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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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!

I was the same way when I was younger. My mom ended up springing for personal swim lessons for me (it was a stretch for our budget - didn't grow up UMC) because she felt like it was an important life skill. I loved my swim teacher and still remember those lessons fondly. Worth a try!

Learning to swim is not a choice. Just like seat belts are not a choice. If your child accidentally falls into a body of water he or she will not be wearing a life jacket and can die. Get private lessons until the child can swim.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think a lot of people are confusing UMC with "old money."

Not really. Everything posted on this thread is pretty basic.

I am laughing at the notion that you think that cotillion is "basic" for the UMC. It isn't.

PP here. I don't. But virtually everything else, yes, pretty basic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just had to google "Cotillion". Guess that pretty much means I grew up poor and probably still am

Don't worry, I also had to google it, and I am English landed gentry. Maybe this is a very specific to DC thing?

It's an old school thing in the US. Somewhat popular still in pockets on the east coast.

It's a Southern thing. It was a preteen rite of passage growing up in Charleston, SC.

No, I did it, and grew up in Washington, DC.

Yes, like I said - Southern.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Former equestrian here. Surprised by all the hate we are getting! Have ya'll ever been in a horse barn? You're taught to tack and muck out your own horse. It's a dirty endeavor most horse people I know are super down to earth and not afraid if getting a little dirty.

Thank you! I was thinking the same thing as I read people's replies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This a useful, fascinating, and somewhat depressing thread. I totally identify with the OP; we were small-town middle class and now have a gross income that puts us in the 1%-ish demographic. I feel like my entire life since college has been spent trying to crack the code of all the things that I didn't know that everyone else did. It's even more extreme for my husband, whose family lost everything in a revolution before they fled here. He looked in amazement at our kids when they were ordering in a restaurant one day and said "I didn't know how to do that until I was in my 20s." His family never had the money to go out to dinner.

Here's the thing though - we don't try that hard to make our kids fit into some social standard of UMC. We want them to be smart, kind, well-behaved, interested in the world, and have a powerful moral compass. Beyond that, well, if they want to learn to ski, great, but it's not a priority.

Maybe we're just lazy, but part of being a once penniless, clueless immigrant helped give my husband incredible disdain for peer pressure. He literally could care less if other people don't think he's good enough because he can't ski; he knows he is because he knows what it took to get where he is. I don't have that inner confidence at all. One of our kids takes after him in that department and I really wish that both did.

I don't think that's the point at all. No one cares. It's more like...wealthy people have the money to go skiing, so if you also have money, you might get invited to go skiing, so you might want to learn (or have your kids learn) so you can do this winter activity. That's all. No one is judging.

Someone posted upthread some basics--ice skating, swimming, tennis, golf. Where I grew up skiing was definitely on that list, along with waterskiing and sailing. All things people with money did (lots of people had a ski cabin or a lake cabin or a sailboat) and you might be asked to go along. I'm sure in other parts of the country it's other kinds of activities, like surfing or hunting.

I also agree about the "free" skills like being polite, table manners, knowing how to act in a restaurant/at a church service/at a formal party (like a wedding reception), etc. That's stuff you just have to model and reinforce.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just had to google "Cotillion". Guess that pretty much means I grew up poor and probably still am

Don't worry, I also had to google it, and I am English landed gentry. Maybe this is a very specific to DC thing?

It's an old school thing in the US. Somewhat popular still in pockets on the east coast.

It's a Southern thing. It was a preteen rite of passage growing up in Charleston, SC.

No, I did it, and grew up in Washington, DC.

Yes, like I said - Southern.

You consider DC, Southern? Do you also consider MD Southern just because they are below the Mason Dixon Line?

[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.

Um NOPE. Don't use always.

I am left handed and I use my left hand to hold the fork and my right to use the knife.
Some left handers use the left to do both...but I am semi-ambidextrous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just had to google "Cotillion". Guess that pretty much means I grew up poor and probably still am

Don't worry, I also had to google it, and I am English landed gentry. Maybe this is a very specific to DC thing?

It's an old school thing in the US. Somewhat popular still in pockets on the east coast.

It's a Southern thing. It was a preteen rite of passage growing up in Charleston, SC.

No, I did it, and grew up in Washington, DC.

Yes, like I said - Southern.

You consider DC, Southern? Do you also consider MD Southern just because they are below the Mason Dixon Line?

I'm not the PP you're responding to, but growing up in NY I definitely considered MD (and DC) "southern." I appreciate that people from Georgia would have a different perspective, but when your in NY yeah pretty much anything below Pennsylvania seems like the South. I have lived in DC for over a decade now, and my view is a little different. There are definitely some southern elements to DC, but it ain't Savannah.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just had to google "Cotillion". Guess that pretty much means I grew up poor and probably still am

Don't worry, I also had to google it, and I am English landed gentry. Maybe this is a very specific to DC thing?

