to expect people to get their children to vacate seats.

[noonar]

ok, am really not sure what the consensus will be here, so here goes...

dd goes to swimming lessons. there are about 35 children doing classes of different levels. the spectators' are is very hot and cramped. there is v little room for an adult to sit on the floor, and only about 25 seats.

last week, for some reason, there was a large number of siblings watching the lessons with their parents. many of these were occupying a seat. one mum had 2 sons with her. they took up 3 seat. also, a dad let his 2yo have a seat to herself.

meanwhile, i was struggling to keep tabs on my 3yo, while standing, as she edged close to the safety rail between us and poolside.

now, i know children are people too and should be treated with respect but do you think it was fair to allow children to occupy so many seats , in the circs?

On a bus I would stand. People have stood for my children and I am grateful that they have. But at a swimming pool I would bbe unable to answer due to my jaw hitting the floor.

Actually, that's not true.I would assume that the child had a problem that wasn't obvious and would probably stand. If I subsequently found out that wasn't the case I would be pissed off, but naturally would only simmer under the surface, being well-mannered myself

I never imagined I'd be such a Victorian parent lol. Not quite 'seen and not heard' but getting close...

There were a whole raft of unspoken rules when I growing up, like: opening doors for others, not speaking with your mouth full, not interrupting an adult if they are talking (unless an emergency), "May I leave the table?"...

Does anyone do any of these or have any others?

And imo yes, to giving up seats for others = good manners/courtesy and, as MB/Vanilla and so many others have said, it's about modelling good behaviour mostly to your child but others too. There is something very attractive about a person with innate good manners (very sexy in men!). Also it's very nice to be the recipient of such good manners, it certainly brightens my day.

Message withdrawn

See this is what I want to know, Heated.

How did the rules get to be unspoken? This is the position I would like to get to. I would so much rather all these rules didn't have to be tediously insisted upon. How did they do it?

I don't think anyone would be very happy (except maybe the kids!) if they sat on the floor on public transport, which is the main context in which I encounter seats' issues. I think once they hit teenagehood/twenties and are at their physical peak then fine, they should offer any seats they get to anyone they like, because standing won't be any trouble to them but for now, if they can sit down I will encourage them to do so. If someone needs to sit down of course we would get up, but that will be my call. They are perfectly polite children, and unlikely to suddenly turn into hooligans in a year or two just because I don't follow some strange belief that they somehow don't deserve to be comfortable.

What makes up "good manners" is not some sort of natural good anyway, it's culturally dependant, what is polite to you may not be to me. My grandparents were very formal and required very formal manners, that doesn't make them any better than the more informal style of my parents, just different.

"What makes up "good manners" is not some sort of natural good anyway, it's culturally dependant, what is polite to you may not be to me."

I agree that manners are culturally dependent. Do you not live in the UK, then Nooka?

They were never unspoken! That's just ridiculous. We all tell our children to do things all the time. In the past that's what happened too. They might not have been written and codified, but they were certainly spoken!

I'm a Londoner, but there are of course lots of different cultures in the UK too. Differentr generations, different classes, even different areas have different ways of living and expectations.

I completely agree about public transport nooka. More from a safety angle.

And the floor thing is not about them not deserving to be comfortable .

I suspect adults read far more into this than the children.

Can we stop using a notional 60-year-old lady with one leg as our guinea pig. I don't think you'll find a single poster on this thread who would not vacate a seat in those circs. AFAIK, the OP is an able-bodied mother of young children, which in my mind puts her mid-40s, max, probably younger. Evenhope, if you genuinely have trouble standing then that's fair enough - you don't need the seat because you're an adult, you need it because your back hurts. I'm late thirties and can stand for hours - for far longer than my four-year-old can.

Quattro, can you give me an eg of another form of manners that works only one way? I genuinely can't think of one.

Can I just say that a notional 60-year-old lady with one leg wouldn't work as a guinea pig unless she could squeak v convincingly. And even then you'd be bound to notice something was awry when she couldn't manage the spout-dripper water bottle.

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hunker

Imo children have to be "taught" these things again and again, just like you teach them to count or cook. It doesn't necessarily come naturally. Once it's been drummed in to them, it then becomes second nature. But I admit to being an old-fashioned dried-up old prune with regard to these matters.

