Why are parents no longer teaching their children good manners,really most of you younger people have it made,the way I had been raised was to always be respectful to others, especially my elders, I was taught to always refer to my elders by saying yes sir or yes mam, especially to my parents,to show any form of disrespect to others usually meant my rear end getting acquainted with the switch or the belt.

I see today young people exhibiting far to much familiarity with their elders, even at the age I am now, I still show the required respect to my elders, I would never even dream of calling them by anything other then MR./MISS. If by request I am asked to use first names then I will do so, people our elders are a vast storehouse of both knowledge and wisdom, especially are senior citizens they are a national treasure and should be treated as such, well this is just my opinion.

pretty big generalization of young people...

many of the people my age don't respect the young people..

Anyone still in their twenties I would consider young people.

Well maybe it stem from their parents it's ..But I don't think is fair to say all I have nieces and nephews who are very polite and so are their friends so it can go both ways ...I've also seen some rude adults way over 20

Hmmmk. My kid calls me ma'am. I'm not even from the south.

I think there are still respectful young people. I think a big part of the equation though, is that somewhere along the line it became uncoole to 'grow up'. People dont want to be their age let alone act it and many people walk around trying to keep their teenage carelessness. Many elders dont WANT to be treated as an elder but as equal to the twenty somethings. I find it discouraging too, but ya gotta just be the best you you can be and learn to adapt the best ya can. I make it clear to my sons friends that they should call me Ms. and I set the example to my kids by still calling my elders sir and mam. Actually, I call young people sir and mam quite a bit too, or else young man and young lady. I think people tend to live up to the adjectives we assign them (especially at a younger age).

I have 3 sons in that range..and they are polite nice young men. My 18 year old son has hair down to his waist and is snubbed by older people because of it....they are rude to him. Should he say "excuse me Sir, I'm sorry my hair offends you?"

In general every generation does the opposite of what their parents did.

In early 20/30 they had dozen of kids, woman stayed at home and children stayed at home to work.

In the 40/50 children were cut in half, women were working and children rebelled more.

In the 60/70 were down to 3 to 4 kids, parents experience everything, kids still physically corrected by authority figures.

In the 80/90 in was down to 2 to3 kids and parents didn't want the same for their kids as they had experienced so they let them rule the household.

In nowdays parents have 2 both work for things not really necessary kids are lost to themselves (empty households) and flock to the internet where they are still alone but can experience it with the whole world.

What will be the next one?

Just a generalization not sciencetific but you get my drift.

My girls have the best of manners!
I am very proud of that!

To this day anyone older than me is adressed as Mr/Mrs/Miss

I have one and that is enough for me.

and my little one kicks my butt all the time, but she is most respectful out in public with everyone.

Sarcastic with me. A little smarty pants I have here, but I love it.

yet I do see the difference between the children's manners of today then what I grew up with. Perhaps laws have changed much in how we should raise children. Such laws that prevents us from enforcing good upbringing.

I saw a man have his child taken away from him at a restaurant one day because he spank the child out in public for being bad. The father also left with police officers.

So what happened after that I don't know, but it surely was strange.

I mean spankings I guess are not allowed anymore in today's society. The time I grew up I got a spanking if I did something bad, but I surely didn't do that mistake again after that spanking.


I guess that is now child abuse in today's society.

I don't spank my child by the way, but if she is bad she gets no ice cream at dinner or a toy that she wanted on the next day we shop.

Now that is different type of punishment, but it works for my child.

Of course in my days we didn't have half as much toys as today. Computer?? Ninetendo?? Blackberry?? text message, email??

We played outside sports, shot plastic toy army men with rubber bands, played marbles, collected baseball cards, and so forth. Simple but fun.

Times have changed for the better or worst. Well I will let you decide on that.

I respect my elders. I didn't fire back a mean email to the 76 year old that perved me last week!

What happened to the old people that are respectful to younger people?

It is hard to respect elders when they put themselves in a position where respect is not deserved.

my 18 year old son is respectful to all ages (old or young) unless they do something to not be respected any more. and even then he respects them enough to just stay away from them

i teach my children that respect is earned. they do not need to cowtow to anyone who is treating them badly.

i also teach them to control their own actions.

it's a fine line...i encourage them to use "ma'am" and "sir" if the person is completely unknown or someone that prefers to be referred to in this way, but it's not completely mandatory. if that person is downright disrespectful in their own actions, they aren't to automatically defer based solely on age.

treat me like ****...and while i might not treat you badly (because i'm only in control of myself, not others), that doesn't mean that i'll stick around to put up with it.

lets not confuse respect with fear, people who deserve respect will get it from people who are respectful. expecting to be respected from people who aren't respectful ( confusing i know read it again lol) is some one who probably don't deserve that respect in the first place. people will catch on to the whole respect thing with age. expecting any unrelated cohort of people to act a certain way is well...needless to say.

I think respect is freely given until shown they are not worthy, but trust is earned.

I work in a school, this is one of the biggest issues we have, it is a constant battle field (daily) children as young as nine are disrespectful to members of staff. Some parents do not help the situation either,we have had parents who have assulted members of staff because their child had been given a detention............Teach by example?

My kids are taught respect is earnt....they do NOT have to be polite or pseudo respectful to any person, regardless of gender or age.

They do however find themselves naturally respectful to people who respect them.


The whole 'respect your elders' is a dangerous path to tred.....we were raised to always respect our elders....to never say no to them, to do as we were told....


and we became perfect targets for pedophiles....there is only one male child, and two female children in a whole gaggle of cousins of a similar age that were not molested by family elders....


go figure.

I'm glad I live in West Texas

out here the kids say sir and ma'am (or senor and senora)

they hold the door for ladies and take their hats off in the buildings

they say either thank you or gracias and please and por favor

but out here the parents still can give the kids whippings without going to jail too so maybe that's the difference

I did not grow up addressing people as sir or ma'am. Does that mean I didn't respect my elders?