It's an old school thing in the US. Somewhat popular still in pockets on the east coast.

It's a Southern thing. It was a preteen rite of passage growing up in Charleston, SC.

No, I did it, and grew up in Washington, DC.

Yes, like I said - Southern.

You consider DC, Southern? Do you also consider MD Southern just because they are below the Mason Dixon Line?

I'm not the PP you're responding to, but growing up in NY I definitely considered MD (and DC) "southern." I appreciate that people from Georgia would have a different perspective, but when your in NY yeah pretty much anything below Pennsylvania seems like the South. I have lived in DC for over a decade now, and my view is a little different. There are definitely some southern elements to DC, but it ain't Savannah.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Um NOPE. Don't use always.

I am left handed and I use my left hand to hold the fork and my right to use the knife.
Some left handers use the left to do both...but I am semi-ambidextrous.

Using your fork in your left hand to eat, if you're left handed, I can see that. But then wouldn't y use your knife in your left hand as well?

DH grumbles about the knife-in-right-hand-and-switching and just uses his knife with his left hand. That's bad manners, though. My MIL is great but she didn't do a great job with manners, and DH and his brothers look like they were raised by wolves, to judge by their table manners.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just had to google "Cotillion". Guess that pretty much means I grew up poor and probably still am

Don't worry, I also had to google it, and I am English landed gentry. Maybe this is a very specific to DC thing?

It's an old school thing in the US. Somewhat popular still in pockets on the east coast.

It's a Southern thing. It was a preteen rite of passage growing up in Charleston, SC.

It used to be more common in the Northeast, too. I guess the South tends to hang onto traditions longer.

My mom went to cotillion back in the day in Cleveland in the 40s. But i have no clue whether it survived to this day.

[Anonymous]

Another sport that fits this is rowing. That's not a sport you need to learn to socialize like downhill skiing but something your kids might want to try when they get to middle school and high school. In my experience, rowers tend to be well-educated professional types so rowing has given me great access to professional networks.

If your kids' school doesn't have a program, Capital Rowing Club has a Juniors program which is open to kids across the DMV. But I would only encourage them to do it if they are genuinely interested. You should row if you love it - not for the kind of people you might meet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just had to google "Cotillion". Guess that pretty much means I grew up poor and probably still am

Don't worry, I also had to google it, and I am English landed gentry. Maybe this is a very specific to DC thing?

It's an old school thing in the US. Somewhat popular still in pockets on the east coast.

It's a Southern thing. It was a preteen rite of passage growing up in Charleston, SC.

No, I did it, and grew up in Washington, DC.

Yes, like I said - Southern.

You consider DC, Southern? Do you also consider MD Southern just because they are below the Mason Dixon Line?

Yes. Below the Mason-Dixon line is in fact, Southern. Maryland had one of the largest populations of slaves in the Confederacy.

Southern.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just had to google "Cotillion". Guess that pretty much means I grew up poor and probably still am

Don't worry, I also had to google it, and I am English landed gentry. Maybe this is a very specific to DC thing?

It's an old school thing in the US. Somewhat popular still in pockets on the east coast.

It's a Southern thing. It was a preteen rite of passage growing up in Charleston, SC.

No, I did it, and grew up in Washington, DC.

Yes, like I said - Southern.

You consider DC, Southern? Do you also consider MD Southern just because they are below the Mason Dixon Line?

Yes. Below the Mason-Dixon line is in fact, Southern. Maryland had one of the largest populations of slaves in the Confederacy.

Southern.

I'm the NY guy above, so I agree that it's not crazy to consider MD southern. But I'm also a stickler for facts, so I need to correct you.

Maryland did not have "one of the largest populations of slaves in the Confederacy" for 2 reasons:
1. It wasn't in the Confederacy
2. According to the 1860 US Census, MD had 87k total slaves. Above MD on the list is 12 states -- from VA (490k) to Arkansas (111k). The only slave state that had fewer slaves than MD was Florida (62k), excluding a handful of generally non-slave states with a nominal # of slaves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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. :\

Ugh, stop denigrating yourself. These people are no better than you. Do you already have good manners? Are you kind? Do you teach those values to your children? Then you're fine.

I second this PP. Remember OP, she who has the gold makes the rules. You don't have to fit in somebody else's box. You can do it your way. I know an old money family that wears flip flops and shops at Costco. What, why? Because they like to.
Their kids also fence and have horses.
Be principled, considerate, kind and recognize the inherent worth of people (including yourself) and you will always be showing the spirit of manners even if you put your napkin on the table by accident. Then you can feel comfortable going anywhere and meeting anybody.