Mind Yr Manners, Plz!

I know I am dating myself, but when I was a kid, we had an avocado green push button phone with a really long curly cord. You could go all the way from the kitchen to the dining room with it. When we left the house, we were unreachable unless we made a call from the phone at the place we were or used a pay phone.

Now, everyone, kids included, is tethered to their mobile phone. In one way, it gives us tremendous freedom, powerful computing abilities and multiple ways to stay in touch. On the other hand, we are now expected to be accessible to everyone, all the time.

This technology has also brought with it challenges in etiquette. Children, in particular, do not seem to know where to draw the line between staying connected to their friends and participating in real life with flesh and blood people in the same room.

Just today, my husband called our son Danny in to hang out with us for a few minutes before he went to his friend's house for a sleepover. The entire time, he sat on the couch texting. When I mentioned that he had to take the garbage out, he uncharacteristically jumped up to do it right away. Why? So when he was outside, he could continue his texting conversation without parental interference.

I found the same type of phenomenon when we went over to Tarpon Springs near Tampa to visit my brother- and sister-in-law and their children. The two teens were constantly looking down at their phones during almost all of our family dinner.

Here are my rules for phone manners, which I find myself needing to reinforce more often as my son gets older:
1. People physically present with you, even in the car, trump anyone on a phone or text.
2. Always try to engage the real people you're with in conversation. If they are otherwise occupied, it is OK to use the phone.
3. If I call or text you, respond first to me, and secondarily to any friends.
4. I don't mind some common abbreviations, but try not to sound like a total illiterate, even while texting.

This last one really irks me, because as a writer and editor, it bugs me when one of my children uses poor grammar or spelling. Last year, I read all of Jane Austen's novels. One of the things that really struck me was how beautifully the educated class wrote their letters. Back then, letters were the only way to communicate other than face to face, so how a person expressed herself in words was critical to how the world saw her. Now, I'm afraid that we have not only lost the art of lovely prose, but are in danger of losing even the fundamentals of spelling, grammar and sentence structure.

Let's try to preserve some semblance of civilization in our kids or at least common courtesy. I'll try if you will, and I think we'll all be better off for it.

Middle School Culture Shock

I wish someone had told me about middle school when my oldest child was still in 5th grade. It’s not that I didn’t talk to people about it; I did. But some people told me about the drugs and (unbelievably) the sexual activity going on in middle school. Another mother told me about how her son was mercilessly bullied until he was contemplating suicide. When I heard these issues being discussed about middle school, I was reasonably confident that my son was prepared and would not be affected by them, being a smart kid, who is strong and popular. But no one had prepared me for the fundamental culture shock of middle school.

I knew that the school was much larger than the elementary school and that the children changed classes, and therefore had many different teachers. However, I didn’t know that the attitude of the teachers and the administration would be so different. I want to make clear that the middle school is not far from where we live, so it draws from our neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhoods, including everyone who went to my kids’ elementary school plus kids from other elementary schools, so it is not a regional or socio-economic difference. It’s more basic than that.

For example, in elementary school, when a kid seems to be having trouble with either grades or behavior, or sometimes for no reason at all, the teacher will contact the parent to arrange a parent-teacher conference to discuss and resolve the situation. In middle school, there is no such reaching out by the teachers. Maybe it’s because they have so many students that they see every day, but if the parent does not initiate contact, there is no contact between the parent and the teacher even if there is a need for the child to get some help.

Another major difference is in how they handle discipline. For example, the kids have to change classes and they have five minutes to get from one classroom to another. If they dawdle and are late, instead of going to the office and getting a late pass, they are sent to the Tardy Room, where they basically sit there and do nothing. Then it is the kid’s responsibility to approach the teacher and ask for the missed classwork to do as homework.

So the idea is that you take kids who are a bit challenged in the area of responsibility and rule following and you allow them to miss class, first of all. This reminds me of the Song of the South books I read as a child, where the rabbit tells the fox “Please, whatever you do, don’t throw me in that briar patch!” So the fox throws him in there, exactly where the rabbit makes his home. Oh, no! You mean I don’t have to sit in class and I get to hang out with my friends and goof off? Please don’t make me go there again!

Then you put the same responsibility-challenged kid in a position where he has to be proactive about following up with his teacher to get the assignment. Basically, it’s a recipe for failure.

The guidance counselor told me that many kids coming in to middle school for the first time get carried away with all of the relative freedom of movement that they have there in comparison to elementary school, and this causes problems for them, particularly with boys. But apparently, this is something that parents have to find out for themselves, a sort of trial by fire.

The lesson in all this, I suppose, is that parents need to be much more nosy and on top of their kids once they get to middle school, just at an age where kids’ hormones are kicking in and they are the most resistant to overbearing parenting or restrictions on their activities. Just another reason why parenting is the hardest job in the world…

It Came From Middle School

Not long ago, my home was invaded by a strange creature who looks exactly like my son. But it’s not my sweet little boy who loves to cuddle and says I’m the best mom in the world. This monster even acts like my son sometimes, and then without warning and at the slightest provocation, he transforms into a snarling, violent and irrational beast.

It’s a, it’s a…(scream) preteen!!!!

Since he is my oldest, this is my first experience in dealing with the primordial hormone soup that is pre-adolescence, so it is extra scary. Even more so because I have four more behind him who will each be going through puberty eventually, and with quite a bit of overlap.

Middle school is not like elementary school. When he went to elementary school, I knew all of his friends, and their parents and dropped him off at their houses, or had his friends over here. Now, kids are given a lot more freedom to “hang out” with each other, unsupervised. Who knows who is there or what kind of kids they are. Are they disrespectful, delinquent little cretins or nice kids? Let’s face it; good judgment is not at its peak between the ages of 11 and 14.

First and foremost, I love my son, so I laid down the law.

1. I love you no matter what, even if you are spewing the equivalent of verbal vomit from your mouth.
2. If you want to hang out with your friends, no problem, as long as I have met them and have their first and last names, cell phone numbers and home numbers, Social Security numbers, addresses and a photo ID. (Just kidding about the last three.)
3. The hormones are not your fault, but you are responsible for controlling your behavior anyway.
4.Disrespect will result in unpleasant consequences.
5. I still love you.

I have friends whose children are teenage boys and young adult men, and they are still alive, so I have hope that it is possible to get through the Land of Adolescence in one piece. The thing that makes it so hard is the love. If I didn’t care so much, I could just ignore the outbursts and shift my focus on the kids who aren’t screaming at me or throwing things. But I refuse to give up and let my son spin out of control. Someday, God willing, he will grow out of this stage and become the amazing young man I know he can be.