Teach Me to Raise an "Upper-Middle Class" Child

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it's important to point out that a lot of the parenting stuff mentioned needs to be learned, regardless of how you grew up. I was raised UMC and have had plenty of conversations with other UMC parents over the years that made it clear that most of us wing it on occasion. Life has changed a lot since I was a kid and there are a lot of current UMC standards and expectations that did not exist when I was growing up.

I think part of the difference is that since you grew up UMC, you have the baseline knowledge and experience to know that 1) the particular thing that you're winging is not something that everyone UMC just knows and would think odd that you didn't know, and 2) you have enough knowledge of the fundamentals that you're not going to make too big a gaffe by winging it. When you don't have that upbringing, you might be winging the same thing as your UMC friend in exactly the same way and by all appearances "pass," but the lack of that background knowledge makes you a lot more insecure about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tons of UMC don't care about the butter. I feel like you people don't know what UMC means.

UMC means in the top 33% and well educated.

Yes, and that includes lots of people who don't care about the butter.

It's not about the butter itself, it's about being put into situations that are unfamiliar to you and worrying about whether you're about to make a fool out of yourself with some faux pas that those around you might regard as low class. I'm the person who posted about having to figure out the butter thing during client lunches in their first professional job. It wasn't just the butter, the butter was one of many things where I saw people doing it differently from how we'd done them when I was growing up, and not knowing if it was personal preference on the other person's part or an etiquette rule that I wasn't aware of (and then trying to figure out the rule on the fly). Seeing someone post a comment that suggested what I thought I'd figured out as the correct way of handling the butter might have been wrong threw me a bit because that was one I really thought I'd figured out and had stopped worrying about. The old insecurity runs deep.

[Anonymous]

Don't salt or pepper your food until you've tasted it.

[Anonymous]

If you're truly elite, you'll know that you shouldn't be focusing on yourself but rather on others. Look clean and presentable, but otherwise use your energy to show love and compassion to every one and every thing. I guarantee people will look up to you and respect you, and your kids, if you're like this, no matter what other skill/experiences/money you have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I never understood why it's so important to not butter your whole piece of bread. If it's s roll, I can see how that would look odd but if it's a sliced style of bread, why not?
Use the communal knife to put it on your plate, use your knife to spread it on the bread seems like an okay way to do it.


-immigrant

If you butter the whole slice of bread at once, it is almost impossible to eat without getting butter all around your mouth unless you're baring your teeth when you bite. If you tear off a bit and then butter it, the last part that goes in your mouth is the unbuttered portion that you were holding and your face stays butter-free.

I'm completely able to eat bread with butter on it without getting butter all over my mouth. Same with bread that has jam on it.

I do bite with my teeth (how else does one bite) but not with my lips completely splayed baring all of my teeth. I also don't go out of my way to make sure not a peek of tooth is revealed. Is this a tradition that originated in England? I know they tended to have horrible teeth way back when, so maybe it that's why it became habit to be so overly careful with the butter on the bread?

Interesting nonetheless!

[Anonymous]

As Bernie Sanders once said, "Enough about your damn butter!"

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I find the butter discussion fascinating! I had no idea that you are not supposed to butter your whole piece of bread

Really? You are either young (under 35) or not raised UMC.

I'm am 45 and raised UMC and never heard about the butter thing. My parents and I also don't have a stick up my butt so.....

Do what you want with your butter! YOLO.

Having good manners means a person is uptight?

Uptight = Spending any length of time thinking about how anyone butters their bread

+1 pat of butter

Our networth is $10M and I take a pat of butter or a scoop of butter and place it on my plate. Sometimes I butter the entire slice of bread at once and bite off one piece at a time. Other times I tear a bite size piece, butter it and then eat it.

It all depends on my mood and kind of bread.

[Anonymous]

OP here. The butter aside is hilarious...and long-lived. Every time it pops back up, I laugh.

Thank you all for your thoughtful replies. It sounds like manners are a must. Volunteering/kindness and culture are close seconds.

These were the last things I expected to hear, but it makes sense. Of course, being lower class, socially, I guess that's no surprise.

To the PPs telling me to stay true to myself, well, I am. I already feel like an impostor most of the time, I don't have to add feeling fake to the mix. I am heavy, dress badly, unmanicured, and yet I'm quite happy with myself. I've provided a better life for my kids and parents than we deserve. I don't want to spend my time literally reshaping myself. I have a vegetable garden to tend to!

For my kids, though, I want them to have it all. I want them to feel and be authentic. I'm truly grateful to have all of your advice.

Now, I guess the challenge to figure out how to implement it. Manners are a relentless pursuit. You have to have them all the freaking time. F**k me. :\

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel you, OP. I grew up extremely working class (to put it kindly), and even after years of living UMC, I feel like there's a code I've yet to crack and there are constantly things that I didn't grow up with and have never really thought about in terms of how I'm parenting my kids.

