Say please

[slippe]

I have a two and a half year old..

Some of our relatives have taken to asking her to ' say please ' before they give her water / a cookie / whatever it is.

They then refuse to give her whatever item it is, until she says 'please'. Except, she doesn't really say please. They end up dangling the item and refusing to give it to her. Eventually they sometimes give in. Sometimes she screams and cries. She's quite defiant.

I personally don't withhold items from her until she ' says please '. I remind her that we say please and then I remind her we say thank you. She sometimes complies, sometimes she doesn't.

I think manners are important, but I'm not really enjoying how my relatives are doing it.

Am I too lax or are they a bit ridiculous ?

What is SLT ?

Oh I get it ! Speech and language therapist.. thanks for your insight.

@sjl123 I am just reading your post again.

Yes I think her brain can't compute that if she does X, Y happens yet. She doesn't understand reward chards at all yet either for example. She is just starting to follow instructions a bit better now.

I don't think she gets it at all when they're dangling stuff in her face and asking her to say please, she will get said item. In fact, I've seen her uncle to it to her for several minutes and she was just crying. I don't think their tactic has ever made her actually say please.

So tell the relatives to stop it because it's not how you want your child to be treated .
Tell them this at the start of a visit so it doesn't crop up while your child is already upset.
If they won't stop you have to think about whether you will keep putting your child through this by having visits with these relatives.

I've seen her uncle to it to her for several minutes and she was just crying.

Please intervene before it comes to that stage. Be your dd's advocate and protector. And I'd go NC with the uncle.

This!

My children are 4 and 6 and despite being rather feral at times they have impeccable manners! Always say please, thank you, excuse, please may I..

I get very proud when people compliment their lovely manners especially my eldest son who is autistic.

Your relatives should not be offering and making her say please though. As long as she says thank you that would suffice perfectly well when being offered something!

I agree OP. I haven't RTFT so apologies if this point has already been made, but what annoys me the assumption that "teaching manners" can only be done one way - the enforced/dangling way.

Modelling good manners yourself, saying please/thank you when you hand things to her, gently reminding but not witholding... this is "teaching" and I've always resented the implication that I don't care about manners because I think that barking WHADDYASAY at toddlers is probably counterproductive.

I also think there's an aspect of being more bothered by what other people think then what's actually best for the child. ("No-one can say my DC aren't polite".)

She should be taught to say please etc but I wouldn’t make her ask for water, I’d just make sure she has it, same with food. Sweets, however, she wouldn’t get unless she said please.

While i do understand that waving something around in front of a child and refusing to give it to them until they say please or thank you is not the right way to go about things i also don't believe the more " progressive" approach parents take now days really works either. I am in my late 40's so my manners and that of the vast majority of my generation are good, having been raised to always say please and thank you. I have 4 dc age range between late 20's to 18. I would say that so many of my dc friends have extremely bad manners and awful social skills! I worked at my eldest dc school for a while when they were small and the lack of decent manners ( and parents who smiled indulgently instead of enforcing them) astounded me! People may not say it to your face but they most certainly do judge you if you don't have good manners or you don't raise your children with good manners!

Well they shouldn’t be dangling things in front of her, till she screams, that is weird and disruptive, and it is your job to discipline her not theirs.

However, at 2 and a a half she should be saying please and thank you as a matter of course. So you need to get on top of that.

So I would -

• tell them it’s fine to remind her, but please stop winding her up - you are working on it.

        work on it

This is just rose-tinted spectacles. Although I'm sure you and your friends are lovely, I can assure you people of your age are amongst the very rudest in society, just ask any retail worker.

And they would have been just as rude at school, you just don't remember because people only tend to remember the good bits.

Toddlers can be taught to say please and thank you before they understand what it means though, then it just becomes a habit.

But what's the point? What's the point of teaching them to say something if they don't know what it means? There's no value then is there?

YANBU. I don't think there's anything wrong with asking her to say please, but dangling things before her and not letting her have them until she says the word is bullying in a way, setting an example of rudeness rather than politeness, and not really teaching her the purpose of good manners, which is surely to make things pleasant for others, rather than to appease others into giving you something.

How dumb do you think kids are?

@SirCharlesRainier

You are being ageist and sloppy.

