To think that good manners in children are overrated?

[mrsruffallo]

Manners seem so important to some parents. Personally, I don't believe in forcing them to say sorry, please, thank you, hello, goodbye etc.
If it is a genuine emotion they say it naturally anyway
AIBU?

oinky woinky I don't think you can extrapolate to that extent. If you said your son had LD, then most if not all people here would understand.

Oinky - Of course people should be more understanding of say, a child in your situation and I wouldn't presume otherwise, although that's a fair point one wouldn't necessarily know if a child had SN or autism in passing.

Re: Germany and my original point, she is from Munich so maybe it's just there? I really don't know, so I'll ask her next time I speak to her!

I think that if you are not actively promoting good manners in your children and demonstrating them yourself this will impact on how much people will want to socialise with both you and them! To some extent lack of manners in children will just be blamed on the parents rather than the child

I hate it when adults don't say thank you etc - and how can you have a decent society without manners?

Good Manners are under-rated in my view rather than over-rated!

Manners cost nothing and mean everything. Absolutely amazed at this thread, haven't read all of it because its just ridiculous!!!

I believe very strongly in bringing your child up with manners. My SiL's kids aren't rude as such but they don't routinely say please or thank you and it does annoy me, but then I can see where they get it from. Kids aren't born mannerless, they are raised that way. I see it a lot when I'm out and about too.

On the flipside when DS was born, the MiL was on at me 50 times a day to send thank you cards to people that had sent gifts i.e. her family - hubby's aunts etc. I'm talking when DS was about a week old so I was kind of busy at the time . I remember sitting here having had 2 hours sleep writing thank you cards to people I'd never met, I was so pissed off I did it in my worst handwriting. Childish I know

I think the biggest complaint people have about lack of manners is for those kids that tend to push and shove their way to the front of queues, knock little ones over without saying sorry, snatch things when offered and don't ever say please and thank you.

I don't judge kids based on the please/thank you thing alone, but it's a good indicator of how a child will interact with me or my family. And I do get a bit judgey pants if a child is unpleasant, pushy and doesn't say please and thank you.

Manners are a big thing and I'm not even vaguely embarrassed about making a big deal of it in my house. It's part of a bigger agenda that's called respect for others. And when I say I bully my child into, I mean that she has had it drummed into her from a very early age that she has to consider others...not before herself, necessarily, though there are times when others should come first like if they're smaller or if they're guests in our house. Is that not just common sense?

There are some things we have to teach our kids that aren't easy for them to take on board. Saying please and thank you is the least of them, but it's a foundation for other skills like respecting their teachers, complying with rules, being fair. To some people these are not just things you choose to do, they're the very corner stone of civilisation. Hence the expression that people are being civil, I guess?

I want my child to be socially adept, to be integrated easily into school and work, to be a likeable person. If I lay the law down on that am I really wrong???

I think the evidence of my lovely 8 year old dd, who I'd be proud to take anywhere and who is a delight to old ladies across the land, proves that I'm not

Squilly, I absolutely agree with you. I use the SiL's children again as an example. When I go round there, I might ask where they are and the SiL will say that they are on xbox or something in their rooms and that will be it. When I was a child and we had a visitor, no matter how much you knew them, I was always made to come downstairs and say hello. I thought it was silly back then, but I'd do exactly the same with my child.

Bad manners come from lack of awareness of people around you, and a lack of awareness of their feelings. In a word: ignorance.

thumbwitch, it is not always possible/desirable to start explaining to others about your child's difficulties although I agree that most people would be sympathetic if they knew. My son tends to push in queues, knock people out of the way and grab things - although he is learning slowly and in a different way.

To be honest, I am learning to care less about the reactions of other people, whether they are aware of my son's disability or not, but I just wanted to make the point that all may not be what you think, in situations where a child is being supposedly rude.

Oinkywoinky, I really feel for you and I know a little of what you're feeling as my friends lad is autistic and sometimes just comes across as being rude iykwim. She despairs of the fact that if he were in a wheelchair, or had a visible condition people would make allowances, but because he appears the same as her other kids, he's judged without compassion and understanding. I think it's one of the hardest things she's had to deal with in terms of her son growing up...the fact that he's been so harshly judged.

Since getting to know said friend I do stop myself jumping to the judgeypants conclusion of little sod, when someone pushes or shoves, or screams in the supermarket or has a dummy in past a certain age because you don't know what special needs that child might have and it's wrong to jump to conclusions. And I know that some kids who might appear to be rude, etc, may be autistic or have learning disabilities.

There are, however, kids that I know...I know the mums and I know them from school, and they're just plain rude! And THAT to me is just unacceptable.

I would hope, Oinkywoinky that by coming on forums like this people will be less judgemental about kids they don't know socially. It's one of the things I like most about mumsnet...the exposure to other parents in other circumstances and the chance to see the other side of the coin.

Message withdrawn

Pitchounette - It's a good point that saying sorry without meaning it means nothing, but I disagree that saying sorry will come naturally to children. It's something kids have to learn. And if you don't provide them with clear guidance on when they should say it, whilst they're young, they probably would never say it at all, which is totally wrong.

DD does occasionally say sorry and not mean it, like on the odd occasion when she answers back and I point out that she's being unkind, but that too is part of the learning process.

