I hear this phrase all the time, “You should respect you elders.” My question is “Why?” Because they are older than me? I always thought that you should respect your elders because of their experience and wisdom, but, what about when they have done nothing to earn respect? Do I still respect them because they are my elders? I don’t think so, let’s look at cases and I will make my point.
In the first place there is my father, I respect him, my children respect him, he has been around a long time, he has a lot of wisdom. He loves his children, grandchildren, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins, in-laws, etc. He treats all his grandchildren equally, he is good to his friends and family. He treats people fairly. When he has a criticism, he brings it straight to you, you will always know where you stand with him. He is quite possibly the greatest man I know, I would love to be like him, I try, but consistently fall short. That’s life. He is the kind of person that I think of when I hear the phrase “Respect your elders.” Yet for the life of me, I have never, ever heard him use that phrase when talking about himself, others when I was younger, but never himself. He has earned the respect of those around him by his deeds so it was never an issue. But then, it never seems to be an issue with those that have earned the respect of their peers.
As I write this, I think about my own children, and realized that the only time I have ever used that phrase on them has been in play, like when I am teasing my oldest and she sticks out a tongue at me, or when my kids start tickling me. But never when I was upset with their behavior when talking to me.
I also think of my youngest daughter’s soccer coach, I have never heard him utter that phrase. But then he treats everyone with respect, and he shows his knowledge in his teachings. He also accepts input from others and when it warrants it, uses the advice of others. He tries to show little or no favoritism, and trust me, it sucks to be coaches daughter or coaches favorite with him…like when I coach my daughters teams, his favorites and his daughter are expected to perform at least twice as good as the rest, and they do, because they do not want to disappoint
him, because he HAS earned their love and respect through his deeds and actions.
Now let’s look at the other side of the coin……..
My wife has some cousins, by birth and marriage, involved in this next example. Let me describe the two, both female, two different personalities. The first, M we shall call her, has had a life of doing what she wants and getting away with it. She is a spoiled twit whom thinks the world revolves around her (no, I am not fond of her). The second, let’s call her J, was in the AF reserves when I met her, a nice girl whom helped M’s brother grow up a lot (J is M’s sister-in-law by the way). We are at a party at the house of M’s parents a few years ago, about three I believe, and it was getting late. My oldest was sitting at the bottom of the basement stairs, pretty much asleep. J was bring stuff down from to the frig and asked my oldest to move, being asleep she didn’t respond, so J asked again louder. This woke my oldest up who then moved out of the way quickly. The “incident” should have ended there, EXCEPT, M (who was also bringing stuff down behind J) started to chew my oldest out for not responding and moving right away. My oldest being just like daddy, took offense and said she was dozing and didn’t hear her, her tone was not real nice when she said it either. This ticked M off and said that she should respect her elders. M is just her cousin and in no position of authority, so my oldest said she did, When They Earned It. Respect does go both ways. M came to my wife, who basically told her my oldest was right and she had no right to yell at her in the first place.
Next example is my oldest girl’s former soccer coach. He is a nice guy, and he is good with the younger kids (say up to about the age of 10). But at that point the girls that were playing were starting to take the game seriously. He was still babying them and letting them play around, skip practice, etc. The girls started to lose more and more games because not a lot was expected from them. He also had his favorites, his daughter for one and one of our strikers for another. The rest of the team saw this (as did the parents) and saw how the favorites got away with a lot (more his daughter than the striker because her parents didn’t let her pull garbage), if an issue broke out between his daughter and another player, his daughter would often threaten physical violence on the girl involved. It was only the threat of me stepping in or the other assistant coach that kept our daughters from beating her to a bloody pulp (and often the restraint of other players). In contrast when the assistant coaches ran the show we won games because we did not care which girl is was, if you goofed off you were benched. The other assistant benched his daughter for poor play in a game and chewed her out to the point that her Mom got mad about him embarrassing her (she was back in by the second half and playing at 100%). My daughter on the other hand always said it sucked being the coaches daughter, I was always harder on her because I expected more. The head coach, after one game where we lost and during the after game talk one of the girls mouthed off, told them that they should respect their elders since they knew more (I didn’t tell him the one that was mouthing off was his). One of the girls asked “Isn’t respect something that was earned?” Which got the entire team chewed out after they stopped snickering, but she was right, respect is something that has to be earned.
My final example, and then I will finish out what I am saying here is this one. My oldest, does not do things that irritate or upset either of her grandfathers, she does not speak up or talk back or anything that could be deemed “disrespectful”. On the other hand, when her grandmother starts to chew out her, or her brother or sister for something they didn’t do (they are usually getting blamed for something there cousin did – see my blog entry on in-laws), she will stand up and defend herself or her siblings. If they did it she brings it to me so I can step in and handle the discipline (my mother-in-law and I rarely see eye to eye here). And if they didn’t she defends them in a loud and certain voice so that her parents hear and can get involved. My m-n-l on the other hand sees standing up for what is right against an adult as disrespectful. And time and time again reminds her she is to be respectful of her elders, which I follow up with loud comments like “When they have earned the respect.” (This never goes over well and we usually leave soon after…..)
Final Comments:
The point I am trying to make is this:
Did you ever notice…..
The people who are always telling you that you must respect your elders are the ones who have done nothing to earn it, and demand the respect because they are older. And that when you call them on this they get extremely upset about it?
The people who are respected because of their age, wisdom, experience and knowledge are the ones that never say this unless in jest. And also are the ones you can actually joke around with even if you are younger than them.
Just some thoughts on respecting your elders………
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