MANNERS: What is ESSENTIAL and what is DESIRABLE? (OR: Does it make your hair stand on end when children don't say please?)

[morningpaper]

I've been reading this old article by Joan Bakewell

"Next, children. One of the joys of parenthood is looking upon your offspring as little angels. An adjacent pleasure is having others share that view. The interface between the two will depend on their manners. Forget the piano lessons, and ballet classes, neglect football practice and the school choir. A fluency with daily manners is one of the finest gifts you can give your children, and for that you need to start young."

Which got my thinking what manners in young children are essential and which are just nice?

ESSENTIAL MANNERS: (Without these I am )

• please
• thank you
• excuse me
• hello to anyone you know

DESIRABLE: (without these I am )

• hand in front of mouth for sneezing/coughing
• closing mouth when eating
• asking to get down from table
• thanking adults for hospitality
• pardon me for farting/burping

NICE: (these make me )

• thanking adults for nice meals
• thank you letters/pictures

What would you add?

And even more loved up if you can manage to combine good manners with soft lighting, wouldn't you say.

that mostly if it has been consistently modelled a child will say please and thank you and excuse me. but that it is ok sometimes for them not to because they really don't feel it.

as opposed to a child that has had those manners (mannerisms?) enforced on them. in which case they mean nothing at all, as they are simply something the child HAS to do.

Personally I feel loved and appreciated when people I have done things for love and appreciate what I have done for them.

I'd much rather my stepsons asked for a third helping of supper than said "Merci Anna pour le dîner".

Oh yes a real gentleman will make take you through all the emoticons

and will then say thank-you

pmsl

Can dd2 (3.9) win an MN Good Manners award?

6am on a recent weekday morning in the frogpond:

Dd2 (brightly): Mummy, I'm coming into bed to give you a cuddle.
Frogs: Mmkay.
Dd2: I'm going back to my bed now.
Frogs: Mmkay.
Dd2 (Severely): Mummy! Say 'thank you for my nice cuddle'!
Frogs (blearily): Thank you for my nice cuddle.
Dd2 (graciously): You're welcome, Mummy.

Anna that just means you have cooked something they like

a pig could eat three helpings

a gentleman would express his gratitude

and perhaps write a little note

MP - they are children. I am their stepmother.

Stop comparing children and adults. Your thread was about manners in children, remember?

My argument being that I don't see why you think well-raised children will eat three portions, rather than acknowledge the effort of the cook

Bozza: good manners and soft lighting and I would dissolve with pleasure

Why are we arguing about this at all?

Surely the best thing to teach a child is to be polite and have manners, ie

"OOooh yes please, I'd love a cake" (enthusiasm and manners)

and

"Thank you, the cake was really yummy"

That is how I speak to dd, so that is what I get back from her

Am roffling at the soft lighting

Perhaps the harsh "big lights" make children less pleasant in more ways than one

MP - we were talking about love and appreciation. If children feel free, they will show their appreciation by taking freely of what is offered to them freely. That is the most important thing.

Of course, it is very nice to get a thank you as well, but I am much less bothered about the thank you than I am about:

• ensuring that I have cooked a meal that they like (that is my way of showing love)
• them eating lots of it (their way of showing true appreciation)

And that's what family life ought to be about IMO. Not about trite pleases and thank yous - about real effort and real pleasure so that we all live together happily.

It all sounds good Anna

I agree with all of that

Thing is Anna, the pleases and thank-yous don't have to be trite, do they?

just come back to this thread and am and

Anna - am not meaning to join the incredulity but am genuinely interested - presumably you do use the words please and thank you in your own personal day to day lexicon? or don't you? i find it difficult to grasp that for a child to say please and thank you automatically is a sign of repression, but you are proud that your daughter's first word was thank you. copied from yourself.

am confused...

TigerFeet - no, of course not. My own daughter says please, thank you, sorry etc all the time.

She's just not prompted and has not been trained to use them as automatic responses - which is what I don't like.

theFlyingDevil - I suggest you re(read) the thread - I don't want to repeat myself...

but surely speech itself is to some extent an automatic response? if someone called your name unexpectedly, you would say yes. you wouldn't say "who is that desiring my attention" would you? hence an automatic response.
to say please and thank you is an appropriate response to an action. it SHOULD be automatic. if a bit flowery as well, then lovely, as child has obviously thought about it a bit, but i would rather a simple thank you, than an extensive acknowledgment i think.
am riled up and losing myself in philosohpy, hope someone knows what i mean....

If you are fully conscious as a human being, your speech will not be automatic but the reflection of your thoughts and feelings.

We repress a child's consciousness by teaching it automated responses.

Oh Anna people/human beings/children are much more complicated than that, and you know it. Some verbalising is just plain instinctively automatic (eg a noise when you get a fright), some is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings unmediated by societal norms, most you can't track back to either - it's just going to be a mixed-up combination of spontaneous and learnt and all bound up with context in a way no-one can untangle.

EG you will acknowledge - because you're quite clever really - that it is at least feasible that BECAUSE you are happy with your daughter saying thank you spontaneously, she picks up on that & will say it somewhat more often/more enthusiastically than she would do if you had always ignored it/received it with a straight cold face. So you may think she's being purely spontaneously self-expressive but really (and to her credit) much more is going on in the motive and context mix than that.

Bink - I don't think that children are - or can be - fully conscious. Consciousness is learnt/acquired throughout life. However, one's upbringing, and the freedom one is given in childhood to explore and express one's feelings, have a great deal of influence on the freedom one allows oneself as an adult to self-analyse.

I quite agree that the concept of "fully conscious" is a bit ambitious though I think it's a worthy though probably unattainable goal. But surely you also agree that some adult human beings are a hell of a lot more conscious than others - some adults are able to trace their feelings and reactions in great detail to events and feelings in their lives while others live in a sort of semi-robotic fog?

Yes, and I quite agree that if my daughter says please, thank you, sorry etc it is because she is "picking up" on my feelings. But the point is - she is learning to pick up on feelings spontaneously. First she learns about mine and then, gradually, she learns about other people's.

Actually, come to think about it, she does talk about her and other children's feelings quite a bit - when she comes out of school she tells me unprompted whether or not she has cried, whether other children are sad or happy. And I'm very pleased about that.

I certainly think depth of self-knowledge varies (viz. King Lear & "he hath ever but slenderly known himself") - but I'm not sure that lack of that = roboticness. Certainly didn't in Lear's case ... might have been preferable if it had?

You know - I think you and I understand "teach" and "automated" in different senses from each other. For me, the fact that your daughter is learning from her experience with you means that you are "teaching" her and what she learns is a (behavioural, experiential) kind of "programming".

I think when you say "teach" and "automated" you mean something like the way people train puppies to sit or walk to heel, with repeated keyword commands and sanctions for non-immediate obedience.