As I write this, I hear the words of Aretha ringing in my ears- R-E-S-P-E-C-T... Lately there have been several instances where the issue of respect has come up. I had commented recently to CJ, that you need to be "respectful." He looked at me and said, "I think I know what that means, but it seems like it means a lot of things." This really made me start to think, and that opened up a discussion this week with my husband about what respect is and how exactly we need to teach it to our children.
How do you define respect? CJ was right; respect is multi-faceted and at times contradictory. When I think about it I think of: respect for self; respect for others; and respect for all things,living or otherwise, including our environment. Although tied to morality, respect is different. In an ideal world we would teach our children to be respectful consistently in all aspects of their lives, but the reality is that society as a whole does not do that. Sometimes to be respectful of one thing, it means being disrespectful to another. Immediately the civil rights movement comes to mind. Here was a movement to respect the dignity of people of different races, in a world that at the time did not itself deem it important. So how do we engrain the concepts of respect into our children? How do we teach them respect and how to navigate the contradictions?
