QUESTION: I frequently catch my 10-year-old son being rude to grown-ups.
We model “please” and “thank you” in our home, and I always correct him when I see it, but other than that, what can I do? I'm trying very hard not to raise a rude child. Is this just “tweenness”? I would ask the same question about kindness. Sometimes I see him behaving in a manner I would describe as unkind.
ANSWER: When I first read this question, all I could think of is my mother's stink-eye.
My brother and I would be kicking each other under the table at a fancy white-cloth restaurant, and when an older person would stop the table to say a friendly hello, my mother would stare at us with death rays shooting from her eyeballs. The message of this powerful stink-eye was crystal clear: “You address this elderly gentlemen with good manners! Smile and shake his hand. NOW.”
And has she passed down the stink-eye to me? You bet. If my children are looking sullen or annoyed or bored and an adult comes to meet them, they are to sit up and be polite.
Mostly.
I say “mostly” because the truth is (and this was true of my mother's message, too) that you don't want to force a young child to hug or smile or make eye contact with adults that the children don't know (or sometimes do know for that matter). While teaching manners is important, you can't do it at the cost of the child feeling safe. It is disrespectful.
What the stink-eye really does is serve as a warning. It is the same as raising your voice ever so slightly when the child is edging toward danger or a mistake. The stink-eye is the arched eyebrow you send your child as he reaches for another cookie and makes eye contact with you. The stink-eye is when you say your child's name sharply as he goes to push his sister.
These acts: changing your voice, raising an eyebrow, the stink-eye, enunciating the name, are all meant to trigger a low level of alarm in the child. The child's brain is meant to snap to, to say, “Oh! Mom is saying, 'Watch it!' I better stop!”
There is absolutely nothing wrong with this little dose of alarm; it is how we humans work. It is meant to keep us safe from both physical and emotional harm.
Why am I writing about stink-eye and alarm in regards to your son? Well, I am trying to figure out what is going wrong with him. It sounds as if something is a bit broken in his alarm system.
Adults assume that, because he is 10 years old, he is going to “know better.” But something is amiss here, and we can't chalk everything up to “tweenness.” In most cultures (ours included, even though we are pretty lax here), it is rather taboo to be rude to adults. It is pushing a cultural norm that places him on the fringe of society, his peer group and his family.
So, I have a couple of questions here:
1. Is he being “rude,” or is he using 10-year-old humour that is actually permissible? Are the adults okay with his humour, but you are not? I am essentially asking: Are your standards in line with what is really happening?
2. In this same vein of thought: Is your son very shy or sensitive? Is making eye contact, forcing conversation, shaking hands difficult for him? With everyone he meets, young and old? If this is the case, any form of forced conversation doesn't just cause a little alarm in your son, it causes a full panic.
nd a little primer for parents of sensitive children (and many typical children as well): the more they are corrected, forced to speak and make eye contact, the more stink-eye they are given, the more their names are said in a critical and harsh way, the more the brain flies into panic. It is simply too much negative sensory information for their easily triggered brains, and at some point the brain will move the child from panic into defence. This is when the child either will refuse to make eye contact or, in some cases, will begin to lash out.
I simply don't know what is happening with your son here.
If he is truly being rude and unkind (and this is not a case of misreading shyness or sensitivity), then something more insidious is happening.
I don't know how to advise you without more details, but here is what's not going to go well:
* Constant critiques of his behaviour. Clearly, this isn't working, so stop it. In fact, I am hard-pressed to come up with a positive example of anyone improving from constant critiques.
* Forcing him to interact with other adults. Let's stop placing him in situations where he can become “rude or unkind.
* Using anger, threats, punishments, or any shame-based parenting techniques. Again, he is not showing that his alarm system is working correctly, so these techniques will push his brain to become more and more defensive, causing more shut-down or lashing out.
Instead, focus not on his behaviour toward others as much as slowing everything down to fully understand this young man.
What are the dynamics at play here?
What does he truly need?
Please proceed with patience, deep compassion, and strong hope.
Good luck.
Washington Post