Teaching Children to Respect Others

In today’s society, respect is often seen as optional and not required. If they don’t respect me, I’m not going to respect them is often the prevalent attitude. How can you raise your children to be different in such a society? While it may be difficult, it’s not impossible to raise children to be kind and respectful and considerate of others.

What is respect? Merriam Webster defines it as “to consider worthy of high regard, to esteem”. That is a lofty pursuit for many of us. How often do we consider other people worthy of high regard, especially when they are being inconsiderate of us? If we were to review our actions, we might be surprised at the times we fail to live up to that definition. Basically, respect is being considerate of other people. It’s following the golden rule “do unto others as you want them to do unto you.” Treating them how you want to be treated. There are many slogans and expressions that we use but never really think about in respecting others. But to teach our children, we have to truly understand what it means and how we are to live that out in our daily lives.

Children learn by watching others, especially their parents. For young children, their parents are the people they most emulate. For them to learn respect, they will watch how you treat your spouse, people at work and in line at the grocery store and even yourself. Respecting others begins with showing yourself respect. True respect is not a martyr attitude. It’s treating everyone as worthy and that includes the person in the mirror.

How can you demonstrate respect? By modeling it in your words and actions. Say thank you and please to family members. Let others go in front of you in the store. Say excuse me when you must cut in front of someone. Your children are watching you and they will copy what they see. Don’t talk about people negatively and don’t call them names. And when you slip up, as we all do, let your children know it was a mistake.

Respecting others includes your children, too. Don’t forget to use the polite words with them, saying please when you ask them to do something and thank you once they’ve done what you asked. If they know you respect them and see them as people of worth, they will look at you in the same way. Then as you treat others with respect, they will model your behavior because they respect you and want to be like you.

Take time to listen when your children talk to you. Stop what you’re doing and look at them when they talk. It tells them by your actions that they are important. This begins with toddlers and continues through their childhood. By the time they reach their teens, they will know that you truly listen to them. And when you enforce rules, explain the reasons. No, you don’t have to because you’re the parent, but it’s another way to show your children that you respect them enough to explain things to them.

When your children see others not being respectful, you need to discuss it with them. Teach them that not everyone behaves the way they should and then explain how it should have been handled. This is not being negative about someone but showing that their actions were not positive. Kids are going to be treated disrespectfully by other kids sometime in their lives, but you don’t want that to influence their behavior. Talking about those kinds of situations can be an opportunity to teach them.

The only way we can change a culture is to begin at home with our own children. Our influence begins with the people who watch us every day. By teaching our kids to be respectful, we can raise a generation who respects and cares about others instead of the violent, angry people we often see in the news. That is truly a legacy we can be proud of.