Teaching Kids to be Considerate

I pulled into the busy Target parking lot and found one of the only order pick-up spaces open at 5:15 on a Sunday evening during the holiday season. Let me explain the advancement in shopping convenience that is Target pick-up, just in case you’re not aware. A person can open the Target app and pick out and pay for ONLY what they actually need, rather than realizing they need to replace all the towels in the house or update all of the holiday dinnerware on a random Tuesday. This means a $40 trip for groceries can remain a $40 trip, rather than ballooning into a $200 trip, rendering budgets meaningless and causing you to push your kids’ haircut appointments back by two weeks. Just as an example. One then waits for the notification that their order is ready for pick-up, and they get in their vehicle and drive to the specified numbered parking spaces for pick-up orders. One then literally clicks “I’m here” in the app and fills in their space number, at which point an employee brings your stuff to your car. That’s it. Transaction over. It doesn’t even cost extra, and a person doesn’t need to leave their vehicle. Amazing.

I had pulled into my space and reported my number to the Target overlords, meaning I was stuck in that space until the transaction was completed, when a newish-looking Toyota pickup pulled into the space directly across from mine. As it was after 5pm in December, it was already dark out. He (I’m assuming gender here) did not turn off his headlights. I’ll let that sink in for a second. I, in my small-ish sedan, was eye-level with his LED bright-enough-to-see-from-space headlights, and he DID NOT turn them off. Now, again, this was Sunday evening during the holidays, so the wait for delivery was longer than usual, meaning I had to sit with the lights in my face for 7 or 8 minutes. I know, I know, I wasn’t in pain, and I was safe. I was uncomfortable and annoyed, but technically I was fine. I was just pissed and felt powerless because I had no idea if the asshole knew he was being an asshole or if he was just an inconsiderate jerk. I had no way of expressing my annoyance or changing the situation other than getting out of the car or vacating the parking space, neither of which I was willing to do. Either way, I found myself mumbling about how kids are raised and how easy it is to be considerate and not self-absorbed. 

But is it easy? I have no idea if we’re doing all that well with teaching our kids to be considerate. We try to teach them all kinds of things, instill good values - kindness, generosity, tolerance of differences, and so on. I’m extremely hopeful the messages are sticking. But they still don’t clean up after themselves unless directly instructed to do so, something I feel is the most basic show of consideration. If you make a mess, don’t expect someone else to clean it up. They still very obviously expect me or someone else to clean it up, or they legitimately don’t care if it ever gets cleaned up. Sometimes, if I tell the little one to put something away if he’s in the wrong mood or I use the wrong tone of voice, he wails about how he has to do EVERYTHING and how UNFAIR that is. For now, he gets the benefit of the doubt because he’s 5, not yet Toyota-truck-driving age, but his current frame of mind is that of a person who would leave on his headlights without realizing the effect. At some point, there will need to be a transition. When, exactly, does that happen?

Thinking back on my own childhood, I have vivid memories of being a kid, walking along at the mall or on a sidewalk in my own little world, and my sister grabbing me and pulling me out of the path of an on-coming adult. “Watch where you’re going, Laura,” motherly exasperation in her voice. I wasn’t purposefully rude. I was just clueless about how my actions affected those around me. That’s what inconsiderate really means, right? Not considering others as one moves through the world. I also remember, around age 8 or 9, calling someone’s idea stupid, and my mothers face turning a never-before-seen shade of magenta, so filled with embarrassment and rage was she. After we parted ways with the person, she laid into me with that terrifying almost-whisper about how “we must never call someone’s ideas stupid, and I’m SURPRISED at you,” never using the word “disappointed” though meaning it, because my actions that prompted the “surprised at you” were shockingly out of place in polite society. My mother was a masterful teacher of consideration, especially given I never even realized she was teaching it. 

This is all to say that girls have this pounded into them early on. There’s a reason I assumed the Toyota driver was a man, or more specifically a grown-ish boy. A girl would’ve been taught to consider her presence and whether she was inconveniencing anyone around her. If I’m giving Toyota guy the benefit of the doubt, which I didn’t want to do because I despised him and double-hated him for my lack of recourse, but if I was, I would acknowledge he probably didn’t think outside his own little truck-bubble. He was thinking about the delivery of his Doritos and vape refills (does Target sell vapes?), and wasn’t thinking at all about the woman 15 feet away who would be seeing spots for the next half hour because of him. It wasn’t that he was purposefully trying to be a jerk. He just didn’t think to care about any human being besides himself. Or another possibility: maybe he was getting the vapes for his girlfriend, a real person he would see on a regular basis and in whose comfort he has a vested interest. The idea of thinking of the experience of an unseen stranger is too much for some.

I will grant that it’s not the responsibility of the individual to ensure everyone else’s comfort. But when an individual is the perpetrator of one person’s discomfort through mere thoughtlessness, some behavior needs correcting. Unless this was a kid picking up for his mom, this was a grown-ass adult who couldn’t be bothered to turn off his headlights. Who failed you, my son? Who didn’t take the time to gently correct you when you were about to bump into someone at the grocery store or remind you to throw away the carton if you drank the last of the orange juice? And why haven’t you taken the responsibility upon yourself now that you’re grown?