"You don't demand respect; you earn it".

These were words I was taught many years ago by a woman who raised us among a revolving door of "father figures", most of whom were abusive and/or drunk, some of whom took up residence for little more than a week (I believe it would be a conservative estimate to say that in the approximately 5 years I spent with my mother growing up, I had at least 10 "stepfathers"), and who, ultimately proved that she had earned our respect by leaving us without transportation in a desert town where the nearest convenience store was 2 miles away and the nearest grocery store was 7 (I had made the unfortunate mistake of cosigning for a minivan when we arrived there; I needed a van and she had enough time on the job to get the credit; while my credit score was high enough and hers was not; she titled the van in her name alone despite the fact it was to be shared), and my wife 60 miles away in a Las Vegas hospital in labor. Yet, to the very point of leaving, she insisted that she had "earned" respect (in the last couple of days before she left, I found out some other shocking tidbits, as she had been working the whole time we were there to try to remove our children from us through several deceitful tactics).

While I agree with the original statement about earning respect, I have begun to wonder: what is "earning respect", and by whose definition?

My contention is that, if you have to TELL someone you've earned their respect, you most likely have not. Respect is usually given when one is treated with respect. In the case of my dear mother, whenever I was at work, she would use the occasion to humiliate my wife and treat the children as her personal servants, demanding an immaculately clean house (we were paying the bills, she quit her job 4 months after we arrived, ostensibly to start her own business, although she brought no income into the house), while contributing nothing to clean the house, criticizing my wife's cooking and child rearing philosophy on a daily basis, and attempting to undermine our parental authority (up to and including trying to bribe my 9 year old into dressing to go to her church and sneak out of the house...she was thwarted by the fact that our 9 year old DOES respect us and reported the incident). In short, it was living hell.

And yet, in all this, she continually insisted that she had EARNED respect.

Signing off,

Gideon MacLeish