R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Find Out What It Means from a Dad's Point of View

Bruce Sallan - Respect.  Isn’t that
really all parents want from their kids?  Isn’t it about the hardest
thing to actually teach them to do--treat us with respect?  I struggle
with this a great deal due to the way my two teenage boys sometimes
speak to me, respond to a request, and generally behave.  It is not
with much respect, at times, and I don’t like it. 

Aretha had the
biggest hit with her rendition of “Respect” though it was originally
performed by Otis Redding in 1965 (here’s a link to a great video of her
performing it in 1968: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1M2fk72mfw&feature=related).  Some of the lyrics to that classic song resonant for me on this topic: “All I’m askin’ for is a little respect…”  

So,
what is the solution?  I think it may be in our demands and
expectations of our kids.  If we allow them to be disrespectful, we are
essentially condoning that behavior.  I finally realized that certain
things just were no long acceptable between my sons and me and
that there had to be serious consequences if they were not being
respectful. 

I often come back to the inherent parenting dilemma,
I believe, of my generation.  We want to be our kids’ buddies
rather than their parents.  Being a buddy means being a friend, and
letting a lot of things slide.  Being a buddy means not demanding
a level of respect that parents have historically been given without
much question until the sixties when all “authority” was called into
question in some quarters of our country. 

Going biblical, we’ve
got one of the Ten Commandments that says, “Honor Thy Father and
Mother.”  What exactly does that mean?  A man I greatly respect, Dennis
Prager, believes that commandment is the most important of the
ten!  Why? Everything else comes from that relationship between parent
and child.  When children “honor” their parents, they learn the tools to
live life with grace, respect, and principles. 

Dennis Prager
does not expect the child of an abusive/bad parents to honor them beyond
honoring the institution of parenting.  Nor do I.  But, in the more
common scenario of a healthy father and mother, it is our obligation and
duty to literally demand that respect and “honor.”  And, frankly, I’ve
laid down on that job, partly due to guilt over what they went through
in my divorce and also just plain laziness as I, too, like being their
buddy. 

I know I’m doing them and myself no service by not
teaching them to respect my authority which, in turn, will teach them to
respect all the authority figures that they will encounter on
their journey to adulthood, from teachers to employers.  What I’ve
allowed them to get away with, as far as respect goes, would cost them
better grades, jobs, and/or success at work in “real life.”  I am
therefore not doing my job of being the best parent I can be. 

Today,
I made a breakthrough after my younger son questioned my participation
in a task I’d asked him to help with, related to our moving.  I asked
him to join in loading my truck, packing up some of his stuff, and
otherwise contributing to our family effort to move.  As I had done a
lot of the “heavy lifting” already, I expressed that it was my son’s
turn.  His response was, “Well then, what are you going to do?”  The
implication being that I wasn’t doing my share. 

The fact that
he’d slept in till noon that day and most days of the summer while his
step-mom and I had been working since early in the mornings, evidently
escaped him.  The fact that both of us had already done some of our
primary work of the day and made a trip to our new home with boxes of
our stuff, also escaped him because he was sleeping. 

It took me a
full day to realize the level of disrespect he was displaying and I was
sanctioning by my non-response.  I did an inventory of these issues and
realized where I was failing as a dad and parent.  So, today, I sat him
down and explained what I expect of him, what was acceptable, and what
were not, and the consequences of another display of this sort of
disrespect.  He was quiet; he was sullen. 

But, he GOT IT!  The
rest of the day, he was bending over backwards to be helpful.  It sunk
in.  For me, it was hard to be so harsh, or so I thought, but it was
what he needed and what our kids often need from us.  They need us
to teach them about real life, the real world (and I’m not talking some
dumb MTV series), so they won’t get fired from that job when they
question an apparently waste-of-time task a boss asks of them. 

That is my job.  That is your job.  We had kids; we have a responsibility to teach them respect.  Deal with it. 

Please
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