Talking Nicely to Each Other

I despise when people, whether kids or adults, don't talk nicely to each other. Is it too hard to be polite and kind? What makes this pet peeve of mine kind of funny, is that my mom was always on my case about "my tone of voice", as in "watch your tone of voice, young lady". I admitted this to G. yesterday after I asked her to talk nicely to me (instead of sounding like a 14 year old cranky teenager, she is only 8 after all). I wanted her to understand that it is something that all kids have to learn (and is a whole chapter in the "parent conversation book" that we all use at least some of the time). Do I always speak kindly to my kids, spouse and others? Unfortunately no. And that is clearly something, I need to work on along with my kids.

Why do we resort to snarkiness? Is it to add extra affect to our words when we don't think the other person is listening or about to respond the way we want them to? (Which makes it like a kind of armor to protect us). Do we use the "tone" to describe feelings we don't want to overtly express? (Like, Mom, you really bug me when you ask me to pick up my stuff from the living room, and I really don't want to do it). Does it display our true feelings of disdain for others and their feelings (I hope that's not it). Is it because it's easier and we're lazy and distracted?

I'm not sure why we do it, but as sure as we can put ourselves in the listeners shoes, or ears, we can understand why it's worth trying to be nicer, and why it's important for kids to learn to talk nicely to parents, siblings and friends. Otherwise who is going to want to listen to them at all?

Communicating while skating, especially while doing drills, is kind of tough. For one we have mouthguards in our mouths to protect our beautiful smiles. So "Doll on your outside", might sound more like "Do ah your outsi". The second is, while we always say there's no "sorry" in derby, we are all very concerned for each other, and worry that our bump or trip will hurt someone. It's a good skill to learn that we have to skate first and worry later. We all know that there is no malice involved, and we worry about the feelings of the person who bumped or tripped us: we don't want the bumper to feel too badly about the bumpee. I guess our moms and dads did teach us to speak nicely and care about others. We should all strive to do as well with our kids.