Daily Excerpt from Clean Your Plate! (Bayardelle): Be Nice to Your Friends
Excerpt from Clean Your Plate!
Be Nice to Your Friends
[ILLUSTRATION 6, CHAPTER 6 WARNING GOES HERE]
As
anyone who has ever talked to a toddler can tell you, toddlers can be brutal. Like,
soul-crushingly, life-ruiningly frank. There’s a lot of truth to the Internet
meme that says “if a woman calls you ugly, she’s jealous; if a man calls you
ugly, she’s flirting, but if a kid calls you ugly...you’re ugly.”
Kids
have absolutely no sense of social niceties. They also occasionally spaz out
with small bursts of poorly-controlled demonic meanness of unknown origin. (No,
it’s not just your kids. It’s all of them.)
Why
We Say It
The
fact that parents across the globe tell their kids to be nice to their friends
is entirely unsurprising. We’re terrified our little monsters will alienate
their peers and doom themselves to a life of social isolation and misery
(sticking us with the therapy bills).
However
well-meaning this parental plea for our kids to exercise their still-developing
mouth filters may be, it does still have some unintended consequences.
Research
Says (What They Hear)
Despite
the fact that you do in fact want to ensure that your kids aren’t rude, little,
demon spawn, you telling them to be nice to their friends before they go to
school, as a warning when they start to act up at the park, and as they go into
a brand new situation can send two pretty harmful messages:
●
Everyone
is your friend.
●
You
have to be nice to your friends no matter what they do.
So,
let’s look at these two important constructs involved in the parental edict “be
nice to your friends:” the concept of nice and the concept of friends.
Niceness, Respect, and Childhood
Turrets
First,
let’s take a second to acknowledge the ambiguity in the concept of being
“nice”.
Say
your coworker comes up to you and asks if you like his shoes. You look downward
only to be immediately blinded by an abhorrent medley of colors so bright it
may qualify as a traffic hazard. Is it “nice” to tell him that you like his
shoes?[1] I mean,
lying to people is supposed to be not nice, right? But so is hurting people’s
feelings. If you were to honestly inform your obviously color-blind coworker as
to the human rights violation situated around his metatarsals, would it qualify
as “nice” or “not nice”?
Regardless
of the correct answer to the great shoe debate, it illustrates the important
point that being “nice” isn’t always as clear-cut an instruction as it sounds. Not
only does the definition of “nice” contain a lot of grey area, it also differs
dramatically from person to person.
In
this shoe example, if the coworker is a relatively new acquaintance the
“nicest” thing to do is probably respond with a polite dodge or mild white lie
to save feelings while contemplating the quickest way out of the situation. However,
if it’s someone you have worked with for years and have developed a strong and
resilient friendship, the “nicest” thing to do might be to tell the brutal
truth, possibly in a humorous way that reaffirms the strength of your
friendship.[2]
So,
if there is a fair amount of grey area in the concept of niceness for adults,
you can see that it would be even more difficult for children who are still
learning the different protocols for basic social situations.
Each
parent might handle this nebulosity in a different way, but I personally think
that it’s much more helpful to kids to use more concrete concepts in your
parental requests.
Politeness
This
is the first concept I would introduce to most children, as it is usually
considered to be a universal constant. I wouldn’t want my children to be
affectionate to everyone, nor would I necessarily like them to even be friendly
to everyone. (In fact, we are trying very hard to train our 4-year-old not to
be so friendly to everyone. Seriously, the people behind us in line at
Starbucks really don’t need to know about our dog’s potty training accidents. Tone
it down, Smalls.) [PULL QUOTE 52]
However,
there are very few exceptions to the rule that your children should be polite
to most of their fellow humans. Unless someone is actively abducting,
assaulting, or otherwise violating your children’s basic rights, they should
probably treat all people with basic politeness. This includes things like not
screaming at people, keeping their hands (and feet and teeth) to themselves,
not saying objectively mean things, saying “please” and “thank you” when
appropriate, and maintaining a basic sense of decorum and social consciousness
as they bumble their way through early life.
While
this might not be easy to train your kids to do, it isn’t very hard to teach
them when it needs to be done. You can safely try to train your kids to default
to a baseline of polite behavior without much grey area. Basically, act like a
human, not a monkey, and you should be good.
Respect
The
next level up from politeness is respect. While politeness is something to
which all humans are entitled, respect should (at least in my opinion) be
earned.
It’s
not hard to earn respect. The litmus test I use for my kiddos is that, if
someone treats you with a basic level of respect, you treat them the same way. However,
if someone is rude, hurtful, or otherwise disrespectful, my kiddos know they
have my full blessing to choose not to interact with that person. They still
have to be polite as they nope their way out of the situation (because almost
everyone is entitled to a baseline of politeness), but they don’t have to
subject themselves to someone who doesn’t treat them the way they should be
treated.
This
distinction comes in handy when dealing with some of the more old-timey
perspectives. By this, I mean things like telling a boy to “turn the other
cheek” when someone bullies him or telling a girl that a boy is allowed to
treat her a certain way just because he asks her out or buys her dinner. The
difference between politeness (to which almost everyone is entitled) and
respect (which must be reciprocally earned) helps your kid deal with things
that used to be societal norms but have since proven to be counterproductive
(or downright creepy).
