I asked them to clean it once or twice. One of them told me that I was too sensitive and late because “people aren’t offended” by it anymore.
Anything I can do? Am I too sensitive or well brought up?
Mother of three children: Did your epiphany come after your children were mostly adults, or early enough in their training arcs that your kitchen was a modern-day Mayberry hecking?
I may have no reason to ask other than morbid curiosity…because they’re off anyway. It’s no longer a question of what a mother should do, not with your children in their twenties.
Instead, it’s about where your authority ends and theirs (or anyone else’s) begins when it comes to decorum. Do you have the authority to ask your children to limit their rudeness in your presence? Yes, you do, like everyone else. Do they have the right to ignore your requests? Yes, technically they do, although it’s rude and I hope they don’t exercise it. Should we put up with this? No, you don’t. But they’re your children, so it’s understandable that you have other priorities in your relationship with them.
I see the emotional appeal of loose parenting, i-dotting and retouching – you want to make sure they have the best possible chance at life. And/or, you don’t want to feel bad now that you somehow messed them up. But:
1. Your “finish” isn’t necessary or even ideal. Could your parent have passed you off as an adult as effectively as your co-worker eventually did? Be honest with yourself.
2. It’s not possible. No parent can teach everything there is to teach.
3. Again, it’s too late.
Now is the time to believe that you have done your best and to hope that you have understood the general idea of respect for yourself and others. And cross your fingers that the code change fits into their concept of “the era”. And continue to teach by example. And make a mental offering to the gods in advance to watch over your children as they make their way to the logical top of the mountain and see that you and “people” are not two separate things, and therefore some of the ” people” they go through, and maybe relying on things – it just takes one – will find their rudeness as crude, dull, unimaginative and sometimes offensive as you do.
But out loud, for you, there’s just this: gently persisting with, “Tongue, please, so I can eat my fucking dinner in peace.” Think of it as a sort of parent/adult child relaxation: you stop trying to raise them, and they – hopefully eventually – thank you with a bit of ancestral respect.
