More Than Please and Thank You: Raising Children Who Truly Respect Others

Dear friend,

You have probably stood in a kitchen or a church lobby somewhere in Omaha and prompted your child with that familiar whisper: say thank you. And your child mumbled the words, and the moment passed, and you wondered quietly whether anything real had happened at all. Here is the truth that took many of us years to learn: manners can be memorized in an afternoon, but respect must be grown in the heart over a childhood. Please and thank you are the leaves of the plant. Respect is the root. If you tend only the leaves, you will raise a child who performs politeness. If you tend the root, you will raise a child who honors people even when no one is prompting them.

So where does the root begin? It begins with what your children believe about people. Respect, at its core, is the recognition that every person carries worth that does not depend on their usefulness to us. The cashier who is slow, the neighbor who is odd, the classmate who is unpopular, the grandfather who tells the same story twice. When you teach your children that every human being is made in the image of God, you give them a reason for respect that outlasts every social custom. Courtesy without conviction collapses the moment it becomes inconvenient. Conviction holds.

The second thing to know is that respect is caught far more than it is taught. Your children are watching how you speak to the waitress when the order is wrong. They are watching whether you talk about your own parents with honor or with rolled eyes. They are listening to how you and your spouse speak to each other when you are tired and the day has been long. A child who hears his father speak gently to his mother learns more about respect in that one ordinary evening than in a hundred lectures. If you want children who honor others, let them grow up inside a home where honor is the household language. And when you fail at this, as every parent does, let them watch you make it right. An apology offered humbly to a child or a spouse is not a loss of authority. It is a demonstration of the very thing you are trying to build.

Third, hold the standard even when it would be easier to laugh it off. There is a temptation in our day to find disrespect amusing when it comes from someone small. The toddler who sasses, the eight-year-old with the sharp comeback, the teenager with the withering tone. It can be genuinely funny, and the world will tell you it is harmless. But a child who is permitted to speak rudely to his mother at seven will not suddenly discover reverence at seventeen. Correcting disrespect is not harshness; it is love with a long memory. You are not raising a child. You are raising someone's future husband or wife, someone's employer, someone's neighbor, someone's deacon or coach or friend. The kindest thing you can do for the people your child will someday meet is to require respect now, gently and without fail, while the requiring is still yours to do.

Fourth, teach them that respect bends low as well as reaching up. Children often learn to be polite to people with authority or influence, because even a child can sense what those people can give. The deeper lesson is respect for those who can offer nothing in return. Teach your children to greet the elderly by name, to look the janitor in the eye, to include the child no one includes. Respect that only flows upward is just ambition wearing nice clothes. Respect that flows in every direction is character.

And finally, dear friend, respect your children. This is the piece we most often forget. Listen to them when they speak, even when the story is long and wandering. Knock before entering. Keep the promises you make them. Discipline them without mocking them. A child who is treated with dignity learns that dignity is what people are owed, and gives it away freely for the rest of his life. A child who is belittled learns that respect belongs only to the powerful, and spends his life either grasping for it or surrendering it.

None of this work is glamorous. It happens in minivans and at supper tables, in the hundredth reminder and the quiet correction on the drive home across Omaha. But years from now, someone will meet your grown child and walk away feeling seen, valued, and honored. They will never know about the thousands of small moments you invested. You will. And it will have been worth every one.

With you in the work, Explore Omaha