R-E-S-P-E-C-T

First, I wanted to thank everyone who commented on yesterday's post. Your encouragement meant a lot and it was also nice to hear from so many people I care about. Thank you.

I touched on this yesterday, but it's been rolling around in my head all day, so I wanted to revisit it in a little more depth. That would be the idea of respect with regards to children and adults. 

As I wrote yesterday, in coaching parents to help them have better relationships with their children and to reframe (and hopefully eventually mitigate) some concerning behaviors, the idea of respect comes up early and often. This would be the child showing respect to the parent and not the other way around. The longer I parent and the longer I coach other parents, the more I view this concept of respect in a negative light. 

One of the big names in connected parenting is Dr. Karyn Purvis, who wrote The Connected Child as well as doing extensive research on the effects of trauma on behavior and how to help a child heal. She had a profound impact on our family. That said, while I love her videos and found them both hopeful and useful, there is one aspect that has always rankled. That is her instruction to ask a child who was using a rude tone or rude words to "say it again with respect." 

This was always a non-starter in our house and I have heard from enough other parents in the thick of it to know it didn't work there, either. I realized that if my child was able to use a respectful tone, than they would have, because in our family, that is just how we speak to one another. It was the default. So when this didn't happen, then something was wrong. That something often meant a child was so disregulated that they had lost their cognitive and verbal abilities (both needed for polite tone) a lot farther back down the road. 

Now, because I'm not a perfect parent and was a slow and reluctant adopter of connected parenting, I know first hand what happens when I heard a rude (or disrespectful) tone. I drew the figurative line in the sand and saying whatever it was with respect became paramount, more often than not overshadowing whatever the original issue was. These were not my finest moments. It also didn't work with my traumatized children. Instead of getting a reluctant "respectful" tone, I got long and frequent explosions instead. I was no longer on my child's team. I had become the wielder of authority that had to be appeased. Nothing about it furthered a trusting relationship.

So why did I do it? I never liked myself very much in those moments, but it was almost as though I couldn't help myself. It took a lot of soul searching while making the paradigm shift to figure out what was at the root of it all. It actually was very simple and rooted in one emotion.

Fear. 

That was it, plain and simple. If I didn't maintain the idea of being respected by my children, then I wasn't doing my job. My children might become brats. They might not be able to hold down a job and be a functioning member of society because I hadn't taught them to have proper respect for me. 

The better way? Is to treat your children with respect and forge a relationship based on safety and connection. No one needs to command respect because it is already there, flowing both ways, and is a natural result of the relationship. This true of respect allows the parent to set aside their hurt at a tone of voice and choose to figure out what's going on instead. Fear has no place because everyone is secure. 

Think about it, the people in your life whom you respect most are those who treat you with respect and care; who aren't beset by fear of not being enough. They never require you to respect them, it just happens. We actually have a word for someone who insists or requires someone to be respectful... we call them a bully. This is particularly true if there is already a power imbalance, say between young person and youth leader. Pretty much if you find yourself needing to make someone else respect you, it tells you a lot more about yourself than it says anything about the other person. Go check what you are afraid of. 

Now, do I ask my children to be polite? Yes, of course. But you can disagree and still be polite. (At least you used to. I'm not so sure about right now.) Last night my children were polite. They just didn't agree to do what was being asked of them. Respect does not mean doing whatever someone tells you to do, especially a person in authority. So when the person J. spent a good chunk of time talking to kept saying the issue was disrespect, I might have been tempted to quote The Princess Bride and say, "You keep using this word, but I don't think it means what you think it means." (J. is far calmer and rational in these sorts of moments, by the way.) He didn't really mean respect, he meant submission. 

I find using accurate terminology to be very enlightening, don't you? 

(Maybe by tomorrow this won't be stuck in my craw quite so much and I can move on.)