Reply to Parents- nix these behaviors in your kids before they go to college

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As a parent, I’ve been giving feedback to my kids on their emails to teachers and other adults since middle school. Fully recognize my privilege but I think OP’s post is directed to the parents of privilege on DCUM. I agree more grace and education are needed for kids without those skills and that professors should provide that where needed (it’s crucial to social mobility!). But if you’re a parent on here and able, I agree you should be helping your middle or high schooler recognize where their tone isn’t appropriate in an email, where they are putting a burden on the teacher (or future boss!) to answer something easily found elsewhere, etc. It’s an important lifelong skill. And some kids will need more help with it than others.[/quote]
+1

We made our kids contact adults for themselves starting in MS via phone or email.  They hated doing it, but it's important for kids to learn to 1. advocate for themselves  and 2. know how to speak respectfully to another adult, and not like they are their friends (as in.. "yo".).

My DC is a freshman in college now, and I have read their emails to adults, and it is respectful.  At times, I've had to help them rewrite the email to make it more clear, and explain to them why that email that they wrote was not clear.

These are learned skills, believe it or not, like budgeting. I get emails at work that are not clear, and it drives me crazy.

As for the "read the syllabus", ITA.. I get that at work, too, and sometimes, I'm guilty of it. And yea, it's laziness, or "I don't have time (or want) to read through it; can you give me the summary".  This one person I used to work with was the absolute worst.  He was fired because he was just lazy. That was a symptom of his laziness.   When my kids would ask me something about some subject I would make them google it, and then we'd discuss.  When they were younger, and they'd ask me how to spell something, I'd ask them, "How do you think it's spelled"?  They'd have to first try to figure it out, and then I'd help them.

Funny story:  DC was working at a tutoring place when a little kid asked DC how to spell some word. DC said, "How do you think you spell it?", and DC realized my words were coming out of their mouths and laughed.

I recently saw some article that stated that Americans are less likely than a lot of other countries to value good manners. We value hard work and independence, but not manners.[/quote]

Unfortunately, technology moves fast.  My kid interned for a tech company and they communicate via slack and through some dischord channels and very little email.

If you didn't know it was a company and looked at the screen, you might think it was teenagers speaking to each other through a combination of words and emojis.[/quote]

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