To
sum up, I’d say politeness is the global rule that your child should be as
courteous as is situationally possible, whereas respect is a deferential way of
treating people that is earned only by reciprocity.
Friendliness
This
one really kicks in around the ages of two to three. Your kiddo is so excited
to show off burgeoning social skills that all the sudden the kiddo is best
friends with every kid around, the checkout clerk at the grocery store, that
lampshade over there, the stray cat sitting on your car, and your newly-planted
nectarine tree (literally…my kiddo named it “Friendly,” and they talk every
morning)[3].
It’s
a fantastic sign that your kid is willing and capable of creating social bonds
with so many different people (and the occasional inanimate object, I guess). It
means their verbal skills are blossoming and that you have done a great job as
a parent in making them feel safe and secure. Give yourself a high-five.
Friendliness Downside #1: Issues of
Safety and Childhood Stranger-Friends (aka Dear Toddler Please Stop Telling
Strangers Our Address)
When
reading the last paragraph, it may not have escaped your notice that, while we
want our kids to feel safe and secure, the world they live in is not an
entirely safe and secure place. Far from it.
While
there are very few long-term downsides to your toddler having pretend
conversations with a plant, there are very real consequences to a child being
too friendly with the wrong type of people. Telling strangers where you live or
when you’re going on vacation could increase your risks of a robbery or home
invasion. We all know the horror story of a child trusting a stranger that says
he’ll show them a new puppy if they only come into his house or get into his
car.
While
we want our kids to feel safe, happy, exuberant, and friendly, they also have
to know that they have to marry these qualities with an appropriate serving
size of caution and common sense as well. Teach your kids that while they
should be polite to (almost) everyone and demonstrate respect with (almost all)
those who respect them in return, friendliness shouldn’t be exercised
indiscriminately. Things like physical contact, sharing of personal details,
and feeling comfortable being alone with a person should be reserved for those
who are truly your proven and long-term friends. This means people you know
well, people who have proven to be trustworthy, and (for littler kids) people
who have been approved as “trustworthy” by parents.
Friendliness Downside #2: Emotional
Dangers (aka A Tale of Cookies and Neediness)
As
your kids grow up and start school, they stop having indiscriminate
conversations with lampshades (hopefully) and enter a much more complex social
realm. While it might seem like, with the increasing social competence of an
elementary, middle, or even high schooler, the dangers of friendliness have
passed, this is actually not the case.
And
now I would like to tell a tale of the worst (and most incorrect) social lesson
I ever learned—and how it took me the subsequent decade to unlearn it.
If
you couldn’t tell from my biting sarcasm and fervent insistence on a strict
adherence to grammatical intricacies, I didn’t have the easiest time making
friends as a child. The briefest explanation of my particular social problem is
this: A child who is raised by wolves never learns how to eat with a salad
fork. As the only child of incredibly intelligent parents (with whom I was and
still am insanely close), I never really learned how to relate properly to
other kids. I was much better at talking to adults and actually became friends
with many of my teachers.[4] As you
could probably guess, this did absolutely nothing to endear me to my peers.
In
high school, after a solid decade of wondering just why I didn’t fit in, I
discovered two of the girls in my English class who were in the technical
theater group (i.e. the people who do the lighting and paint the scenery for
the drama club) had “hell week” that week and would be staying at school until
9:00 or 10:00 at night every day until the show opened. That night, I showed up
at the theater room at 8:00 p.m. with a giant tray of warm, freshly baked
cookies. High schoolers are ravenous monsters so it will surprise exactly no
one that this gesture was very appreciated (and the cookies rapidly consumed). Like
the good little Skinnerian rat I am, I then showed up with cookies the next
four nights and, by the time the show opened, I had successfully baked my way
into my first friend group.
Now,
if any of you were thinking ahead about what conclusions my developing mind
might have been drawing from this experience, you probably just experienced the
literary equivalent of the background music that is played in a horror movie as
the side character walks down a rickety staircase into a poorly-lit basement.
What
adolescent Liz took from Cookiegate was the fact that if you just performed
acts of service for other people you can make them like you. Extraordinary! There’s
no conceivable downside to this whatsoever! Nothing can go wrong now!
Yup,
everything went wrong. I then spent the next decade of my life trying to bake,
buy, lend, toil, and work my way into friendships with people who had no real
desire for a reciprocal friendship (or later a mutual romantic relationship)
but were plenty content to consume the goods and services I was only too happily
offering. What I “learned” in one week of adolescent cookie baking took me a
half-decade to realize was a horrible idea and another goodness knows how many
years to stop doing. Even now, as a (mostly) secure, happily married, mother of
three, I still have to tamp down the urge to try to buy people’s affection
(usually with food).
If
only for my sake, please tell your kids early and often that they should not
bestow their friendliness on anyone who does not willingly and freely offer it
in return.
Kids
are often told to be friendly or to be nice to their friends in order to ensure
they have a social network. I’ve definitely been tempted to tell my
violence-prone daughter that no one will want to be friends with her if she
didn’t stop accidentally hug-tackling them. [PULL QUOTE 53] However tempting
this line of thinking may be, try to ensure your kid gets the message that
friendships are born from mutual compatibility and interest. No one has to
“earn” friends’ attention via friendliness or anything else.