If such things as manners and good behaviour were natural, we'd have lots of people in society behaving in accordance with that. It's not natural. It's taught. And as soon as parents take it off their agenda, you may as well kiss respectable society goodbye.

'My mother always taught me that if you are nice to people it is much more difficult for them to be rude back. I am always to polite to people doing me a service and I have seen that I get better treatment than those who are rude.'

It certainly does! When I was in some of my jobs in student days the rude people got the bare minimum of service but I would really put myself out for the polite people.

Very occasionally we get a family sized portion of chips from the chippy. My Ds goes in for them and he's quite adept at being so lovely, they give him a big portion and he knows it too now! he's pleasant and chatty and even tells the lady that their chips are nicer than our local one! Manners can get you more chips!

Aw, twopeople, that's cute! Poor girl. It's so funny how kids think.

Yes, OP, I think YABVU. Personally, I don't really like the company of rude children. That sounds awful, I guess, but...in the decade I've worked with young children the ones who always get to have their own way, throw constant fits, and are not polite are almost always the ones who end up with no friends. When I was preg and thinking about what I wanted to really instill in DS, manners were at the top of the list. He always says please and thank you and now we're working on "excuse me" and "no thank you" instead of just "NO!" (He's not quite two yet, so we're getting there! )

I promise if you teach your kids basic manners they'll be all the better for it!

Manners always help. If you are polite when complaining about something/asking for a refund - whatever - you are far more likely to get a good result if you are pleasant. It does make me feel ancient but do notice that many people now just don't think to say please and thank you. When buying a bus ticket for example they would just say "80p" and bang their money down then take the ticket. No please or thank you involved. However it is still common in the North East to say "thank you" to the driver when you get off the bus which must be very old fashioned. Does this happen elsewhere? Think that manners just means treating people with respect. Remember when my DH who is a cameraman was doing some filming at our house with a lady who was VERY heavily pierced. When she knocked at the door I got a bit of a shock but said hello, welcomed her in politely and said to DH "your lady has arrived". Poor woman nearly cried - she said she hadn't been called a lady for as long as she could remember! Our DSs, have always been polite and can talk to people although I despair of the way they answer the phone.

I was gob smacked when a friend of mine said she found it hard to teach her son to say thank you because saying thank you does not come naturally these days!!! I believe that children should see adults being polite and kind to each other - expecting to get things and not be grateful or to show gratitude would be a sad sight.It teaches them if you like receiving gifts,attention, food, praise, whatever you have to say thank you otherwise that person wont think you liked it, be offended and there may be no next time......so thats my logic!! YABU. next stop is teaching them to give up seats on the bus for old people and pregnant ladies....its all about being a part of society and leading by example....

Completely agree. Children become adults and therefore, yes, they need to learn manners. It is clear that a lot adults either have no manners or have completely forgotten them - and those are the people that try to run me over at zebra crossings, cut me up on the motorway, don't give way to pushchairs, and a hundred other rude and disrespectful things. Everyone needs manners - let's start with our kids!!!

Don't even get me started on "respect". I was shocked when a friend's husband said that respect must be earned before he or his children would treat another person respectfully. What happened to treating each other with respect just as a matter of course because we are all human beings? aghhhhhhhhhhhh! (clearly this husband misunderstood admiration and respect, the first being something that is earned through a person actions/deeds, and respect being something we should naturally extend to each others in all of our interactions)

Obviously I'm just old fashioned!

i think manners are really important. my ds is 5 months but when he sneezes i say 'excuse me' in a chirpy manner to him. i want him to be familiar with please and thank you etc, whether he uses it is his choice as he gets older but i want him to be polite. children must learn to use cutlery properly. i taught at a posh girls sch and on a residential had girls eating pudding with their hands in the bowl, totally ignoring the spoons and just shovelling it in their mouth.

If you don't instill good manners in your children early on, you are not doing them any favours in later life. They need to get in to the habit of good manners now.

Tied up in good manners are etiquette, respect and how to behave appropriately in social situations.

No-one likes anyone who is rude, or ill-mannered, child or adult.

Three times today I stopped and waited for three people to pass, three times I didn't get a thank you.

I wanted to kick them all in the arse.

IMO its a lot of what is wrong with the World today

'...in the decade I've worked with young children the ones who always get to have their own way, throw constant fits, and are not polite are almost always the ones who end up with no friends.'

I see the same, over and over again. The best thing you can do for your DCs is help them be well mannered-it makes life so much smoother for them and is so simple.

Just playing Devil's Advocate (cos actually I agree that being able to express thanks and remorse are very important), but perhaps 'Please' is just a word that we add to requests, a mere convention...does it really mean anything??

In some languages, despite there being a word or phrase for please, people just don't expect to say it, or hear it all the time. So in those languages it isn't seen as being rude if it isn't used.

If we ask for something nicely enough, in an appropriate tone, I don't think adding 'Please' makes any difference to the politeness. Try it!

It is a shortening of 'if you please'. It distinguishes a request from an order.

oinky, I am sorry, after I posted my earlier post I did think more about what I'd said and realised that there would be situations where you wouldn't be able to explain, such as in supermarkets etc. and I do feel for you.
Thank you for your response - I can only imagine how hard it must be with a lot of judgeypants people around you when your DS is being himself - I'm sure you just want to shout at them yourself sometimes. I find the judgiest ones are usually the old ladies - they get very sniffy but often have shocking manners themselves!