Didn't you talk about this between you and Mr. Crescenzo doing the same thing awhile back?

I think that's rude, but I'm old

Yes, we do it. But for us, it's kind of a gag between old pals who have this cold way of basically saying, "I'm not going to indulge you."

For these kids, it's just business.

It's because they have too much self esteem. These are the same kids who make asses of themselves on American Idol because nobody *ever* in their lives (including choir directors, etc.) had the balls to tell them they can't sing. Similarly, folks are too timid to tell the assholes that they are rude when they do that crap.

Will

Everybody gets their comeuppance, Will. I generally disagree with this sentiment that kids have "too much self esteem."

I was once asked by the proud 16-year-old daughter of a Ragan colleague, "How can you guys work at a small-time publisher like that?"

And I thought (and may have actually said): You'll get yours, Sister. The world is a cold place.

She spent an aimless and worried year or two after college, and I empathized with her very much (I was once a cocky son of a bitch too).

Now she's having some pretty amazing success as a rookie public radio reporter. She's coming to town this summer and her father tells me she can't wait to tell me all about it. And I can't wait to hear.

We should tell kids when we think they're rude. But we should remember it ain't easy being 22, and 3/4 of their bluster is whistling in the dark.

I don't blame the kids as much as the parents. What kid grows up thinking it's okay to hang up on someone mid-sentence? Like yesterday...we were at the pool and this little hellian was being a pill and her mom said, "She's qualified as a 'spirited child.'" Whodawa? I'll tell you what she is, I thought, a spoiled brat.

We Dr. Philisize them so they aren't accountable for anything, then send them out to drive us all crazy. Sheesh!

Again, Eileen, I may be blind to this issue ... but these people I'm talking about aren't spoiled brats and they're not American Idol contestants. They're teaching in one of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods.

I think this instance is more about style than about self-esteem.

Like the quick e-mails you get from people who IM a lot. (I asked a young Ragan colleague if a project was completed and he replied, "Nope." THAT WAS IT! I asked, he answered.

Meanwhile, I often start and finish my e-mails with salutations. These seem to them decorative and not functional, like the formal business writing of the early 20th century seem to us.

But not saying goodbye on the phone is DYSFUNCTIONAL; because how is the other person to know you've gone?

Well, I think I see your point. I'm not a thank you note writer, but I'm not a spoiled brat either. Now my mother in law, who is a HUGE thank you note writer and assumes everything she gives us should result in a flowery thank you note, probably thinks that's rude, but I think thank you notes are a tad outdated. If I can call and thank you, why is the note necessary?

Is that kind of what you're saying?

Exactly. But we dusty, musty old 30-somethings reserve the right to call children back and scream into the phone, "Barbarian!"

Um-hmmm. I lost my right as a thirtysomething a few weeks ago when I turned 40, but you surly thirtysomethings carry on for me, ok?

Thank you notes never go out of style -- only the medium has changed. I can't tell you how many thank you e-mails I send.

Will

DISCLAIMER: This is not meant as a personal attack.

David, if you're only thirty-something, you are part of the generation I accuse of having too much self esteem. In your early years you had Mr. Rogers telling you every day just how "special" you are, and you (collective you -- your generation -- overdosed on Sesame Street with all of its "specialness."

When I was a kid (yup, I'm about to show my age) we weren't allowed to have any self esteem. Hell, I don't think it was even a recognized term then. But anyway, if you wanted self esteem you had to grow up and leave home to find it. Hell, today's grownup kids don't even leave home.

Will

About six months ago I told my daughter if she ever hangs up on me again I'll permanently take away her cell phone. Hasn't hung up since.

And, another time, I was serving my son and his friend some home made baking -- I think it was cupcakes -- and they took the cakes without saying thank you. I took the cakes away and tossed them in the garbage and called them a couple of extremely rude ingrates. They've been more polite to me since.

As parents, and fellow humans, we need to let people know when they've crossed a line, because that's the only hope we have of changing their behavior. The good news on the cell phone front is usually you have the person's number right there so you can call back instantly.

Does Christie think it would make a difference if she were to call back and call the offender on what they'd just done?