Affection
The
final tier on the relational hierarchy is the demonstration of affection. This
can mean physical demonstrations of affection (e.g. hugs, holding hands, pats,
kisses, etc.) or it could just be verbal expressions of affection.
Kids
should be taught two primary things about affection:
1.
Affection
is reserved for those close to you who have earned your trust.
2.
You
never have to show anyone affection if you don’t want to.
Let’s
go over these one by one.
#1: The Relationship Hierarchy
With
our affection-prone toddler, I’ve started using the categorization of
strangers, acquaintances, friends, and family. Strangers are people you’ve
never met, acquaintances are people whose names you know, friends are those you
have known for a while and who have earned your trust over time, and family is
those members of your tribe (whether related by blood or mutual weirdness [PULL
QUOTE 54]) whom you trust implicitly in all circumstances.
Kids
should know that these categories exist, how to place people in the proper
category, and that their behavior toward people will vary depending on what
category that person is in. They should know that most of their classmates are
acquaintances and not friends, and they should know that this is completely
okay. Not everyone has to be their friends, nor should they be.
By
saying “be nice to your friends” insinuates that everyone they meet that day
should qualify as a friend. Not only is this rarely ever going to be the case,
it also gives your kids false expectations of the hellishly brutal social
atmosphere that awaits them just inside the doors of their school. Your kids
should be polite to everyone, but they shouldn’t be expected to show
friendliness to the kid who tries to bully them in the lunch line, the jerk who
makes a snide comment about them in homeroom, or any of the other horrible
inhabitants of your child’s social landscape.
Exhibiting
politeness to (almost) everyone will keep your child from becoming the bully,
but there is no reason we can demand or should desire that our kids be friendly
to everyone.
#2: Affection Is Voluntary
The
entire next chapter is devoted to this concept, so I won’t go into it in too
much detail, but ensure your kids know that they are never obligated to show
affection. Affection is the top level of the
polite-respectful-friendly-affectionate behavioral hierarchy and should only be
demonstrated when it is 100% authentic and heartfelt. [PULL QUOTE 55]
Forced
affection is not only disingenuous for the recipient but it is also a violation
to ask someone to demonstrate a feeling they might not have. This top level of
the hierarchy is completely voluntary, and your kid should know that no one can
or should ever demand this if they aren’t feeling it.
What
To Say Instead
As
discussed above, your kids should know the difference between friends and
acquaintances. This is important because, as they go through life, a vast
majority of the people they meet will never proceed past “acquaintance” to
“friend”. This is okay, normal, and good.
There
is an overwhelming notion especially around small children that they should be
friends with everyone. “Let’s all be friends!” is the rallying cry of
preschoolers everywhere, yet it couldn’t be farther from the case. Any adult
can tell you that a true friend is someone whose loyalty, common interests, and
compatibility have been tested extensively and have held true over time. Having
a real friend, who likes you for exactly who you are, isn’t afraid to tell you
when you do something stupid or get an ugly haircut, and appreciates your
bizarre sense of humor is both incredibly rare and immeasurably valuable. Most
adults have at maximum a handful of people they consider to be true friends,
and these cherished weirdos hold an irreplaceable role in our lives. [PULL
QUOTE 56]
Given
this incredibly high bar for the concept of friendship, it seems kind of silly
to expect our kids to form this kind of bond with everyone in their classes. Heck,
it’s a pretty high ask for them to be expected to find even one or two true
friends by the time they finish high school. It’s totally fine for you to
expect your child to be pleasant, polite, and respectful, but insinuating that
they can or should be friends with everyone they encounter is just setting them
(and you) up for disappointment.
Schemas for Dummies (and Your Child)
There
is too much information in the world for your child (or you, or any human) to
absorb and consider each fact individually. Our brains simply don’t have the
processing power. We would be stuck so indefinitely trying to process all the
information available to us that no decisions would ever get made, no actions
taken. So, to help us make sense of this incredibly information-rich world, we
use mental shortcuts to help us reach mostly accurate conclusions in much
quicker ways.
Schemas,
one such mental shortcut, are basically preconceived groupings of
interconnected information.[5] For
example, if something has four feet, fur, and barks, it’s probably a dog. We
don’t have to assess its exact coloring, behavior, ear size, or other features
to know that it’s probably a dog. We then activate our schema for “dog” and
know exactly how we should treat that barking, four-footed, furry thing. Even
if we’ve never met that particular dog before, our schema for the concept of
“dog” helps us know how to act. Our brain can create a fairly accurate guess at
how we should act while taking a very small amount of time processing
information.
The
reason schemas are relevant in this section on friendliness is that your child
has schemas for everything. Information your child gathers about the people
they meet, situations they experience, and types of encounters all get sorted
based on their preexisting schemas.
Typical
childhood schemas are for things like “friend,” “trusted adult,” or “bad guy”. Usually,
this works to your children’s advantage. They can assess a new situation fairly
quickly and, using their schemas to guide their behavior, know exactly how they
should act at any given moment. Is this new kid a “friend”? Then I should
probably be nice, share my toys, and wave goodbye to them before we leave the
park.
