Demanding respect is inherently disrespectful

To anyone like myself who has been raised under the umbrella of a collectivist Asian family, you would know the following statements:

• "Why are you answering back?"
• "Respect your elders!"
• "Just keep quiet and do what you are told to!"
• "You want me to take the belt out?"

If you are a parent frequently using these statements and wondering why your child isn't capable of being as disciplined as you were during your younger years, I might be capable of explaining that.

First, let's talk statistics. Statistically speaking, being older gives you more experience in life and thus allows you to draw from a larger pool of data to base your decisions on and a wider perspective. A child or teenager would not have that experience and thus would have the disadvantage by having a narrower perspective.

Now, onto respect. If your coworker has a different perspective than you do concerning some arbitrarily chosen matter, do you listen to them and try to understand why their perspectives are different, or do you wave them off without any consideration for why they think as such? If you do respect them, then it would be the former, if not, it would be the latter.

So when, by definition, you have a different perspective than your child due to your experience pool, do you listen and attempt to understand them or wave them off? Let's scale things a bit more differently, would you wave off a teenager by declaring your authority by simple virtue of having been born a decade or two prior? A teenager is not as dumb as a child, they possess intelligence but lack wisdom, they will not be cowed by the same tactics that would work on a child, but at the very least can understand reason should one attempt it as an action.

Yes it is true, you are statistically more likely to be correct than your teenage child would be when making decisions, but is that really the goal? The endgoal is to make sure that the best decisions are made at each juncture, and this can only be realistically achieved by having both parties explain their perspectives and coming to an agreement based on all available data. Handwaving somebody off on some arbitrary basis cuts off the necessary communication that makes that possible.

So now, were you to attempt to explain to somebody as to why you have a differing perspective, is it not disrespectful to you should they ignore you or tell you to cease talking? Would it not be even more disrespectful should they demand respect from you when not having given you the basic courtesy of listening to your problems?

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To all the parents that may be answering in the comments section, I have anticipated several questions and have written answers.

"I understand that communication is key, but it's really difficult to do that when my 5 year old child is throwing a tantrum and crying his eyeballs out!"

That is a perfectly sensible statement, but handle it like any other tantrum and explain it to him later.

"Teenagers are too edgy/emotional; they'd just tell me "Mom, you don't understand anything!"".

Experience from talking to teenagers that suffer various forms of psychological problems all point to a degenerative cycle of relations with their parents. Yes, it is true that you have a larger experience pool to draw from and thus a greater variety of advice to give your child, but doing so requires that you understand the nature of their problem first. Understanding their problem relies on them providing you with accurate information beforehand, and this requires trust. Check first if you had, at some point years prior had you spurned their earnestly-expressed misgivings, that might have led to an attitude of independence and unwillingness to tell you. You being overprotective is another. The less they trust you beforehand means that they are far less likely to provide you with information that would be of great use.

As for understanding them, try to coax out as much information as possible; this is key. Making suggestions and advice based on limited information is far more likely to bring out the much-despised "Mom, you just don't understand anything about me!" response.