Standards Vs Expectations

I am confused between standards vs expectations. The reason is because I watched Dr. Phil yesterday. Related to the Mother's statement on her daughters drug use. She said, she found a pipe in her daughters car and she expected her to experiment and try misc drugs.

Dr. Phil said... My my, how we've lowered our standards as parents.

Then went on to say, not all our kids experiment, etc.

It got me thinking... In my Polarity classes and thru therapy, I learned to get over my expectations of my daughter or other people. Because they are just that... MY Expectations. People, including my kids, husband, family, shouldn't have to try to live up my expectations. So I worked my butt of on that... let go of expecting my daughter to go to college. Let go of my expectation of my daughter staying in a program. Let it all go.. Let go that my husband will not be on the same recovery path as myself. You get the idea...

But...

When Dr. Phil says, how we have lowed our standards, I get confused. Again. Does standard mean, within the laws of society only? So it's illegal to do drugs, per society, so if our children experiment and we are ok with it, then we have lowered our standards? Or is it an expectation of ours that our children don't experiment with drugs? Not all that "experiment", go on to be addicts. So, I guess my confusion is directly related to having an addict child.

And some of my confusion is because, again, thru therapy, I learned at a certain age, we as parents, are no longer our child's biggest influence. Having said that, whose standards are they? The parents, or biggest influence on kids, their peers?

Take away addiction. Take my son for example, who is not an addict. Make it simple. We walked into 5 Guys for dinner one night. This girl that worked there, basically yelled across the restaurant to Andy... HI ANDY!! He barely looked up, claims he nodded to her, but I didn't see it. So our dinner conversation was about his reaction or lack of. I told him, I don't care who it is, but when someone acknowledges you like that, you should be polite and say hello. I felt your behavior was rude. He had his list of excuses as to why he acted the way he did. But, my expectation or standard of him is to be polite, no matter what. You don't have go do something with them or text them, but you can lift your head and say Hi. You never know, you may need a job some day and she is the doing the hiring.

Another simple example is the simple words: THANK YOU. I was a stay at home mom for a lot of years. That meant, I was the driver of many kids for many activities. I can tell you 90% of the kids do not say those 2 little words, Thank You. After the kid would get out of my car, I would say to my kids, why do I do this, if I am not even thanked. I , there's that word again, "expect" you to say Thank You to any mother that is driving you, feeding you, letting you in their home. I expect that. That is my standard, that's how I raised my kids. And I can very assured, tell you, both my kids say it to others now. Emily explained it to me one day. She said, Mom, not all kids are raised the same way we are. They do not know to say Thank You. So those words are not a standard or is it an expectation (?), in most families. I can also tell you, my kids both thanked me for driving their friends around or after I had their friends over to play and took them home, I heard Thank You from my kids. They know I am a stickler for that.. or that I expect it.. or that it is my standard.

So are our standards or expectations different when we had a child that is addicted?

What is the difference between standard and expectation?

I welcome feedback.
Hugs
Kelly