children grow up under our roof or not,
they live in the same world we do and their behavior can and does impact
our lives. However we treat the child, the child will treat the world.
How can we expect children to understand and practice the Golden Rule if
we treat them with less respect than we give our peers? In saying that
children deserve the same respect we would give our friends, I am not
saying we should treat children like adults or that we should never get
angry. I'm saying that there is nothing we ever have to say to a child
that we need to say in a disrespectful way.
Yelling, "I'm angry, I don't like this behavior" is not disrespectful;
screaming at, belittling, embarrassing and humiliating children is. If
we question whether or not something we have said to a child is
disrespectful, we can ask ourselves, "would I say those words, in that
tone of voice, to my good friend?" If not, it was probably
disrespectful. When we model disrespect, we must then model apologizing.
If we are sincere about teaching respect to children we must expose,
acknowledge, and work on eliminating all the ways that we model
disrespect. Even if we do not model the blatantly disrespectful
behaviors of criticizing, lecturing, shaming, ridiculing, giving orders,
screaming, threatening and hitting, there are many things we do and say
to children, that have been said and done to children for so long, we
aren't even aware that they are disrespectful. Yet, if these same things
were said or done to us we would identify them as disrespectful.
In my parenting class on treating children with respect, we read a
brilliant piece by Erma Bombeck, titled ,"Treat Friends, Kids The Same."
She imagines having friends over for dinner and saying to them all those
things that most of us heard growing up and therefore, say to children.
"Shut the door. Were you born in a barn?" "I didn't work over a hot
stove all day to have you nibble like some bird." "Sit up straight or
your spine will grow that way." Most parents roar with laughter at the
thought of speaking to their friends that way, then realize it is just
as disrespectful to say those things to children.
We don't say, "What do you say?" or "What's the magic word?" to our
friends but children hear it all the time. If we expect children to
always say please and thank- you, we must always say please and thank
you to them and to each other, otherwise we are modeling that sometimes
you say it and sometimes you don't. Children imitate what we do. If we
expect children to have manners, to share, to apologize, to be honest,
kind, respectful, and loving, we must do and be those things so they
will have that model to imitate.
Children imitate parents, family members, friends, caregivers, teachers,
and television. The more children are out in the world, the more models
they will be exposed to. While we can't keep children from ever seeing
models of the kind of behavior we don't want them to imitate, we can be
more selective of what models we expose them to, especially television.
Since parents are the primary models in the early years, we must work on
modeling the behavior we expect and not modeling behavior we don't want
to see in them.
The ancient wisdom "what goes around, comes around," and, "as you sow,
so shall you reap," applies to how we teach children. To move from the
disrespectful way of teaching through criticizing, lecturing and giving
orders, to teaching children through conscious, intentional modeling ,
takes time and practice and a willingness to look at and sometimes
change our own behavior. Gandhi said, "We must become the change we want
to see in the world." Joseph Chilton Pearce says, "We must become the
people we want our children to be."
Most of the disrespectful things we say and do to children aren't even
intentional.Our old "tapes" just automatically play when our buttons
get pushed. Learning to teach respect by intentional modeling is simple;
it's unlearning the old ways that is difficult. When a child doesn't
behave in the ways we expect, we must ask ourselves, "Am I providing a
model of the behavior I am expecting of my child?" When a child behaves
in a way that we don't like, we must ask ourselves, "Am I modeling that
behavior?" If we can honestly answer, "No," then something else is
causing the behavior.
We can train ourselves to stop and think before we speak, by remembering
that everything we say will be recorded and imitated. We can stop or at
least interrupt those old recordings and intentionally model the kind of
behavior we expect and will accept from our children. When we give
children the same respect we expect, we teach children respect. How we
treat them is what we teach them.
"Teaching Children Respect"
© 1989-2003 by Pam Leo, PLP & Company
For more information, articles and reprint permissions,
contact Pam at her website:
www.connectionparenting.com
