How Important are Manners?

[bejeezus]

I always instil in my DCs how important good manners are; always say please and thankyou; pardon not 'eh?'; wait your turn blah blah....alot of it involves, 'when you are at other peoples houses' rules i.e. dont ask for food (you can ask for a drink of water) eat what you are given/dont say 'yeuck, this is disgusting'...etc want to feel that my kids would be a pleasure to have as guests...

But it occured to me today that if a child is visiting our house, I dont care if they say please and thankyou as long as the tone and the intention is there ('please' and 'thankyou's can easily be delivered in a way which clearly shows the sentiment is false) and I would hate to think they would not ask me for food if they were hungry. I dont mind if they express what they think of my cooking...I quite enjoy their honesty and innocence in this way.

It also occured to me that 'manners' is not an attribute I look for as an adult in adult friends. In fact some of my friends are downright rude and I love 'em!

How important are manners?

Where does the Mn massive stand on unanswered texts?
I find this incredibly rude, dh says not to sweat, texts aren't real communication.

I dont get the P A thing either if somebody doesnt like you but are civil then how is that passive aggresive ? should a person make it clear they hate you by telling you to eff off is that a better way

They make me positively ERUPT with anger, Eyja

No but seriously. So rude not to reply. It's still someone talking to you!

scarlett it is very complicated innit?! its all social construct and everyone has different ideas...and some hugely different, as evidenced by the ladies PD experienced

Mrsjay the thread I saw about taht was most insistent that if you don't like someone then anything other than open hostility and possibly hurling nearby pot-plants was PA and symptomatic of a toxic personality

On that case I gotta be as PA and poisonous as they come. If anything, the more I loathe someone the politer I am

It depends on how long the texts are unanswered for or what the text is about if i send a chatty how are you text and dont hear back for a few days i dont sweat it , If i text 1 of my children to ask when or what time they will be in and the ignore me i go all twitchy

PD was just having a silly day-dream about what it would be like if all the men in our office stood up everytime I sat down!!

I have certainly sent passive aggressive thank you letters to people: but only to people who never write thank you letters when they really, really should do.
At the same time, it was polite...

I'm not hugely bothered by manners or the lack of them in children, but I do think if I don't teach them to my DS as a child he has no hope of learning them as an adult, IYSWIM. So, I don't think it's the end of the world if he doesn't say do or say certain things. But at the same time, if he isn't taught now, when will he learn the things that you need to be a pleasant guest, colleague and acquaintance?

I remember having a conversation with an older colleague about a very formal dinner we were going to have to go to (I was quite young) and I was completely confident about knives and forks, etc. She said 'go home and say thanks to your mother because you'll never be out of your depth. I had to learn all that stuff the hard way.' I basically want my DS to be pleasant to be around, and confident in most social situations when he grows up. So I teach him manners now, but don't sweat when he forgets.

thescarlettPimpernel im obviously very toxic as there is alot of people i dont like and im always nice to them but now i know i should be upfront and maybe launch something at them

well polite nice is taking it a bit far

i find it rude to find it rude that I dont reply to texts!

People just have to accept that other people dont use their mobile phones in teh same way- mine can spend days lost under the sofa for example

Eyja please notice my volcanically themed pun upthread ^^

Mrsjay no, keep me company in the 'waaaaay too British to betray any actual emotion' corner....

Texts asking a specific question
My MIL does this to me. We'll never be best mates I suppose!

I think manners are important as they are a tool to navigate many social situations and help grease the wheels of society however some people can become fixated on the trivia of manners like that stepmother in the papers last year.

She e-mailed a whole list of things about the financee that she considered ill-mannered, but really it was because she considered her to be from the wrong class

Ha ha ha Scarlett ERUPT
I missed that one, I thought you were as cross as me

But bejeezus would you not then send a text saying 'sorry, phone was lost in depths of sofa...The answer is X'? I would.

MrsPD's work sometimes brings her into contact with the Military and she was saying they always stand when she enters a room and only sit after she has seated herself. She thinks its quite quaint and makes her feel quite girlie-girlie as opposed to being some gender-less techie there to sort out their software problems

bakingaddict - re the stepmother story, the consensus at the time was it was a publicity stunt. The stepmother was trying to launch some Internet start up or something similar.

Well if I WERE cross I would be far too PA polite to betray it

thanks for LOLing at my lame joke

oh eyjaf yes I would! Hadnt thought of it like that.

It is such an easy thing to teach and it makes your DC more likeable.
You don't even have to teach, you just do it yourself everyday and they automatically copy. e.g. I wouldn't get off a bus without saying 'thank you' to the driver. When my DS first asked a shop assistant for some help I noticed that he said 'excuse me-please could you tell me........' and I hadn't discussed it-he just automatically did it. I don't go around saying 'say thank you' I just thank them if they do something for me. It becomes the norm.

If a kid genuinely forgets to say thank you or please as they're in the middle of something it doesn't matter too much. I tell my kids to always treat people the way they want to be treated themselves. I see manners as a sign of respectfulness towards other people. My kids do say thank you for christmas presents not because I insist on it but because they genuinely appreciate them. I have had a lady in a shop in the past saying how nice it is to hear a child with manners. Funnily enough though my kids like to hear manners and get cross if a friend hasn't said please or thank you. They also do not like the children who do not use manners and can find those kids rude.

exotic it does become the norm and it can take a while for it to instill in them sometimes but if we do then the dc will do and it just becomes automatic ,