Respect - Midlothian,TX

My 10 1/2 y/o was having some serious "talk back" issues. Not to mention tone of voice, eye rolling,. etc... I was getting tired of always arguing w/ him over things, so we told him he would get a warning- "The discussion is over" If he continued I would do a "zip your lip" sign. From there I held up fingers until he stopped. When he stopped how ever many fingers were up was how many days he lost electronic privledges (ALL! TV, Gamecube, computer...)
That has worked wonders for us! :-)

D.

I am reading Parenting with Love and Logic by Foster Cline MD and Jim Fay. It is a great book and is already helping me. Its teachings are the opposite of the way I was raised so I will probably have to read it a couple of times :) Good Luck

I think kids these days need to know reasons for things, other than "because I said so".

Also, so many parents expect their kids to respect them, and yet they don't treat their kids with respect.

One thing we did, was every Monday night, we sat together as a family, had a spiritual thought, sang a song and a family prayer, had treats and a little family activity, and a lesson on something educational (fire safety, Bible story, study tips...). We all took out our calenders and planned our weeks together, even our parents, so we all knew where each would be and rides would be coordinated...

Also, each kid took turns setting this family night up and we would go around the circle talking about what we each did that week (Timmy did a great job helping mom with dishes on Wednesday), and things we needed to work on (Molly did great on her homework but didn't make her bed every morning).

This way, we all got respect, learned how to respect each other and learned our roles in the home. We we all expected to do chores fairly as well. We called this Family Home Evening, it is a night set aside for our church, and even if you don't add religious content to it, it still works great and can really bring a family together.

Good luck and have lots of fun! Here is a great resource:

http://lds.org/portal/site/LDSOrg/menuitem.30b4d942d0dda7...

My son is taking Karate lessons and they focus a lot on respect, discipline. It might be something you want to look into.

This may seem like a small thing....but I think it helps to set the tone that adults should be treated differently. I've taught my children to call adults by their last name---Mr. Smith or Mrs. Jones, etc. Always, they have to answer "yes or no, ma'am/sir" when an adult speaks to them. But on a deeper level, do they understand why they should be respectful to adults? Certainly not just because adults tell them to be but because GOD has told children to respect adults. When they start to understand that their accountability is really, ultimately to God then (hopefully)life makes more sense to them. good luck!

T.--I totally agree with you about this. Kids these days do seem to think they have equal rights as adults. We, as a society, have nothing but ourselves to blame but I am glad that you are trying to change this. Kids are not taught to revere adults as generations past. Kids know that teachers and others in the community have no real power and they have learned to take full advantage of this. In all of our efforts to protect children, we have created kids that think they have the right to do whatever they want. I personally do not tolerate disrepect of adults from my 3 year old. Sometimes when we're out, other adults will correct her behavior and she looks at me as if I'm supposed to be on her side. I never fall for that and I ask her, "Did you hear what she said? Then you need to listen and stop doing that." She cries about it but respect starts early and I don't want to have a huge battle to fight when she's older. I know of some parents who will get super angry if another adult corrects their children. I have never felt this way. In my mind it still takes a village to raise a child. So forgive me if I yell at other people's kids when their acting up in the store but someone did that to me and I think I'm just fine.