Can Respect Be Toxic?
The gist of things
Can Respect Be Toxic?
In the Morning Cup of Calm two weeks ago, we learned how some Latinx families are passing traditions down to their kids. There’s another, darker, side to cultural intentionality. It’s understanding the aspects of culture and family that don’t serve us, that we work to avoid passing on to our children.
maturity in [parenting] is when you catch
your mind as it is creating a false story about
your [child] which is based on inner tension
that is unrelated to them. self-awareness
helps decrease unnecessary conflict.
- yung pueblo (adapted quotation)
I was raised with just a few rules growing up. These included; don’t make any noise when the Red Sox are on TV, and don’t ever, ever, disrespect Mom. I knew from a very young age that we were never to argue, whine, complain, or talk back, or the consequence would be quick and harsh. Usually she could shut behavior down with just a stink-eye. If that didn’t work, she might pinch and twist the skin on my inner arm, causing me to wince or cry. I could do something common and harmless, like leaving a towel on the bathroom floor, and that could induce a screaming fit about how I treat her like a servant. Or it could cause nothing.
Fearing Mom’s reactivity was a core experience of my childhood. In adulthood, this reactivity infiltrated my own parenting style even though I want to have relationships with my kids grounded in calm and joy. A big part of my life’s work is unlearning this reactivity, and instead practicing responding to my kids with empathy, boundaries, and the skills I teach in my parenting classes.
In my healing process, I’ve come to understand mom’s volatility much more. Mom carried a shit ton of stress. Like many working moms, she worked a second shift at home, before there was a cultural conversation about division of parental labor. My parents navigated financial stress for years. The scholarships my brother and I received for our private schools weren’t quite enough to make it work. We excelled at athletics, which meant expenses for elite teams and travel. Mom worked hard in the office, and hard at home, always moving in service to others.
I don’t know if Mom understands the generational trauma she carries. In many ways we lived the immigrant dream. My grandparents came from the Philippines to work the sugar plantations in Hawaii. Through effort, industriousness, and luck, they scraped together pennies to buy property. This meant that their 10 kids, while still quite poor, always had shelter and food. These kids went off to college, the military, or both. They privileged my generation with a stability and white collar living that my grandparents could only dream of. Respect, hard work, and loyalty to family, were etched into our souls as birthright and duty.
My family glosses over a shadow narrative. My grandmother was orphaned by the Spanish Flu, and then forced to move to Hawaii with her brother (he beat her when she refused). She was a child bride, arranged to marry at 14. She bore 10 children even though the last three births came close to killing her. They led a back-breaking existence, and the specter of violence was ever present. My grandfather participated in several labor strikes, and it was common practice to send in goons to physically break the workers. For women, rape and abduction were common. Grandma told stories of hiding in the cane fields on payday to avoid being “cowboyed”. I believe these pieces of our family history, along with the norms of the day, led my grandparents to demand extreme respect and obedience from their children. Fear, violence, and subjugation haunted their lives, and became tools in disciplining their kids. Mom tells of the time that her brother back-talked his father. His punishment was to place a chili pepper on his tongue and hold it there until his father told him he could stop. He cried, sweated, and groaned in agony. His tongue swelled up. Yet he wouldn’t scream, and wouldn’t spit it out. Somehow this was supposed to teach respectful communication.
Let me clarify, my mom and grandparents were loving, committed, parents who brought affection, joy, and care to their children. I’m indebted to them. From them I learned commitment, dedication, and the power of hugs and deep belly laughs. I’m also saying that their personal and intergenerational trauma showed up in their parenting, and one of the main manifestations is toxic respect.
Wait! How can respect be toxic? Respect is essential! Of course it is. It’s imperative that we teach our kids how to respect themselves, their families, and others in the world. We teach them through intentionally building their skills, and by creating and holding boundaries. In these cases, we are leading with our frontal lobes. Last week, my boundary setting looked like, “It’s not okay to whine about dinner. I worked hard to prepare this, and it’s disrespectful to complain when I’ve worked hard to feed you. I’m happy to have a conversation about cooking more of the things you would like for dinner. I’ll know you are ready for that conversation when you come to me and you use nice language and a calm voice.”
Notice both the boundaries and the invitation in that mini-lecture. I’m naming the behavior that I find to be rude (whining about the dinner I cooked), and pointing to behaviors that are welcome (negotiation, nice language, calm voice). In implementing toxic respect, we strip a child of power. The parent’s way is the right way. The child’s attempt at voice, choice, or agency is punished. True respect is mutual respect. This means that we model listening, support, and care, while teaching what respect looks like. This is an example of positive parenting.
Here are some of the life skills we teach when we model true respect:
To set and hold boundaries
To consent or not consent, and to honor those decisions
To negotiate
To state one’s needs
To listen, to care, to be compassionate
To try to hold one’s own needs and feelings, while also holding those of another
To debate or argue to resolve, rather than to win
To know that ALL feelings are okay
To know that NOT ALL expressions of feelings are okay
To put someone else’s needs above one’s own
To know when NOT to put someone else’s needs above one’s own
So how do you know when your need for respect is toxic or not? If your amygdala is leading you, that’s a sure sign. If you feel rage, shame, and an impulse to retaliate or “teach a lesson,” then you are in fight/flight. This is not wisdom, this is survival. It makes sense that you have these instincts, but it’s time to purge them out of your relationship with your child.
In my upbringing, I experienced both toxic and true respect. In the culture that I am creating with my kids, I’m working to model and offer only true respect. I don’t get it right all the time. It’s a commitment I’m making to generations past and future.
About us:
Ed Center, the founder of The Village Well, is a parenting coach and educator certified in the Triple P method. The Village Well is a community of parents in BIPOC families, focused on attaining more joy, calm, and meaning in family life. We coach parents to prioritize their own healing and wellness, deepen connections with their kids, and learn tools to support better behavior. Services include Parenting workshops, Parenting courses, and community events. Our support is culturally-grounded support and honors your unique family. Ready to stop yelling? Schedule a free consultation with one of our team members.