However,
where your kids can get into hot water is when they select the wrong schema for
a given situation. For example, what if your child meets an adult at the park
and instead of triggering the “stranger” schema, your kid activates the
“trusted adult” set of behaviors? You can see how a mistake like this could
have serious ramifications. After all, schemas are mental shortcuts, and
shortcuts mean that you’re sacrificing some accuracy for a higher degree of
expedience. There is a chance that, in not processing all the information, your
child will come to the wrong conclusion and activate the wrong schema.
Quick
Rant: This is another reason why Disney movies (and other made-for-children
media) make me incredibly mad with their depictions of villains. By constantly
presenting the villain as a fat, ugly, or old character who wears all black and
is accompanied by creepy music, they are giving your kid the misperception that
real life “bad guys” will always come with these schematic clues. In real life,
bad guys look just like good guys and cannot be easily identified on sight. In
real life, you have to devote some real time to getting to know someone before
you can tell if they are a “bad guy” or a “good guy.” Stop making our kids
think that they’re safe around someone as long as they don’t cackle, twirl
their mustache, or carry a sinister-looking walking stick. End of rant.
So,
what do schemas have to do with not telling your children to be nice to their
friends? Simple. They need to know that, when they meet a stranger, they have
to activate the “stranger” schema even
if the person looks nice, acts nice, or offers to give them free candy or show
them a cute puppy. They should know that they should use the “acquaintance” schema
for kids in their class until they earn the status of “friend.” Later on, when
they begin dating, they need to know that it’s okay to downgrade someone from
“potential romantic partner” or even "steady boyfriend" to “molesty
jackass” the second they push them to do something they’re not comfortable
doing.
Kids
need to know what schematic categorizations exist for the people they’ll
encounter, what behaviors they should show in each situation, and that people
have to earn their titles as “friend” or “trusted adult” with long-term
behavioral consistency.
The End Goal
The
end goal is a child who is confident in many different types of situations,
from meeting new peers or adults to correctly interacting with people they’ve
known for years. Children should have appropriate schemas of what behavior is
appropriate for what type of person, and they should be able to tell who falls
in what category. Most important, they should know that, while politeness
should be a universal constant, they are not obligated to show respect to those
who do not demonstrate it in return. They should know that friendliness is
reserved for people who have earned the title of friend, and they should feel
confident in the fact that affection is a 100% voluntary way of expressing their
feelings toward a trusted member of their tribe, blood-related or not.[6]
If
your kid can internalize these categorizations and their corresponding sets of
behavior, they will have a much easier, safer, more successful, and less
painful time navigating their social surroundings.
Cheat
Sheet
●
Teach
the behavioral hierarchy of politeness, respect, friendliness, and affection. Your
kid should know that their behavior has to be different based on whom they’re
interacting with at any given time. Teach that politeness should be a constant,
but that respect, friendliness, and affection should be reciprocated and earned
via good behavior (on the other party’s part) over time. They should also know
that if someone does not treat them with the appropriate level of respect (or
friendliness or affection) it is acceptable and expected to downgrade them
without hesitation or guilt.
●
Teach
the difference between strangers, acquaintances, friends, and family. Strangers
are people you’ve never met before, acquaintances are people whose names you
know, and friends are people you have known for a long period of time and have
earned your trust. Once kids get this categorization system, you can start
helping them put their actions into perspective. They will know what is
acceptable behavior for a friend versus an acquaintance and how to tell the
difference.
●
Teach
reciprocity and a willingness to walk away from one-sided relationships. Your
kid does not need to go above and beyond for people that would not do the same
for them. There are 7.8 billion people in the world. Your child cannot be
friends with all of them, so your children get to select which ones make the
cut. If your child has someone who is not as invested as he or she is in the
friendship, teach your kid that it is not mean and is actually perfectly
acceptable to walk away. Politeness must still be shown (because almost all
humans deserve politeness), but no one should ever feel the need to stay in a
one-sided relationship.
[1]
Bet you thought this was a woman, right? Check your gender norms, pal. Men can
have ugly shoes, too.
[2]
I don't know, but I'll let you know when my retinas heal.
[3]
True story: my teenager saw an ant crawling up my toddler’s arm and attempted
to blow it off for her. My toddler shielded the ant and screamed “Nooooo! He’s
my best friend!” My teenager didn’t stop laughing for days.
[4]
When I say I was friends with my teachers, I’m not kidding around. My sixth
grade English teacher let me knit in her class. My second grade teacher is
still considered to be a close friend of our family. My high school geometry
teacher and I still email at least once a month, and she sends my kids stuffed
animals from fun places when she and her husband go on vacation.
[5]
Torney-Purta, J. (1991). Schema Theory and Cognitive Psychology: Implications
for Social Studies. Theory and Research in Social Education, 19(2),
189-210.
[6]
Some may have a different opinion on this, but it is my fervent belief that not
all blood relatives are family and not all family is blood related. Family (or
one’s tribe, if you like that term better) is the word for people you trust
implicitly to put your best interests over their own. This is the highest
schematic ranking a person can achieve (in my book), and the title should not
be used loosely.