For instance, on a recent thread about weight, someone was talking about having the advantage of growing up with a mother who worked out regularly, bought fresh food and made from-scratch healthy meals as part of the reason it was easier for her to stay thin -- those habits had been ingrained in her from an early age and weren't a struggle to develop as an adult. My mother was a single parent to two children, she worked full time and was barely able to make ends meet, our meals were whatever was on sale at the grocery store (things like hamburger helper, ramen and rice-a-roni were frequently on sale for 19 cents a box, so we ate a lot of that) and fresh produce was usually too expensive, and there was no money for a gym membership or exercise equipment, nor was their childcare for her to even just go for a speed walk around the neighborhood without two small kids following so she never really exercised. I know about healthy nutrition and the benefits of exercise, but I'd never really thought about the extent to which I was impacting my kids' future health in terms of what habits they would take into their futures. I figured that if I made sure there were protein and veggies on their plates they were getting good food and hadn't thought before about how prioritizing exercise in my schedule (because I have the luxury of doing that in a way my mother never had) would teach my kids about prioritizing exercise. It's not that people in lower classes can't know and teach these things, but the reality is that they tend to be very tied to class status. Obviously I don't want my kids to struggle the way I have, so I need to take some of my resources and improve my lifestyle for them.

I don't have a whole lot of advice for how to get over it. I tend to follow stuff on DCUM a lot because I feel like, for all the negative attitude, I have actually learned a lot about the "right" way to be from this place. I do a lot of asking casual questions to figure out what I should be doing (e.g., once I realized that camp registration starts in January, I started asking other parents in January, "So, what camps are you looking at for the summer?" Not to copy what they're doing, but to help figure out what's out there and what's typical). If we're at someone's house, I try to take quiet notice of what's in their pantries or what kinds of toys are around. I'm not snooping, just trying to pick up cues. It's hard to feel like I fit in.

OP here. I totally feel you! I'm also quietly stalking neighbors' homes. Strategy games from Germany...I never would have guessed...

Ditto on the cheap food. I used to watch cooking shows on PBS dreaming of real food. That said, loved my Hamburger Helper Beef Stroganoff. And Vienna sausage straight from the can.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you're truly elite, you'll know that you shouldn't be focusing on yourself but rather on others. Look clean and presentable, but otherwise use your energy to show love and compassion to every one and every thing. I guarantee people will look up to you and respect you, and your kids, if you're like this, no matter what other skill/experiences/money you have.

Thread can end here. PP's got it figured out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I find the butter discussion fascinating! I had no idea that you are not supposed to butter your whole piece of bread

Really? You are either young (under 35) or not raised UMC.

I'm am 45 and raised UMC and never heard about the butter thing. My parents and I also don't have a stick up my butt so.....

Do what you want with your butter! YOLO.

Having good manners means a person is uptight?

Uptight = Spending any length of time thinking about how anyone butters their bread

+1 pat of butter

Our networth is $10M and I take a pat of butter or a scoop of butter and place it on my plate. Sometimes I butter the entire slice of bread at once and bite off one piece at a time. Other times I tear a bite size piece, butter it and then eat it.

It all depends on my mood and kind of bread.

I butter the whole thing then I tear it into bite size pieces as I eat it. I've never thought about this or why I do it until now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op unlike the previous poster I will try to be helpful. My mom was like you and I am a product of grandparents who were homeless,?drug addicted, teen moms, etc.

My dad did very well in business and my family is now wealthy. My mom tried to play the game and was frustrated all my youth and probably still is.

Things she did--she got etiquette books and treated them like the Bible. She paid attention to other parents in the social circle she found herself in all the time. Asked open-ended questions like what activities is your DD doing? And pretended like she knew what was going on. "Oh, your DD is in tennis? We're considering it. I've been too busy to get her registered" The next week I'd be signed up for tennis. Of course she'd never thought of tennis. Same with piano.

Healthy food became important in these circles. She stopped cooking rice a roni at some point and moved to organics and steamed vegetables.

My advice is be yourself. This is a game you can't win and will kill yourself if you try to play. Just enjoy your kids and give them love and what you think they need.

Does anyone have a good modern etiquette book they would recommend? I don't need to know how to write a proper long-form rsvp to a wedding invitation, but there's probably stuff I'm missing.

Not sure about "Modern," because she would reject that descriptor, but I still think Miss Manners is the best.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Table manners! I still get surprised eating at a business meeting and someone is holding their knife like they plan to stab someone.

As for switching hands to eat the meat/food you cut, that can go either way -- it's Continental vs American style and both are acceptable here. Americans always use their right hand with the fork to eat.

As for the butter, you put a pat of butter on your bread plate with the butter dish knife. Then you use your own knife to butter a bit of bread at a time. You don't make a butter sandwich out of it -- we're not at Subway!

Remember to put your napkin on the chair not table when getting up to use the restroom/etc, if you're not done eating.

My mother was a high government official in England and learned all kinds of stuff like how to toast the Queen as part of her training. Some of it rubbed off on me.

Ma'am like jam. Starts at 2:30.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjkHpJuifg4

[Anonymous]

I don't understand why you are so concerned with trying to fit in with UMC people? Would you pretend to be LeBron James if you lived in the inner city? JUST BE YOURSELF, same goes for your child.

[Anonymous]

But what if your kid doesn't WANT to learn to swim? My kid is completely content using a PFD. I have paid and paid for swim lessons... for her not to participate!

We do all the other "UMC" things mentioned, but seriously my kid will not learn how to swim!