Old-Fashioned for me -- straight up!

There are days when I think I’m incredibly old-fashioned. Well, ok, if you listen to my older daughter, I’m ALWAYS old-fashioned but that’s beside the point. I’ve been on a bit of a tear lately about manners… etiquette… consideration… let’s just call it “NOT being incredibly self-centered.” I’m trying to raise my girls to be good people. Good citizens of society in general. They respect their elders – but they also respect their peers. They say “please” and “thank you” and remember to say “one moment please” before calling someone to the phone. I don’t think it’s asking too much of a child to expect them to behave appropriately in any given situation. We were out shopping the other day. In Wal-Mart, actually. Ahead of us at the check-out was a woman and what I presumed to be her son. A devil-possessed little cretin, mind you, but I’m sure his momma loves him. He was waging war with her over a toy he wanted and wasn’t getting. Poor woman was doggedly standing her ground but what a losing battle. The boy decided to scream… a long, painful, ear-piercing, unending, if-you-don’t-shut-him-up-I-WILL, experience for everyone in the store. This was not a toddler throwing a tantrum. This boy was at least ten years old. He screamed. His mother screamed. The cashier screamed. And ‘nary an ice cream in sight. (If you’re old enough to have sung the “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream” rhyme, you got that). The situation actually turned comical when the kid caught sight of something hanging on the “impulse buyers beware” rack, near the register. He picked up the little trinket, turned it over in his hands, examined it carefully and even appeared to fully read the packaging – all the while screamin’ like a banshee!! He just kept his mouth wide open and let ‘er rip while he busied himself trying to find something else to want. He might want to consider a future in opera, the way he can hold a note. Anyway… after all this, what did his mother do? Not… a… single… friggin… thing. He trailed her, and her 32 rolls of t.p. and 16 rolls of paper towels, out of the store -- still screaming. I had briefly considered offering to mummify the lad with all that paper but I didn’t think it would be appreciated. I’m sure that many will tell me that he was just being a kid. Yes, he was. A rude, obnoxious, disrespectful kid. Some people dig that kind. I prefer the ones that come with volume control. Control – of any kind – is really at the heart of the issue these days. I don’t know who runs some households – the parents or the kids. Parents suffer from guilt pangs about working, sending kids to daycare, spending evenings doing housework and paying bills instead of playing Barbie or baseball. To make the average lifestyle more palatable for the kids, they decide to discard the bitter pill of discipline and sugarcoat everything. What message are they sending to their kids? I’ve had discussions with parents who justify their kids’ tantrums by telling me that they are teaching them a lesson. Making them realize that they can’t have everything they want. Umm. No. Primarily, what you’re allowing them to do is to utterly and completely disrespect other people. Those of us in the line behind you at Wal-Mart are JUST as stressed, JUST as pressed for time, struggling to meet the demands of every day life JUST like you. The last thing we appreciate is listening to your kid’s aria. When my girls were young, they learned that, if they pitched a fit in a store, they got pitched too – right into the car and we went home. I guess that lands me firmly at the opposite end of the parenting spectrum from Junior Pavaroti’s mom. But, when we go out in public now, I appreciate that people will sometimes take a moment to smile at my children, rather than rolling their eyes or clucking their tongues. All these years, I’ve been trying so hard to teach them to be thoughtful and consider others. In recent days, I’ve begun to question the effort. We live within a 1.6-mile radius of the elementary school. My 11 year old doesn’t “qualify” for bus service and, with my husband working an early morning shift, I have no car to drive her to school. Sometimes she walks with a friend, the rest of the time I walk with her. In the last week alone, that same friend has passed right in front of our house, with her mother, IN THEIR CAR, on their way to school. We walked. Two driveways to our right, there’s a little girl who attends the same school and knows my daughter. Her mother drives her EVERY day. On my walk back home, the mother’s van passes right by me and pulls back into her driveway. The same driveway that is maybe 200 feet from my own. Neither one has ever offered my daughter a ride to school. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not up to them to transport my child. But I know, if the tables were reversed, I’d be happy to include theirs. So, what does this teach the kids? Well, it tells the one in the back seat of the car that it’s ok to ignore people when you want to but then call them up when you need something – like someone to walk to school with when you’re not allowed to walk alone. To my daughter, it’s confusing. The same mother who welcomes her into their home to play one afternoon can drive right past her, never so much as glancing in her direction, the very next morning. With the wisdom of all of her 11 years, she looked at me and said, “Well that’s not very nice.” That was the moment that I realized, I’ve taught her to be old-fashioned too. In this day and age, we’re still expecting “nice.”