Chapter
6: Be Nice to Your Friends
[ILLUSTRATION 6, CHAPTER 6 WARNING GOES HERE]
As
anyone who has ever talked to a toddler can tell you, toddlers can be brutal. Like,
soul-crushingly, life-ruiningly frank. There’s a lot of truth to the Internet
meme that says “if a woman calls you ugly, she’s jealous; if a man calls you
ugly, she’s flirting, but if a kid calls you ugly...you’re ugly.”
Kids
have absolutely no sense of social niceties. They also occasionally spaz out
with small bursts of poorly-controlled demonic meanness of unknown origin. (No,
it’s not just your kids. It’s all of them.)
Why
We Say It
The
fact that parents across the globe tell their kids to be nice to their friends
is entirely unsurprising. We’re terrified our little monsters will alienate
their peers and doom themselves to a life of social isolation and misery
(sticking us with the therapy bills).
However
well-meaning this parental plea for our kids to exercise their still-developing
mouth filters may be, it does still have some unintended consequences.
Research
Says (What They Hear)
Despite
the fact that you do in fact want to ensure that your kids aren’t rude, little,
demon spawn, you telling them to be nice to their friends before they go to
school, as a warning when they start to act up at the park, and as they go into
a brand new situation can send two pretty harmful messages:
●
Everyone
is your friend.
●
You
have to be nice to your friends no matter what they do.
So,
let’s look at these two important constructs involved in the parental edict “be
nice to your friends:” the concept of nice and the concept of friends.
Niceness, Respect, and Childhood
Turrets
First,
let’s take a second to acknowledge the ambiguity in the concept of being
“nice”.
Say
your coworker comes up to you and asks if you like his shoes. You look downward
only to be immediately blinded by an abhorrent medley of colors so bright it
may qualify as a traffic hazard. Is it “nice” to tell him that you like his
shoes?[1] I mean,
lying to people is supposed to be not nice, right? But so is hurting people’s
feelings. If you were to honestly inform your obviously color-blind coworker as
to the human rights violation situated around his metatarsals, would it qualify
as “nice” or “not nice”?
Regardless
of the correct answer to the great shoe debate, it illustrates the important
point that being “nice” isn’t always as clear-cut an instruction as it sounds. Not
only does the definition of “nice” contain a lot of grey area, it also differs
dramatically from person to person.
In
this shoe example, if the coworker is a relatively new acquaintance the
“nicest” thing to do is probably respond with a polite dodge or mild white lie
to save feelings while contemplating the quickest way out of the situation. However,
if it’s someone you have worked with for years and have developed a strong and
resilient friendship, the “nicest” thing to do might be to tell the brutal
truth, possibly in a humorous way that reaffirms the strength of your
friendship.[2]
So,
if there is a fair amount of grey area in the concept of niceness for adults,
you can see that it would be even more difficult for children who are still
learning the different protocols for basic social situations.
Each
parent might handle this nebulosity in a different way, but I personally think
that it’s much more helpful to kids to use more concrete concepts in your
parental requests.
Politeness
This
is the first concept I would introduce to most children, as it is usually
considered to be a universal constant. I wouldn’t want my children to be
affectionate to everyone, nor would I necessarily like them to even be friendly
to everyone. (In fact, we are trying very hard to train our 4-year-old not to
be so friendly to everyone. Seriously, the people behind us in line at
Starbucks really don’t need to know about our dog’s potty training accidents. Tone
it down, Smalls.) [PULL QUOTE 52]
However,
there are very few exceptions to the rule that your children should be polite
to most of their fellow humans. Unless someone is actively abducting,
assaulting, or otherwise violating your children’s basic rights, they should
probably treat all people with basic politeness. This includes things like not
screaming at people, keeping their hands (and feet and teeth) to themselves,
not saying objectively mean things, saying “please” and “thank you” when
appropriate, and maintaining a basic sense of decorum and social consciousness
as they bumble their way through early life.
While
this might not be easy to train your kids to do, it isn’t very hard to teach
them when it needs to be done. You can safely try to train your kids to default
to a baseline of polite behavior without much grey area. Basically, act like a
human, not a monkey, and you should be good.
Respect
The
next level up from politeness is respect. While politeness is something to
which all humans are entitled, respect should (at least in my opinion) be
earned.
It’s
not hard to earn respect. The litmus test I use for my kiddos is that, if
someone treats you with a basic level of respect, you treat them the same way. However,
if someone is rude, hurtful, or otherwise disrespectful, my kiddos know they
have my full blessing to choose not to interact with that person. They still
have to be polite as they nope their way out of the situation (because almost
everyone is entitled to a baseline of politeness), but they don’t have to
subject themselves to someone who doesn’t treat them the way they should be
treated.
This
distinction comes in handy when dealing with some of the more old-timey
perspectives. By this, I mean things like telling a boy to “turn the other
cheek” when someone bullies him or telling a girl that a boy is allowed to
treat her a certain way just because he asks her out or buys her dinner. The
difference between politeness (to which almost everyone is entitled) and
respect (which must be reciprocally earned) helps your kid deal with things
that used to be societal norms but have since proven to be counterproductive
(or downright creepy).
To
sum up, I’d say politeness is the global rule that your child should be as
courteous as is situationally possible, whereas respect is a deferential way of
treating people that is earned only by reciprocity.