And to think Generation Me is on my reading list.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is great . . . unless you don't mind having the phone snapped shut, then you're going to assume it's no biggie.

Well, maybe she was at a light that had just turned green.

Or maybe a police cruiser was approaching (it's illegal in Chicago to drive with cell phone in hand).

Or . . . or . . .

I don't worry so much about an incident as a pattern.

Pretty funny, Will: On my very first post on this blog, I wrote a list of facts about me. Here was one:

"I can sit quietly and think of Mister Rogers—and all the kids whose parents couldn’t love them sufficiently who heard the dear man on the TV tell them there’s no one in the world exactly like them—and cry."

Why on earth do you think it's right and proper for kids to not be "allowed" to love themselves before they leave school and ... what? become a lawyer, get married, WHAT?

My mother loved me and told me I was a smart and good person. I believed it. I still have to prove my worth in society (and my family and my friends) every day in order to feel good about myself.

What in the hell is the problem with that?

(Ron, I'll ask Cristie if she said anything, and I'll get back to y'all.)

Will, my parents were 48 and 42 when I was born in 1961, and they came from, "Children should be seen and not heard" and "Spare the rod, spoil the child," which was very different from the attitudes of my friends' much younger parents. While both are way too harsh, I do think there's been a swing WAY too much the other way, with parents wanting to be friends, not parents. And there's way too much negotiating. I watched a dad negotiate for FIVE minutes with a 3-year-old about whether to walk on the boulders or the grass. JUST DECIDE, DAD. The kid will not be ruined for life over it. Yikes.

(Speaking as a non-parental unit, of course.)

With you all the way, Diane. My kid gets choices: at the playground and in a few other spheres where she should. Not shoes, not what we're having for dinner, not whether or not grass or boulders.

The friends vs. parents thing IS important. But you can be a parent who loves like hell, tells the kid she's the greatest thing since sliced bread, and lowers the (verbal) hammer when she gets out of line.

As a parental unit, I know this for sure.

(So far. She's three.)

Geez, David, let Scout pick her own shoes, fer cryin' out loud. Or was it that she wanted to go barefoot on the boulders while not eating what was put in front of her? :-)

This whole conversation has my wheels turning, which can get ugly. I'm much older than you--just turned 54--and grew up with parents who loved me a lot but would be damned if they'd ever SAY it or tell me I was a great kid. (My ethnicity is German, but I have friends of Norwegian and Irish and African and Mexican descent who led the same childhood.) The way I try to treat other people has less to do with how much I like myself that day than with (1) a general respect for God-made human beings that my parents taught me and (2) the knowledge that treating people well in this cold, cruel world just makes things nicer all around for everybody, including me. Altruism and self-interest sleep under the same quilt.

I really don't think today's younger people are ruder than we were at their age. They just have more electronic ways to be rude--and parents who didn't live through WWII--and grandparents who didn't live through the Great Depression. The biggest thing today's young people have gone through is 9/11, and the entire country is acting as if that never happened, so how can we expect them to be moved by it--or by anything, for that matter?

Well said, Jane, as per usual.

My parents told me I was great -- WHEN I was actually, well, great, i.e., brought home As, got selected for plays, had a painting displayed in the Albright-Knox, etc. I wasn't great merely for existing, though. Too many people think they are great simply because they are, that is, to be is to be great. To me, greatness is earned. I've worked with too many people who, because they are of course great, expect everyone to bow to their greatness, which the rest of us haven't actually witnessed.

I sometimes wonder if all this somehow correlates to the huge number of people I see blowing through stops signs and traffic lights as though they are for Everyone Else, including, recently, almost into Pedestrian Me. Within one and one-half inch. Thank goodness for efficient brakes (and a healthy cardiovascular system). Now, had they hit me, THAT would have been really rude.

Apparently the Today Show had a segment on kids who are told how special they are and how they end up being brats and I missed it. I did, however, see the segment about how chicks go for brawny guys when they want to hook up, but scrawny guys when they are choosing a partner for life. So we scrawny guys get the long-term relationship with all the responsibility, but not the hook-up. I don't know, I think I can convince myself I'm OK with that.

