It’s happened pleasantly once more. Complete strangers come up to me and say, “Wow. You’ve got some very well behaved kids here. You’re doing a teriffic job.  I rarely ever see kids these days that well behaved.”

    My first instinct is to say, ‘Thanks, I beat them.’ But you never know with strangers whether or not they have a sense of humor or not. And a dark sense of humor at that. So, in general, I just say thanks. But it does get me wondering---just how badly behaved are today’s youngsters that perfect strangers are compelled to compliment me on my well behaved kids like they’ve found a four leaf clover in a meadow of threes?

    A conductor on this very Amtrak train said. “I love coming into this car where your kids are. The other car is crazy.”  In the nineties when my Anglo aunts were raising kids they often attributed bad behavior to food additives and dyes and natural occurrences like earthquakes that took their kids years to get over. My Mexican aunts attributed bad behavior to a lack of shame and spanking (for the record, they had the better behaved kids).

    This brings me to the big question--is it the kids or is it the parents?

    In all likelihood today’s kids are being raised by my generation and younger (I readily admit to being catergorized as an “older” mother at the ripe old age of 39 with preschooler/kindergartener). Is there something about X, Y and Millenium generations that just yield brats and meltdowns in public? Is it a cultural thing?Is it harder to teach children manners and politeness when you spent your youth pushing to the front of the pit so you didn’t have to stand by the speaker?

    A student of mine, 18, in a composition class was joining in on a discussion of giving back to one’s community. She remarked in a way I did not expect but yet, should have expected. A fellow student told us about her extracurricular activities----working in her community, with kids, elders, everything you’d want out of an 18 year old. She did hard stuff. She fed people. She went outside that ‘comfort zone.’ The other student remarked, “That’s great. I’ve always been told to make myself happy. I never thought about making other people happy. I should look into that.” At first I thought she was being sarcastic (after all this is Gen X, Y, Milenium). But then I realized she was serious. She really was raised to feel good about herself and to make herself happy. In her world view, others were an after thought. I got to thinking maybe others were an after thought for the children and parents of Car 2 on the Amtrak Coastal Starlight as well.

    Two weeks my kids have been traveling with me and its been two weeks were other than a few specific incidents where my caffeine intake had waned, we all got along fine and no one annoyed anyone. Here are my thoughts as to why that was and what perhaps one might want to implement.

    1) When my kids are being annoying? I tell them they are being annoying. Period. This lets them know that climbing on the walls in restaurants isn’t acceptable behavior, nor is interrupting grown ups when they are talking (unless of course it is someone I’m trying to get away from and then it’s totally okay).

    2) Explaining consequences. Not that I want my children’s imaginations squelched but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with explaining ‘the reason I screamed in the middle of the intersection when you darted out onto Pico Boulevard to fetch your ball is because I thought you’d be dead and we’d never see you again. You don’t hold my hand in a cross walk, you could very well die. They have sort of a concept of death brought to them by cancer of various friends’ loved ones and the hunting skills of our cats. They don’t want to wind up a headless mole. Powerful visual that one.

    3)    Don’t take your kids out in public if they aren’t ready for primetime. Just the opposite of NIKE---just don’t do it. Shopping alone is more fun and cheaper anyhow.

    4)    Kill Your TV. When my kids visit other people’s houses they come back with smartass sitcom quips every time that take days to deprogram. I stick to the ratings on movies. Given that a PG-13 is really a well lobbied R movie, those are out of the running for kids I’m around too. I stick with G and only G’s where English grammar has a fighting chance. No slang, and no characters who ‘know more’ than the parents and thus don’t really respect their parents. Enough--this attitude is far more detrimental to the American child’s psyche than sex or violence.

    5) Politeness Enforcement. Be queen of the please and thank you. They’ll follow by example and make everyone’s great grandmother you know smile with ease and happiness.

    6) Dress better. I will argue till the cows come home and pigs fly like a conservative old nun in full habit that good grooming yields better behavior. When did we become a society of people walking around in pajama pants and sweats? India and China have every right to take every last one of our jobs from our young people until we start instructing them to go out in public like they mean to interact respectably.  What hope is there for the preschooler in my daughter’s class that regularly comes to school wearing a t-shirt that says ‘my future wife is a Hooter’s waitress?’

    7) Do not buy your child their own: cell phone, iPod, TV, Wii, Xbox, DVD player, etc. Make electronics a treat not a given. Sure, this means your kids will be freaks--but they’ll be polite, engaging freaks.  Whenever my kids get in give me electronics mode I say, hey--wanna try and build your own robot in the garage? That actually works....or we go lo-fi and explore the pre information era of super 8 cameras, reel to reel, and other older tech stuff for fun.

    8) Tell them so. I tell them when I’m unhappy with them. It’s kind of hard to say I love you but I hate what you did or are doing but it is necessary.  My kids don’t have meltdowns because they aren’t allowed. We banned them almost at birth.

    9) Hug Them. We are always hugging on our kids and vice versa. They like people. They talk to them. They give them hugs. A friend of mine at the beginning or trip who is around many kids said that our kids aren’t fearful.  They don’t meltdown when they have to interact with adults. They like adults.

    Maybe it’s just a fluke. Maybe I got lucky. But I have a hunch that it isn’t all about luck--it’s often about choices.