Friendliness
This
one really kicks in around the ages of two to three. Your kiddo is so excited
to show off burgeoning social skills that all the sudden the kiddo is best
friends with every kid around, the checkout clerk at the grocery store, that
lampshade over there, the stray cat sitting on your car, and your newly-planted
nectarine tree (literally…my kiddo named it “Friendly,” and they talk every
morning)[3].
It’s
a fantastic sign that your kid is willing and capable of creating social bonds
with so many different people (and the occasional inanimate object, I guess). It
means their verbal skills are blossoming and that you have done a great job as
a parent in making them feel safe and secure. Give yourself a high-five.
Friendliness Downside #1: Issues of
Safety and Childhood Stranger-Friends (aka Dear Toddler Please Stop Telling
Strangers Our Address)
When
reading the last paragraph, it may not have escaped your notice that, while we
want our kids to feel safe and secure, the world they live in is not an
entirely safe and secure place. Far from it.
While
there are very few long-term downsides to your toddler having pretend
conversations with a plant, there are very real consequences to a child being
too friendly with the wrong type of people. Telling strangers where you live or
when you’re going on vacation could increase your risks of a robbery or home
invasion. We all know the horror story of a child trusting a stranger that says
he’ll show them a new puppy if they only come into his house or get into his
car.
While
we want our kids to feel safe, happy, exuberant, and friendly, they also have
to know that they have to marry these qualities with an appropriate serving
size of caution and common sense as well. Teach your kids that while they
should be polite to (almost) everyone and demonstrate respect with (almost all)
those who respect them in return, friendliness shouldn’t be exercised
indiscriminately. Things like physical contact, sharing of personal details,
and feeling comfortable being alone with a person should be reserved for those
who are truly your proven and long-term friends. This means people you know
well, people who have proven to be trustworthy, and (for littler kids) people
who have been approved as “trustworthy” by parents.
Friendliness Downside #2: Emotional
Dangers (aka A Tale of Cookies and Neediness)
As
your kids grow up and start school, they stop having indiscriminate
conversations with lampshades (hopefully) and enter a much more complex social
realm. While it might seem like, with the increasing social competence of an
elementary, middle, or even high schooler, the dangers of friendliness have
passed, this is actually not the case.
And
now I would like to tell a tale of the worst (and most incorrect) social lesson
I ever learned—and how it took me the subsequent decade to unlearn it.
If
you couldn’t tell from my biting sarcasm and fervent insistence on a strict
adherence to grammatical intricacies, I didn’t have the easiest time making
friends as a child. The briefest explanation of my particular social problem is
this: A child who is raised by wolves never learns how to eat with a salad
fork. As the only child of incredibly intelligent parents (with whom I was and
still am insanely close), I never really learned how to relate properly to
other kids. I was much better at talking to adults and actually became friends
with many of my teachers.[4] As you
could probably guess, this did absolutely nothing to endear me to my peers.
In
high school, after a solid decade of wondering just why I didn’t fit in, I
discovered two of the girls in my English class who were in the technical
theater group (i.e. the people who do the lighting and paint the scenery for
the drama club) had “hell week” that week and would be staying at school until
9:00 or 10:00 at night every day until the show opened. That night, I showed up
at the theater room at 8:00 p.m. with a giant tray of warm, freshly baked
cookies. High schoolers are ravenous monsters so it will surprise exactly no
one that this gesture was very appreciated (and the cookies rapidly consumed). Like
the good little Skinnerian rat I am, I then showed up with cookies the next
four nights and, by the time the show opened, I had successfully baked my way
into my first friend group.
Now,
if any of you were thinking ahead about what conclusions my developing mind
might have been drawing from this experience, you probably just experienced the
literary equivalent of the background music that is played in a horror movie as
the side character walks down a rickety staircase into a poorly-lit basement.
What
adolescent Liz took from Cookiegate was the fact that if you just performed
acts of service for other people you can make them like you. Extraordinary! There’s
no conceivable downside to this whatsoever! Nothing can go wrong now!
Yup,
everything went wrong. I then spent the next decade of my life trying to bake,
buy, lend, toil, and work my way into friendships with people who had no real
desire for a reciprocal friendship (or later a mutual romantic relationship)
but were plenty content to consume the goods and services I was only too happily
offering. What I “learned” in one week of adolescent cookie baking took me a
half-decade to realize was a horrible idea and another goodness knows how many
years to stop doing. Even now, as a (mostly) secure, happily married, mother of
three, I still have to tamp down the urge to try to buy people’s affection
(usually with food).
If
only for my sake, please tell your kids early and often that they should not
bestow their friendliness on anyone who does not willingly and freely offer it
in return.
Kids
are often told to be friendly or to be nice to their friends in order to ensure
they have a social network. I’ve definitely been tempted to tell my
violence-prone daughter that no one will want to be friends with her if she
didn’t stop accidentally hug-tackling them. [PULL QUOTE 53] However tempting
this line of thinking may be, try to ensure your kid gets the message that
friendships are born from mutual compatibility and interest. No one has to
“earn” friends’ attention via friendliness or anything else.