Anyway... Look, kids know when they're loved. They feel it. Just like they feel it when "I love you" is just empty words with nothing behind it. And kids who are loved are generally not in danger of losing their self-esteem when their parents correct them or scold them or punish them.

My observation -- and it's truly just an observation -- is that today's young people are more self-involved or at least the self-involved kids are more expressive of it. And I agree that it's because their parents never really had to go through anything like the Depression or WWII. When you've always had everything you could ever need or want in the world, it's pretty easy to believe you don't need anybody else in the world.

I wrote about this at length recently in my column, discussing how the world will be when this generation of "princesses" grows up to take care of us. Chilling thought, eh? You can read it at http://www.oregonnews.com/article/20070603/FEATURES01/70605021&SearchID=73286751626880

How's that for a self-promoting healthy self-esteem?

As per usual I'm late into the discussion, but I love this thread - this issue is one of my favourite rant-ables.

A few things, if I may:

Ron Shewchuk: I LOVE LOVE LOVE you!! Your way of handling rudeness is absolutely fantastic and appropriate!

Diane: Yes. Having some choices is a good way to learn how to be independant, and how to behave with others. Negotiating with 5-yr olds over things that 5-yr olds neither understand nor care genuinely about (like asking "why" for an hour to everything you say) is a foolish waste of time.

Jane: Mostly I agree with you, but on the rudeness quotient of the current generation we diverge. I am 42, and I and all my friends and people I know in my bracket have some basic level of manners, the sense that others matter at least as much as me. My experiences with the younger people (and this is a generalization and not entirely fair) is that many of them do not have that sense. Many of them behave as though they are the ONLY PERSON there, and some of the behaviour I have seen in terms of face-to-face rudeness has absolutely floored me.

Finally, Diane: on your almost being run over story, today at work a colleage told us about her 79 yr old father, who, in addition to routinely wearing socks & sandals, actually ran into a pedestrian ("bumped her out of my way") ON PURPOSE because "they were moving too slow". Because he's so old, nothing happened to him. Pedestrian shook it off and walked away and "Dad" went on his way. Maybe when we get really old we'll get to do whatever we want too!

I do think it's right that a child knows, however she is told, that she is thought excellent by her parents.

That doesn't mean of course that she'll be satisfied with that the rest of her life. One must do good work, good things to truly feel good about oneself.

But the worst nuts and bullies and bottomless pits in life are those who weren't loved as kids, or who thought they had to achieve excellence every 10 minutes to get what-have-you-done-lately approval.

The other day Scout remarked in a traffic jam that "traffic is like garbage." I told her that was poetic and made a big deal out of it. Next scene shows her making up a song about it.

Should I have waited until she wrote the whole poem with a heroic couplet at the end to tell her she'd done something neat?

"When you've always had everything you could ever need or want in the world"

. . . when I was a kid, I never lost anything. I didn't have much, and I clung to what I had because there wasn't going to be more, and because my parents were big on not being wasteful.

The kids who come to my building to use the pool leave a half dozen toys behind every day. Most seem to end up in the trash. Somehow this makes me feel sorry for these kids.

David - of course you should tell Scout she's wonderful! Balance is the key - you don't need to behave as though they've cured cancer when they finally pick up their toys after you've asked them to do so 18 times in an hour.

My issue is less about rudeness and bad behaviour (contrary to my other comment) as it is that those engage in these somehow feel they should NOT be held responsible for the consequences of their decisions. My personal approach to life has always been "You can do whatever you want, so long as you'll accept the consequences without whining about them" Hence my frothing rage of Paris.

David, my dad would have winked at the nearest adult and said to me, "And your comparison is like garbage because it is." Which makes me laugh.

See? Now I just sat here for a full 60 minutes trying to figure out if Kristen's mad at a whole country or just a stupid heiress. Which one?

Diane--

There's clearly more than one way to make a poet.

The main reason I have confidence in my judgment in this area is that I have confidence in my INSTINCTS in this area. I KNOW when to give Scout a choice, and I KNOW when to tell her: HOLD THE RAILING. I know when to cheer and when to shrug, as I did this morning when she showed me some dance move, and say, "Is that it?"

