hi everyone
a very belated reply to this, as it had sat in my "drafts" for ages - possibly a bit late to be useful for the original questioner, but maybe useful for someone else another time :-)
My son said ¡°if I respect someone I treat them as my equal¡± an excellent perspective. However this was his explanation while I tried to discuss his impulsively telling his best friends mom (also radical unschooling) ¡°to shut the fuck up Sally¡± over the boys Skype call.
She understandably was angry and let the boys know and me.
I¡¯m looking for suggestions of ways to both explain & model the fine line between being equal and WHY this is not acceptable. Beyond it not being appropriate to speak to your friends mom like this. The WHY of this.
I think there's two parts to it: the power/equality framework, and the communication skills involved in not being ruder than you meant to be.
The equality part first:
Even though he's framing it as within the context of equality, any kind of non-playful "shut up" (even without the swearing) is arguably a claim to be one-up at that moment.
That is: Telling someone "shut up" is acting as though you have the right to decide whether the other person's allowed to speak.
If I were in Sally's position, I think I might be more angry about the "shut up" itself than the wording. (like "How dare you tell me to shut up in my own house! Who do you think you are?!")
You _can_ have equality in a relationship _overall_ without having it _in every moment_, e.g. where you're on a team and someone's in the team leader role. However, "shut up" in itself isn't usually an expression of equality.
Also, different families have different rules & customs, and equality includes it being OK for people to come up with their own ways of interacting. Maybe in your family, in similar circumstances, _you_ wouldn't have interrupted _his_ call (or whatever exactly it was that happened that he didn't like) - but that doesn't mean Sally was out of order to do what she did in _her_ household. People vary! Families vary.
In your position I'd be curious to know, did he think _she_ was wrong or rude (before his words), and if so, based on what conventions?
Supposing he did think she was wrong: well, it's not equality if he's taken the role of making up rules for what Sally can do in her own household, or what's OK between his friend and Sally.
But it's possible he doesn't realise he implicitly did that. He may not have fully taken in yet that _your_ family's customs aren't The Customs Which Everyone Else Must Follow Because They Are Right.
The rudeness-skills dimension:
Due to the equality/one-up implications, "shut up" is already rude without the swearing. But yeah, there's the swearing too, which to me isn't directly about equality but more about fine-tuning rudeness-calibration.
I think when children mis-pitch their rudeness level, it often has to do with how a phrase transfers over from one context to another.
I'm remembering when small-me was once very rude to a woman in a train, who was in the seats my mum had pre-booked, & was refusing to move when my mum explained.
_Complaining_ about her was intentional - but I had no idea until later _how_ rude my comment was, because I'd heard the exact same phrase repeated casually in the playground dozens of times! Oops.
I think it's likely that his map of the world is oversimplified along the lines of: "Sally's a friend, and _I'd_ get over it if a friend said that to me, so she shouldn't mind either".
in which case, an important bit of him understanding the territory is to realise: yeah that might be what you think _should_ happen, but it isn't what _did_ happen. She _did_ mind! Reality check :-)
It may not have occurred to him beforehand that an outburst which he himself genuinely wouldn't mind hearing, which feels minor to him (due to hearing it in contexts where it's treated as minor), can mean something much harsher and horribler to someone who doesn't use those words every day. It's possible (I wouldn't say definite) he'll feel sheepish/ashamed himself when he eventually realises how rude it landed, compared to what he intended.
One thing I would do as part of my own thinking-through is, I would try to come up with a hypothetical situation where it _would_ be OK to say that exact same thing, same tone, not banter.
Maybe in the future he'll be hanging out with a bunch of mates or work colleagues, and one of them says something horrible/ derogatory/ oppressive, like calling women "bitches" or saying the n-word. And suppose the first time it happened, your son had asked the other guy not to do it, maybe with a reason or two. But suppose the other guy won't let it go, and keeps doing it, more so now because he thinks it's funny to wind the others up.
In that context, an abrupt STFU could express a refusal to be pressured into going along with something harmful. It communicates that you don't think the offensiveness _is_ at all amusing and you're not going to stand for it.
So if it was me, then quite likely at some point in the conversation, I'd share that scenario as one where STFU could fit, and imply/suggest: maybe it would make sense to keep it in reserve for those kinds of possible situations in your future :-)
I think it's useful to share those kinds of possibilities, _partly_ just as info about the wider world, and also because it means he knows you're not saying "you were wrong to even think of those words, everyone who ever uses them is wrong". It's context. There's a time and a place for them which this was not.
There could also be situations where you and a friend are close enough to say superficially-"rude" things to each other in a bantering way, and both know that no offence is intended. I've definitely told one or two close friends "fuck off", in good humour - when they were teasing me, also in good humour, and we were in social circles where that word was in general use. I'm sure there are friendship groups where STFU can mean something similar, as well as (depending on tone) something more like "if you carry on along that line, I'm gonna be genuinely upset, leave it alone now so we don't ruin the moment".
That kind of mutually-understood bantering rudeness can be risky, mind you, because if you miss a social cue, you can genuinely upset people.
(Even if the two people involved are fine with it, a bystander might be concerned... or a third friend might start doing it, and it turns out that what felt OK coming from one person feels different coming from another.)
so yeah, in this incident you were encountering some quite profound stuff about how the same words can mean different things in different contexts & different relationships!
My 2p - thanks anonymised writer for the question, and thanks Sandra for sharing it :-)
Jennifer
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Sandra Dodd