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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Sigil" data-source="post: 2527936" data-attributes="member: 2013">As far as common courtesy, I think a part of it is people being afraid to voice their opinions about other folks' behavior.I was in church about a month ago and my four-year-old son was crawling all over the pews (I was busy with our two-year-old daughter, and my wife was busy with our infant).  He hurled a hymnal before I could stop him and the father behind us (who has several teenagers) gave his hand a little smack and forcibly sat him down.After the meeting, he apologized to us for striking our son.  I told him, "hey, you did what I couldn't, and I appreciate it."  The problem IMO is a lot of parents don't want anyone else telling junior he's doing wrong.  Every parent thinks s/he is right, even though most of us would freely admit we have no CLUE what we're doing and are just trying our best.My kids are actually pretty doggone polite (they regularly get compliments in public, so I hope this isn't through "parent goggles"); but I think that's because they've never known any different.  Even when my oldest was a newborn and I was strapping him in the carseat, it was, "okay, give me an arm please.  Thank you.  Okay, other arm, please.  Thank you... watch out for your legs... thank you."  Even when they're being punished, it's "give the toy to daddy, please... thank you.  Now go to the naughty corner for two minutes, please."*shrugs*I once heard someone say that respect and love are interesting animals in that you can only control how much respect and love you give others.  You can't control how much respect and love you receive... you can't FORCE someone to respect you.  Somehow our culture seems to have become, "you must respect me, but I won't respect you" and that leads to a fundamental breakdown in civility, because you're too busy waiting for others to defer to you to defer to them first.If you just give them the respect right of the bat, and don't worry about "getting your respect" it tends to make things go a lot easier.--The Sigil</blockquote>

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