Affection
The
final tier on the relational hierarchy is the demonstration of affection. This
can mean physical demonstrations of affection (e.g. hugs, holding hands, pats,
kisses, etc.) or it could just be verbal expressions of affection.
Kids
should be taught two primary things about affection:
1.
Affection
is reserved for those close to you who have earned your trust.
2.
You
never have to show anyone affection if you don’t want to.
Let’s
go over these one by one.
#1: The Relationship Hierarchy
With
our affection-prone toddler, I’ve started using the categorization of
strangers, acquaintances, friends, and family. Strangers are people you’ve
never met, acquaintances are people whose names you know, friends are those you
have known for a while and who have earned your trust over time, and family is
those members of your tribe (whether related by blood or mutual weirdness [PULL
QUOTE 54]) whom you trust implicitly in all circumstances.
Kids
should know that these categories exist, how to place people in the proper
category, and that their behavior toward people will vary depending on what
category that person is in. They should know that most of their classmates are
acquaintances and not friends, and they should know that this is completely
okay. Not everyone has to be their friends, nor should they be.
By
saying “be nice to your friends” insinuates that everyone they meet that day
should qualify as a friend. Not only is this rarely ever going to be the case,
it also gives your kids false expectations of the hellishly brutal social
atmosphere that awaits them just inside the doors of their school. Your kids
should be polite to everyone, but they shouldn’t be expected to show
friendliness to the kid who tries to bully them in the lunch line, the jerk who
makes a snide comment about them in homeroom, or any of the other horrible
inhabitants of your child’s social landscape.
Exhibiting
politeness to (almost) everyone will keep your child from becoming the bully,
but there is no reason we can demand or should desire that our kids be friendly
to everyone.
#2: Affection Is Voluntary
The
entire next chapter is devoted to this concept, so I won’t go into it in too
much detail, but ensure your kids know that they are never obligated to show
affection. Affection is the top level of the
polite-respectful-friendly-affectionate behavioral hierarchy and should only be
demonstrated when it is 100% authentic and heartfelt. [PULL QUOTE 55]
Forced
affection is not only disingenuous for the recipient but it is also a violation
to ask someone to demonstrate a feeling they might not have. This top level of
the hierarchy is completely voluntary, and your kid should know that no one can
or should ever demand this if they aren’t feeling it.
What
To Say Instead
As
discussed above, your kids should know the difference between friends and
acquaintances. This is important because, as they go through life, a vast
majority of the people they meet will never proceed past “acquaintance” to
“friend”. This is okay, normal, and good.
There
is an overwhelming notion especially around small children that they should be
friends with everyone. “Let’s all be friends!” is the rallying cry of
preschoolers everywhere, yet it couldn’t be farther from the case. Any adult
can tell you that a true friend is someone whose loyalty, common interests, and
compatibility have been tested extensively and have held true over time. Having
a real friend, who likes you for exactly who you are, isn’t afraid to tell you
when you do something stupid or get an ugly haircut, and appreciates your
bizarre sense of humor is both incredibly rare and immeasurably valuable. Most
adults have at maximum a handful of people they consider to be true friends,
and these cherished weirdos hold an irreplaceable role in our lives. [PULL
QUOTE 56]
Given
this incredibly high bar for the concept of friendship, it seems kind of silly
to expect our kids to form this kind of bond with everyone in their classes. Heck,
it’s a pretty high ask for them to be expected to find even one or two true
friends by the time they finish high school. It’s totally fine for you to
expect your child to be pleasant, polite, and respectful, but insinuating that
they can or should be friends with everyone they encounter is just setting them
(and you) up for disappointment.
Schemas for Dummies (and Your Child)
There
is too much information in the world for your child (or you, or any human) to
absorb and consider each fact individually. Our brains simply don’t have the
processing power. We would be stuck so indefinitely trying to process all the
information available to us that no decisions would ever get made, no actions
taken. So, to help us make sense of this incredibly information-rich world, we
use mental shortcuts to help us reach mostly accurate conclusions in much
quicker ways.
Schemas,
one such mental shortcut, are basically preconceived groupings of
interconnected information.[5] For
example, if something has four feet, fur, and barks, it’s probably a dog. We
don’t have to assess its exact coloring, behavior, ear size, or other features
to know that it’s probably a dog. We then activate our schema for “dog” and
know exactly how we should treat that barking, four-footed, furry thing. Even
if we’ve never met that particular dog before, our schema for the concept of
“dog” helps us know how to act. Our brain can create a fairly accurate guess at
how we should act while taking a very small amount of time processing
information.
The
reason schemas are relevant in this section on friendliness is that your child
has schemas for everything. Information your child gathers about the people
they meet, situations they experience, and types of encounters all get sorted
based on their preexisting schemas.
Typical
childhood schemas are for things like “friend,” “trusted adult,” or “bad guy”. Usually,
this works to your children’s advantage. They can assess a new situation fairly
quickly and, using their schemas to guide their behavior, know exactly how they
should act at any given moment. Is this new kid a “friend”? Then I should
probably be nice, share my toys, and wave goodbye to them before we leave the
park.