I have to trust these instincts. (They are all I have.) And I do.

David

Sorry Eileen! That would be the stupid heiress. Paris the country hates us ("us" being anyone who isn't them) but I have nothing against them.

Cheers!

Kristen

Paris is a city.

Love, Jane

Oh, yeah. Ugly American that I am...I thank you for signing it "love" Jane. You're a kind woman.

I never was good at Geography.

Humbly yours,
Eileen

I'm Canadian, but apparently I'm no better at Geography than Eileen.

What would we do without Jane to keep us humble?

We're all about lifelong learning here at Shades of Gray.

Okay, get this everybody. Last night I had a beer with the young woman who hung up on Cristie. Cristie HAD ribbed her about it, and she HADN'T BEEN CONSCIOUS OF DOING IT!

Furthermore, she says she gets annoyed when her friends do it to her--and they do it often--but swore she hadn't been conscious of doing it to Cristie. She was sheepish as hell. We all had a big laugh, especially when I told her the hang-up had spawned a global conversation about The Decency of A Generation.

Glad to see y'all aren't taking me too seriously. I'm just a grumpy old fart who grew up under the children-should-be-seen-and-not-heard school of child rearing. Instead of Mr. Rogers and Cookie Monster, we had Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy on our one and only channel. We didn't watch much TV at all. Instead of McDonald's, we had moms who cooked for us and dads who beat our asses when we needed it. It didn't take "a village" to raise us -- just Mom and Dad.

Will

But do you have the instinct to know when you're being twigged?

Will -- I'm with you. My parents were the best.

This conversation, while highly entertaining to read, is based on an extremely flawed premise. David takes one anecdote--a young teacher fails to say goodbye to his wife--and turns it into a generational fault for everyone younger than him.

Maybe this young teacher is a rude person, maybe this was a bad day, maybe she doesn't get along your wife, maybe her phone died, maybe your wife's phone died ...

What's the difference between this massive leap to a conclusion and this one, following a fictional conversation with David Murray.

Me: Hey David.
David: Hey Michael (hiccup)
Me: How are you?
David: Pretty (hiccup) good.
Me: Really?
David: Yeah (hiccup). Okay, (hiccup), gotta go (hiccup). Bye.
Me: See-ya.

The conclusions based on this chance (and fictional) encounter with David Murray: Generation X either a) hiccups a lot, b) is dishonest because David clearly wasn't "pretty good," as he said, or c) Dutifully says goodbye?

Hogwash! All of it! Stop making sweeping generalizations based on one event. And if you've got more facts to support this theory then show your cards, Mr. Murray!

This generation is so angry.

;-)

Michael--

I really don't believe I made any sweeping generational generalizations. Reread my post and my comments and tell me what generalizations I've made.

David

Michael, you left out d) is always plastered.

Jane, you should be in the movies as a comedy scriptwriter - your 'asides' are killer! :-)

David, thanks for reporting back to us on the originator of this conversation. It strikes me that young people are often simply not completely conscious. In fact, I've studied this a bit and human brain development is not actually complete until a person reaches about 23 years old. I'm generalizing, of course, but one of the things we have to understand is that it takes much, much longer for people to grow up than most of us assume. Just because we can drink and vote and go to war at 19 doesn't mean we can think straight or listen properly or act in a thoughtful way. We need to be reminding our children to be better, but we also need to be as patient as we can with them because it takes time and experience to become a responsible adult.

Ron, taking issue with the "...but we also need to be as patient..." comment. Not serious issue, more of a counterpoint. If twenty-something adults are in a grownup world, doing grownup work and earning grownup pay, I don't believe it is incumbent on us "real" grownups to be patient with their childish ways.

Will

I see what you mean, Will. Here's where my comment was coming from: as the father of a 16-year old, I need to remind myself to be patient and tolerant because it's easy to forget that the qualities of her character that get on my nerves are the qualities that she has inherited from me -- but without the tempering effect of my many years of adult life.

I hear ya man -- raised two young ladies myself.

Will