Is 'Respecting Your Elders' Actually Adultism?

Generations of Black parenting have been influenced by this simple ground rule, but is it based on ageism? And can it lead to more biased behaviors?

A social media post with years of popularity has begun recirculating, pushing around a harmful narrative that rules of engagement matter most when children interact with adults.

The post reads: "Parents please teach your kids that answering 'what' to an adult is rude [sic]." While many responded favorably to the viral message, a few people pointed out that if something is rude, it is still rude no matter who is speaking to whom. Holding children to higher standards of communication and demanding greater levels of respect from them when they're communicating with adults is a form of adultism, and it’s incredibly damaging to growing minds.

Exploring Adultism

According to Adam Fletcher’s book Facing Adultism, adultism is discrimination against children and youth. It favors adults by dismissing young people and is the addiction to adults' attitudes, ideas, beliefs, and actions.

In the case of the social media post, the idea is that children responding "What?" are only rude when they respond that way to an adult. But that's not true. Responding that way is rude no matter how old the speaker is. When we remove preconceived, ageist beliefs this becomes a teachable moment about responding kindly to everyone. This means that adults also have to take responsibility for responding kindly when called upon.

According to Unicef’s tools for communicating effectively with young children, “leading with kindness is always the way to go,” as children’s emotional development and relationship-building skills are shaped through early communication. Unfortunately, some adults tend to relish the power that comes with being grown-up and recognize the ways of their upbringing as law. Enter “stay in a child’s place” or "children should be seen and not heard."

In an article titled, Adultism: The Hidden Toxin Poisoning Our Relationships With Children, author Teresa Graham Brett insists that adults don’t tend to consider adultism oppressive since they were treated in the same manner as children.

“The process has been internalized,” Brett writes. “The essence of adultism is that young people are not respected. Instead, they are less important and, in a sense, inferior to adults. They cannot be trusted to develop correctly, so they must be taught, disciplined, harnessed, punished, and guided into the adult world. The liberation of young people will require the active participation of adults. A good starting place is to consider and understand how we —today’s adults—were mistreated and devalued when we were children and youth and how we consequently act in adultist ways now.”

Respect Is a Two-Way Street

According to The Freechild Project, adults “have a hard time hearing the thinking of young people as worthy of adult respect, let alone on a par with the quality of adult thinking. Yet young people are expected to listen to adults all the time.”

This is especially true in many households of color where children grow up inherently understanding that respect for elders is a birthright granted to them just because they were born sooner. The idea that respect is earned and not given has been non-existent in many Black households, but as times change and gentle parenting has found its way into the fold, more and more parents are finding an appreciation for the idea that respect is a two-way street.

Mimie Laurant, an education coordinator with two decades of experience in positive youth development, told Kindred by Parents that children who are taught equitable communication skills grow into more respectful adults.

“Children who are taught to respect others based on personhood, as opposed to engaging in adultism, are less like to perpetuate these larger systems of oppression that plague us all,” Laurant says. “They are more likely to become the compassionate, empathetic people that we know are in short supply.”

Adultism Disempowers Our Children

If the goal is to shape healthy adults, parents should be mindful of talking down to children or having expectations of them that they don’t have for themselves. The practice of adultism opens the floodgates for other isms, Laurant says.

“When we teach our children that we should treat or speak to adults in a certain way simply because they are adults, we aren’t only practicing internalized adultism—we are also practicing other internalized isms,” she says.

“It may seem like no big deal, but disempowering a person begins in small ways, rooted in ‘just because.’ These beliefs are all rooted in ingraining power dynamics instead of teaching mutual respect," says Laurant. "At its core, adultism, just like racism, sexism, or any other form of prejudice, is about exerting control and having perceived power over someone else, in this case, the child. But these children eventually become adults who perpetuate these systems of inequality.”

Seeking to possess power dynamics in a parent-child relationship over mutual respect can present long-term harm.

“It signals to your child that they, as the inferior person in the power dynamic, must monitor their behavior and show deference to the person who is being perceived as their superior,” Laurant says. “Meanwhile, the person who is their superior is allowed to have no accountability for their actions and is allowed to play by a different set of rules.”

The damage may not be noticeable in childhood, but as these children grow into adults, they may become less likely to effectively emotionally support themselves.

“They become more permissive of maltreatment and abuse, making it less likely that they will advocate for themselves, even in adulthood, because they don’t want to come across as rude,” Laurant says.

The golden rule isn’t just something we teach children and toss away in adulthood—treating others as you wish to be treated is a life skill. When helping young people cultivate the skills they need to be successful self-sustaining adults, parents must consider empowerment over control. And, of course, they must possess the understanding that if something is rude, it is rude, period, not just when directed towards an adult.

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Read the original article on Parents.