To some people, it may seem like overkill to ask children to stand up for able-bodied adults, but to me it's just polite and a way of "training" them so that when they are on their own in a similar situation they will remember what to do. It may seem like we are not being respectful of them but children can be dreamy and easily distracted. Good manners need to be modelled and demonstrated again and again until they "get it".

I think this is really helpful - glad you are doing the drumming too - thought from Heated's post that there was a way to do it without drumming

By innate good manners I mean manners that are used effortlessly/ingrained - rather than conscious displays, as if to say look at me haven't I got lovely manners?!

For instance, I went out a few times with a man who would make a big production of opening doors with a flourish and says loudly 'after-you' and lots of other little things particularly when in public which I found vaguely embarrassing. Whilst for instance my father, now in his 70s, will automatically walk on the side of pavement nearest the road if with his wife, without conscious thought.

But now you've got me thinking as to whether manners are innate in the way you questioned Nooka. Certainly I have to explain and model them to my los which means a lot of manners are not innate. But I think you can be innately courteous, if it's in your character to be so. But not totally sure that's the same thing...(puzzled self now!)

Surely modeling is when you give your seat up, and your children see that as a good way to be? Otherwise it's just indoctrination really (as is a lot of what we do as parents, granted)

Just had a chat with Dh about it, and we came to the consensus that we would expect our children to give up a seat in the same instances we ourselves would - for the elderly, for the pregnant, for the disabled and even for children smaller than they are.

But Dh wouldn't give up his seat to another random bloke on the train, so we wouldn't require our 6 year old to do it either.

However, dh may well give up his seat to a woman, and there's a whole other can of fishbait right there...

See what happened last time is this:

Elderly lady walks in looking for a seat. I mutter in DS's ear. He says very loudly. "But why SHOULD I mummy?" to which I hiss "Because you should and you know you should and anyway the Nintendo DS is going to be removed if you don't" "But why shouldn't DD do it? It's her turn ..."

You get the picture

I think that some people can be more considerate than others because they are more aware of their feelings/have a higher degree of empathy. Whether that is an effect of nature or nurture as it were is I am sure debatable.

Well, another circumstance we may disagree on is when walking down the road with your children. Do you expect them to move out of other peoples' way?

As children we would always move out of the way of someone older, but fairly recently a parent walking towards me & holding hands with their child (about 6/7 years old I would have said), walked them into me as if they expected me to move out of their path. Fortunately I stopped so there wasn't much of a collision but was told to 'watch where I was going fgs'
(they clearly not having dusted off their copy of Debretts' that morning )
but is there some other 'rule' I am unaware of here?

I agree with Suebaroo (and her dh).

Quattro, your ds is making my point exactly imo - why should he move? Rather than you, for example, which achieves the same end result >>> little old lady gets a seat.

Why the underlying assumption that he moves - and if not you punish him by taking away his stuff If that's not about power, then I don't know what is.

I agree totally with Suebaroo/dh

Heated, yeah you should have moved imo, and if you didn't I'd have been the parent looking askance.

I ask (NB ask, not beat with a stick and force up chimneys) my children to stand on buses etc for the same reason that I ask them to lay the table and clear up their plates afterwards. I'm training thenm to have respect for the needs of others.

Just because I ask them to lay the table, it does't mean that they are second class citizens in regard to cutlery. I don'#t 'use ' them as sevents to clean my table.

I'm teaching them that within a comunity they should try to be useful, and that their desires don't always come before other people's

Same on the bus.

I see table laying (and other chores) as part of how the household works smoothly, and a fair sharing of duties, as dh and I will be getting the meal ready. It's a small contribution to the meal that we are all eating. Couldn't really be thought of in the servant category unless they were laying the tale for a meal they weren't going to be eating. So it's in the reciprocal category for me.

Walking along the road I would judge whether I thought the other people coming towards us were
a) aware that there was an incipient crash and
b) likely to make a diversionary move themselves

Then I would move and advise the children to move accordingly. I agree that people can be a little silly about this and hog the pavement (although cars can also do this in the road too). But I wouldn't expect the kids to get out of the way more than me, it would depend on the circumstances. Still they usually run ahead anyway and can be completely oblivious, so a fair amount of yelling/apologising can occur.