Saying that people in their late 40s are the rudest generation, ‘as any retail worker will tell you’ is untrue. Unless you’ve conducted a scientific survey of retail workers across the country, you can’t know this - you are purely talking about your personal experience and perhaps that of your friends / colleagues.

I used to work in retail and would say rudeness is pretty evenly spread, but both our personal experiences are purely anecdotal.

Generations have different ideas about manners. Children are now brought up differently. There are good and bad sides to this, and again it will vary from group to group. I don’t agree with the PP you were responding to that teens have bad social skills for example, but I think they are slower to learn good table manners (as eating has got much more casual, this isn’t surprising.)

Don’t make mad sweeping generalisations.

Because you are teaching them the habit of politeness that will be useful for life, at the age it’s easiest to teach it. You are also teaching them the first steps of interacting with other people, and the understanding that other people have needs as well as them.

It’s the same as teaching your primary school kids not to expect endless sugary snacks, or your secondary school kids to build an exercise habit. Lots of snacks and no exercise probably won’t make them overweight or stiff at that age, but bad habits will catch them later on.

But the dangling things in front of her is not on - knock that on the head right now, OP.

This is a strange question. But to answer it, I don't believe children are dumb. I do believe that there things they don't understand yet due to their developmental stage. I believe that is fact. Do you believe that babies are born with a full understanding of the world? I don't think there is any evidence to support that belief.

I disagree that it's easiest to teach something before they can really understand it. I think you'd actually have much greater success in explaining the importance of please and thank you to a slightly older child. Of course you should model it right from the start, but forcing it, withholding basic provisions until it is said is not in anyway necessary. There is no need to make an issue with a very young child.

I would expect a normally developing primary school child to have a basic understanding of nutrition and a normally developing secondary school child to have an understanding of why exercise is important.

@Luredbyapomegranate

Sloppy - meh. I'm commenting on MN not contributing to a peer-reviewed journal.
And ageist, I'd say that's a bit over the top too.

But if my observations do count as sloppy ageism, does saying the "vast majority" of one's own generation have good manners compared to the "extremely bad manners" of many teens and 20somethings count too?

Because you are teaching them the habit of politeness that will be useful for life, at the age it’s easiest to teach it. You are also teaching them the first steps of interacting with other people, and the understanding that other people have needs as well as them.

I don’t think saying please teaches them anything about other people’s needs. It’s just something they learn they should say if they want something - that makes the whole thing very much about themselves.
I also think the OPs situation demonstrates that it’s really not the easiest time to teach children this. They are still learning to form sentences. ‘Can I have a drink?’ is pretty good going for a two year old and is perfectly polite. If you continue to model the ‘please’ yourself when you ask for things they will quickly catch on when they are ready to make sense of it. I really don’t understand creating such conflict and contention over a pretty meaningless word.
‘Thank you’ means something as an expression of gratitude. And I think young children can understand that.
’Please’ means fuck all of you really think about it. It’s just short for ‘if you please’ but that doesn’t add anything to what you’re saying. And it certainly doesn’t automatically add ‘politeness’ or bring out good manners. As previous posters said, whining ‘drink pleeaaase’ isn’t polite at all, but children mistakenly think (and some adults according to this thread) that tacking please into the end of a sentence automatically makes it polite or that they are then entitled to what they want.
As I said upthread, it’s not used half so much in other countries and some languages don’t even have a specific word for please. Or they just use ‘thank you’ or ‘pardon’ as a substitute where necessary. Seems like a massive fuss over nothing.

Yes and the amount of times I've seen a child say or sign please but the adult have no idea what they want still, so the frustrations remain!

@Luredbyapomegranate but then the words are meaningless if they are just habit. By modelling the correct use of please and thank you a typically developing child will naturally copy and use it in the right situation when they are developmentally ready, rather than just being pressured to say a nonsense (to them) word to get their needs met. This way when they say their manners it's sincere which seems to be more important to people than the child's actual language skills.
This whole thread demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of how children's use and understanding of language develops. And more importantly how to encourage them to develop their language skills in an age appropriate way.

And actually I would say it's more about a development stage appropriate way. As all 2 year olds are not at the same level of development.