My son came home with his school report last week.
It was a pretty positive and accurate description of his attributes and attitude IMO.
Although, like most reports, it largely described the qualities that his teachers look for, hope for and are judged upon themselves.

It didn’t describe the child who is sensitive or thoughtful or who has a delicious sense of humour. 
Nor did it describe the kid who often objects to going to school or refuses to do as he’s asked.
Or who can pick an argument with his own shadow when the mood takes him.

Once the parental pride of a glowing report subsided, the nagging feeling of unfairness took over.
Because the absence of ‘Needs to do more of X, less of Y’ or ‘Is below target for Z‘ is largely a reflection that my son is just fortunate…

He’s well supported at home, with no difficulties to deal with that spill over into his school life.
And he’s blessed with the ability to work out what people need from him, and behave accordingly.
There are many reasons why lots of children – and adults – just can’t execute that skill.

The value that we – us as parents, and especially society overall – place on children, and the words they subsequently get labelled with, and judged upon, accordingly – so often just depend on what the adults in their lives deem favourable (or not).

‘Respectful‘ is one of those judgments; one which I developed an aversion to 20 years ago, having stood in a school corridor silently cringing as a teacher demeaned and screamed at a group of children for ‘not showing enough respect‘.
The irony was not lost on me…

100%, I agree with its value, but it’s very easy for society to look admirably on children who, more accurately, are passive, compliant and obedient, simply because these are behaviours we assign to ‘respect’.

There’s a place for obedience and knowing which battles to pick of course, but by nature, children are impressionable; thus, mindless compliance doesn’t serve them in the long run.

On the contrary, as they get older and peer pressure becomes very real – maybe with coercion and exploitation coming knocking as well – unquestioning agreeability can, in fact put them in harm’s way.

It’s a difficult landscape for us as parents to navigate, because we experience so much scrutiny and judgement ourselves these days.

Whether the headline is about poor school attendance, child mental illness or another senseless act of violence, you can put money on it that the first uninformed finger will point at parenting.

When a keyboard warrior takes to Facebook to complain about misbehaving kids, how long does it take for the word ‘parents’ to appear in the comments?

The truth is that kids have always misbehaved, that is nothing new; what’s changed is that people haven’t always had the means to publicly shame and blame (nor choose to remain anonymous while they do).

So it’s very easy for us to get sucked into this idea that our ‘success’ is essentially about conditioning our kids’ behaviours: not just so they’re easy for us, as their mums and dads, to live with, but so that society can rubber-stamp them as ‘acceptable’.

After all, who doesn’t want their child to be declared ‘a pleasure to teach’, or to know their football coach finds their effort on the pitch ‘rewarding‘?
That they were polite to the neighbours or ‘as good as gold’?

Behaving respectfully is a useful, pro-social skill of course; it helps children navigate the world effectively as they become more independent.

But, IMO, society’s expectations – that we have a duty to create well-behaved children who ‘show respect’ – sometimes needs to be challenged.

Firstly, because – as we all know from our own experience (which we can easily forget in the job of child-raising) – nobody gets respect by insisting on it.
We get it by earning it. Demanding it only serves to undermine it.

And secondly, because ‘respect’ is so often code for ‘compliant and obedient’; young people who are easy to be in the world with, easy to control and easy to ignore…

Counter-intuitive as it may feel, when we can get over ourselves – our fear of losing our authority, of falling short of others’ expectations; of the [usually misplaced] belief that by not commanding respect, we’ll raise self-entitled, over-indulged snowflakes – we might notice we’re achieving something far more impactful and powerful instead…

We might just be raising independent, autonomous children who can think for themselves, challenge what they don’t agree with or believe in, and handle the discomfort or disapproval that that might bring…

Individuals with enough self-esteem to accept their flaws and imperfections, instead of, god forbid, feeling duty-bound to present a version of themselves that our intolerant world can accept.

Yes, it’s certainly more demanding of our time and inner-resources than ‘I’m the grown-up and you do as you’re told’.

But if we want our kids to lead rich, fulfilling, resilient and creative lives, having them trained to be a ‘good boy’ or a ‘good girl‘ who knows how to earn a pat on the head isn’t ever going to cut it.

Maybe the question isn’t really about how we raise ‘respectful’ kids… Maybe it’s about how we respect their right to move through the world as they are, even if that’s inconvenient for their grown-ups? 

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