I'm fully aware that it may only be my perspective of the world that sees this spectrum as so, but I think there exists a grey area between nice and mean. And when you don't have anything nice to say, it is okay to say something that's just not mean. Something that is grey. Or even not say anything at all.
It's a well-accepted tradition that friends of family members are more than welcome to our gatherings at the lake. It's not uncommon to see entire families that you've never met before fishing from the pontoon boat, jumping off the zip-line and helping themselves to smoked pork sandwiches. This past weekend was no different.
Our immediate family - aunts, uncles and cousins - all were there, joined by some extended family and even some friends. One of those friends was a husband and wife duo with their eight-year-old daughter. The husband was a nice guy, the wife a bit quiet from what I could tell, and the daughter? She was an asshole. No that is not a typo. She was a complete and utter asshole. An ungrateful, ill-mannered, confrontation-seeking asshole.
She was rude, argumentative, unsupervised, and made-up like a two-cent hooker. That is not an exaggeration. The kid had enough lip-liner and lipstick on to polish up every whore on the Vegas Strip for a week. It didn't even come off during her two-hour long swim in the lake (during which her mother spent all of five minutes watching her - because we ARE free-babysitters, you know, but that's another story for another day)
And yes I do realize none of this is her fault. It is all a salute to an EPIC failure in parenting. I understand that.
What I do not understand is the predominant notion that we need to be, we MUST BE, nice to people, even if they are children, like these.
Because there is a grey area between nice and mean, no? There is being neutral. Not nice, but not downright mean either. There is ignoring. There is respectfully, but clearly communicating that no you do not want to play a game, or make a craft, or talk to, or be friends with a person. And none of that is nice, but it's not mean either. And it's okay. And it's what I teach my children.
Because lets face it, as much as it is not the child's fault she must learn. She must learn that being an asshole will get you nothing in the long-run of life. She must learn that arguing with the gracious hostess you were dumped on about how you can swim in forty-feet of water without a life jacket at the age of eight will get you out of the lake completely. That demanding marshmallows and more sparklers when others are asking for them nicely will get you placed swiftly at the back of the line. She must learn that walking into a band of kids who have known each others personalities, quirks, thoughts, ideas, families, and preferences since the day they were born on their turf and trying to stage a coup will only get you a spot on the outside looking in. And lets face it, we can't wait for the parental unit that made her that way to teach it. Because if they were going to, one would think they would have taken the opportunity at some point in the past eight years, no?
So I teach my children to utilize the grey area; the beautiful thing that it is. I teach them to be straight forward. Not to sugar-coat. If they don't want to be someones friend because that someone is mean? I teach them to say so. And they do. And it sometimes pisses other parents off. And you know what else, I don't care. Because their kids are assholes, and at least I didn't teach mine to say that. Because they know it, make no mistake. But they also know the grey area. And they use it. And here's the thing, if you don't like it, don't raise an asshole. Because someday, I'll also teach them when it is okay to be mean.
