[quote=CA renter]The drive to emphasize a person’s “masculinity” by engaging in rude or offensive behavior is interesting. Some of the most confident and masculine men I’ve ever known were absolutely not trash-talkers; they were kind, considerate, well-spoken people who knew when to be considerate, and also knew when to get aggressive with bullies.
For whatever it’s worth, teach your son to keep the “yo mama” jokes to himself when around African-Americans. I attended a junior high school in L.A. where a majority of the students were bused in from downtown, so we had a student population that was majority African-American. Whenever a kid dared to say the words, “yo mama,” it was a sure bet that he was about to have his ass kicked from here to Mississippi. It was serious business and, oftentimes, multiple other kids would join in the beatings as other students would link arms and form concentric rings around the fights so that the administrators and teachers couldn’t intervene.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that your son might think he’s pretty smart, but if he utters the wrong words in front of the wrong people, it could easily get ugly.
The other kid was fully justified in telling his parents about your kid’s behavior. There are a whole lot of people in the world who would not be okay with these comments, even if they were made “in jest.”
It’s good that you’re concerned about it, and I know that you want to do the right by your kid. As someone already mentioned above, we no longer live in a society where the wife-beating asshole wins. Teach your son to socialize with all kinds of kids: older kids, younger kids, black, white, brown, rich, poor, smart, not-so-smart, etc., and teach him to make friends with girls, too! There is nothing worse than a grown man who’s never learned how to socialize with women (and vice-versa). It is a HUGE handicap in life.[/quote]
Last year when my son was on the 7th grade basketball team the 8th graders would walk into the school gym as his team was finishing up practice and the 8th graders would start barking at them and fake throwing the ball at their heads and many of the 7th graders would be genuinely terrified of the older class. When my son’s 7th graders would walk into the gym as the 6th graders were finishing up, many times one of the 6th graders would toss my son a ball and challenge him to “come get some”. The littler ones found my son approachable and I felt good about that.
Which was why I was terrified when I was confronted with what my son was saying to the other kid – I was terrified he had turned into one of last year’s eight-graders.
I don’t think I have to worry about him talking smack or making yo mamma jokes to a complete stranger or some stranger who refuses to swim -he seems to know the code. He keeps saying he thought the other kid was a friend, and they spent a whole season together on the same track team. Nevertheless,on the advice of many ,I instructed him to completely cool it with the off color stuff when at school.
He does socialize with all kinds, including girls. On reflection, I think overall he is an ok kid. But you know, I just realized that being a parent will never stop and just because someone young may be “amazing” now doesn’t guarantee they will be the same later on in life. The hopelessness of it all has sapped my mojo 🙂