However,
where your kids can get into hot water is when they select the wrong schema for
a given situation. For example, what if your child meets an adult at the park
and instead of triggering the “stranger” schema, your kid activates the
“trusted adult” set of behaviors? You can see how a mistake like this could
have serious ramifications. After all, schemas are mental shortcuts, and
shortcuts mean that you’re sacrificing some accuracy for a higher degree of
expedience. There is a chance that, in not processing all the information, your
child will come to the wrong conclusion and activate the wrong schema.
Quick
Rant: This is another reason why Disney movies (and other made-for-children
media) make me incredibly mad with their depictions of villains. By constantly
presenting the villain as a fat, ugly, or old character who wears all black and
is accompanied by creepy music, they are giving your kid the misperception that
real life “bad guys” will always come with these schematic clues. In real life,
bad guys look just like good guys and cannot be easily identified on sight. In
real life, you have to devote some real time to getting to know someone before
you can tell if they are a “bad guy” or a “good guy.” Stop making our kids
think that they’re safe around someone as long as they don’t cackle, twirl
their mustache, or carry a sinister-looking walking stick. End of rant.
So,
what do schemas have to do with not telling your children to be nice to their
friends? Simple. They need to know that, when they meet a stranger, they have
to activate the “stranger” schema even
if the person looks nice, acts nice, or offers to give them free candy or show
them a cute puppy. They should know that they should use the “acquaintance” schema
for kids in their class until they earn the status of “friend.” Later on, when
they begin dating, they need to know that it’s okay to downgrade someone from
“potential romantic partner” or even "steady boyfriend" to “molesty
jackass” the second they push them to do something they’re not comfortable
doing.
Kids
need to know what schematic categorizations exist for the people they’ll
encounter, what behaviors they should show in each situation, and that people
have to earn their titles as “friend” or “trusted adult” with long-term
behavioral consistency.
The End Goal
The
end goal is a child who is confident in many different types of situations,
from meeting new peers or adults to correctly interacting with people they’ve
known for years. Children should have appropriate schemas of what behavior is
appropriate for what type of person, and they should be able to tell who falls
in what category. Most important, they should know that, while politeness
should be a universal constant, they are not obligated to show respect to those
who do not demonstrate it in return. They should know that friendliness is
reserved for people who have earned the title of friend, and they should feel
confident in the fact that affection is a 100% voluntary way of expressing their
feelings toward a trusted member of their tribe, blood-related or not.[6]
If
your kid can internalize these categorizations and their corresponding sets of
behavior, they will have a much easier, safer, more successful, and less
painful time navigating their social surroundings.
Cheat
Sheet
●
Teach
the behavioral hierarchy of politeness, respect, friendliness, and affection. Your
kid should know that their behavior has to be different based on whom they’re
interacting with at any given time. Teach that politeness should be a constant,
but that respect, friendliness, and affection should be reciprocated and earned
via good behavior (on the other party’s part) over time. They should also know
that if someone does not treat them with the appropriate level of respect (or
friendliness or affection) it is acceptable and expected to downgrade them
without hesitation or guilt.
●
Teach
the difference between strangers, acquaintances, friends, and family. Strangers
are people you’ve never met before, acquaintances are people whose names you
know, and friends are people you have known for a long period of time and have
earned your trust. Once kids get this categorization system, you can start
helping them put their actions into perspective. They will know what is
acceptable behavior for a friend versus an acquaintance and how to tell the
difference.
● Teach reciprocity and a willingness to walk away from one-sided relationships. Your kid does not need to go above and beyond for people that would not do the same for them. There are 7.8 billion people in the world. Your child cannot be friends with all of them, so your children get to select which ones make the cut. If your child has someone who is not as invested as he or she is in the friendship, teach your kid that it is not mean and is actually perfectly acceptable to walk away. Politeness must still be shown (because almost all humans deserve politeness), but no one should ever feel the need to stay in a one-sided relationship.
[1]
Bet you thought this was a woman, right? Check your gender norms, pal. Men can
have ugly shoes, too.
[2]
I don't know, but I'll let you know when my retinas heal.
[3] True story: my teenager saw an ant crawling up my toddler’s arm and attem
pted to blow it off for her. My toddler shielded the ant and screamed “Nooooo! He’s my best friend!” My teenager didn’t stop laughing for days.
[4]
When I say I was friends with my teachers, I’m not kidding around. My sixth
grade English teacher let me knit in her class. My second grade teacher is
still considered to be a close friend of our family. My high school geometry
teacher and I still email at least once a month, and she sends my kids stuffed
animals from fun places when she and her husband go on vacation.
[5]
Torney-Purta, J. (1991). Schema Theory and Cognitive Psychology: Implications
for Social Studies. Theory and Research in Social Education, 19(2),
189-210.
[6]
Some may have a different opinion on this, but it is my fervent belief that not
all blood relatives are family and not all family is blood related. Family (or
one’s tribe, if you like that term better) is the word for people you trust
implicitly to put your best interests over their own. This is the highest
schematic ranking a person can achieve (in my book), and the title should not
be used loosely.
Clean Your Plate! was awarded the gold medal in the Literary Titan competition and placed as a finalist in the Readers' Favorite book award competition.
Currently, this book is on deep discount at Amazon: $7.80. But Amazon has only 16 books left at this price. Chances are the new inventory will approximate list price.
To read more posts about Liz and her books, click HERE.
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