I was taught by the generations before us to be respectful by greeting them and others my senior by their relation to me. I think this is pretty common among the Asian communities.
I guess the more specific thing is that I was raised in a way that dismisses my feelings from a time when I didn’t even know how to manage difficult emotions yet. As children, I can see for myself now having C that it’s so easy to just tell them what we want them to do at any given moment (For example: You met Aunty A and Uncle B at the mall. You immediately interrupt whatever she’s doing, with zero regard to how she feels about it, then tell her off: “Say hi to aunty and uncle!”). This can be really toxic. And I know it comes from good intentions. I grew up that way, and I have no control over myself because free play is nonexistent and I have to do whatever my parent wants me to do no matter how I feel, so that parent A is happy and parent B pays more attention to me.
Whenever I have this urge to just tell off my kid whenever I wish they’d do something else, I remind myself how Jesus showed his love for the world during his time on earth in addition to clear instructions. There was more of a showing on his part rather than telling. The part that convicts the Christian faith for generations was his showing rather than his telling. And I immediately divert from the urges of my old nature to work on bettering myself at being respectful so that whenever C has the opportunity to see me as an example, she learns respect by example.
I’m not saying I’ve always done that. Most people in general take the easy route to just tell off their kids, and if they do not obey, they’ll just say it harder and louder as if the children did not hear them. This is not a pretty habit to have. Sometimes I am guilty of that because my old nature has adopted this example from my own parents. This habit has even crept up between me and my husband whenever we are in an argument. Whenever I feel he wasn’t listening to anything I’ve been saying, my voice gets higher and louder by one volume, even though in my mind I know that’s not the tone to get your message audible for any listener. It’s frustrating enough for anyone to not feel heard; it’s toxic to ask your kid to do something they don’t yet understand or worse, haven’t seen you done it before, all the while suppressing every other childlike feelings of joy, pleasure, curiosity and surprise just for the sake of satisfying their parents.
I remember I didn’t like one of my mom’s girlfriends and that my mom revealed to me that she doesn’t like her either. But we never really discussed about “negative” emotions before and work through it together. Her belief in life is to just bear with it because “that’s life”. It’s the hardest thing to do, even for adults – to respectfully listen to the intentions behind disrespectful tone and words or when you don’t feel like listening—or even just respecting the people you don’t like.
I’ve had my guardian back in Singapore once told me that she had a friend who had her daughter gone through eight full years of piano lessons even when she didn’t like it, only to graduate with the completed 8-grade certificates and shoving those papers to her mom’s hands while saying, “Here. This is what you want, right?”
Every day my prayers to God include getting more wisdom so that I have a good direction on raising C. And wisdom is tough when the tests God wants you to go through are this specific. Doesn’t mean that I have graduated at this. There will be days when I fall off the wagon and back in the lower grounds of sin that for most of my life I’ve lived in. But in my weakest natures he could still perfect me as a testimony to his name. So there’s a lot of room for me to wiggle around and keep me motivated to learn and teach respect.
Thanks for reading.
