Teaching Children Respect

This post will look at this societal problem from a perspective you may never have heard.  I saw a recent poll on the Internet where child care providers were asked the greatest problem they faced in their profession.  Almost overwhelmingly, the response was a lack of respect from the children.  Children in our society are taught to be respected not to respect.  The former does not promote the latter as we in child care know all too well.

Too Much Self-Esteem?
I will briefly touch on the our society's overindulgence in self-esteem, which is a large part of the problem before I move on to the heart of the matter.  As I stated in the first paragraph, children in our society expect to be respected whether they deserve that respect or not.  I once saw a cartoon that depicted children from the 1950s standing before a teacher discussing a bad grade and then children today doing the same thing.  The children from the 1950s were promising to do better.  The children from today were demanding a good grade whether they deserved it or not.  That cartoon actually says it all.  We have so overemphasized self-esteem that our children have lost touch with reality.  They believe that adults must bow down and give them everything they want or they will make us pay.  This is a completely ridiculous situation.  I have already written a post on self-esteem.  Therefore, I will leave it at that and move on.

The Importance of Men
The heart of the matter will not make females of the world very happy.  Men teach children to respect and our men are AWOL on this matter or hamstrung to the point that they do not dare.  As a female, I share your absolute aggravation that this is a reality, but I am smart enough to know not to fight it.  I can do everything in the world to try to gain respect from the children.  Then my husband can walk into the room and say something simple with the children falling all over themselves to obey.  It does make me want to bang my head against the wall sometimes, but that doesn't nullify what I have witnessed over and over.  Something about men commands respect from children when they assert it.  Women get more respect from children when men demand it of them.  To fight this reality is to fight a losing battle.  I'm not saying that women cannot earn children's respect, but the level of respect women garner alone cannot compare to the level a man can garner.

If a person accepts this reality and then looks around at our society, many situations and circumstances take on a whole new light.  For several decades many women have lived as if men were completely unnecessary.  Many women believe that fathers are not necessarily needed to raise children.  They believe women are completely capable of raising well-rounded children without any assistance from a man.  I want to make these women take a good hard look at our society and come to their senses. Men are completely necessary for the upbringing of children.  Contrary to popular belief, you cannot just cast aside all the men of the world and go on without them.  We have no respect from our children because we have no respect for men in our society.

You Get What You Expect
Now, that does not mean that some men are not completely worthless.  People of both genders fall into that category.  However, it has been my experience that with men you get what you expect.  If you expect them to be deadbeats, they will oblige.  If you expect them to step up and be a man, many of them actually do.  I have had to deal with many divorce situations as a childcare provider.  Many times the moms do not know how to take the way I treat the fathers.  I expect the fathers to be involved, and I communicate that as strongly as I do with the mothers.  If I have a difficult child, I will set the father down and let him know in no uncertain terms that he is mostly responsible for how his child turns out.  If he wants his child to do well, he needs to step up and be a man in that child's life.  What amazes me is that usually no one else has ever talked to that man in that way.  I get results because I cut to the chase.

Children Need a Man in their Life
What do you do if the father is truly a worthless deadbeat or the child has no father?  To that I say find a man to fill that void for that child.  It can be a grandfather, uncle, other relative, or mentor of some type.  Somehow, someway find a male role model for that child that will teach the child to respect.  Girls need male role models as much as boys do.  Men teach girls self-respect in a way a woman cannot.  However, the women must get out of the way and let the men be men.  At the beginning I said that our men are AWOL or hamstrung to the point that they do not dare assert their maleness.  Women of our society have done the hamstringing along with the liberal philosophies so prevalent today.  If you truly want the children of today's society to learn to respect other people, then let men be men again and get out of their way.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!!

Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457