Are children disrespectful to their elders?, By Xochiquetzali Aguirre

I am of Mexican decent but I am American. Since I am of Mexican decent I was raised with the idea that one cannot be disrespectful to their elders. I say this because since I live with a host mom (an elderly one) her grandchildren come to visit quiet often, she has nine grandchildren and five are sure to come every week to spend all day with her. and although I find that amazing and truly beautiful, the one thing that I don’t is the way they sometimes speak to her, coming from a Mexican American family I was taught that I must speak to my elders with all the respect in the world, but here I hear the children talk to their grandmas and I’m not sure if its normal or if these children are plain disrespectful.  Something I have noticed is that in general the Spaniards are more upfront with how they think, in America we would say that people have no filter, but I was raised to have a filter with the elders, these children don’t. For example the grandchildren and my host mom where playing a board game and a child called my host mom dumb. I was appalled, but my host mom didn’t care, I was in shock, How could they just bluntly say “Grandma you are dumb” I would never say that to anyone older than me. Later in the day my host mom accused one of them for making a mess and the grandchild responded with “you are crazy “in English it doesn’t sound so bad but in Spanish, I was like oh lord… is that acceptable here? I’ve also heard many children say things like this to their parents and grandparents in the metro. So it got me thinking is this acceptable here to say exactly what you want to any age range? Because in every situation I’ve never heard someone scold them for doing that.  I was really appalled when one of them told their grandma to shut up, because she was giving the youngest one clues on how to win, so they said “Grandma, shut up” Once again if I were to ever do that in America I would be scolded and personally it doesn’t feel right to say it. So I’m still wondering are these children disrespectful or is it okay to say things like that to your elders