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?

Yes. Robot-like behaviour comes about when societal/familial pressure to conform to stereotype crushes the personality and creates a person "carried" by the structure(s) they function within rather than by self-control and self-motivation.

There are more savage personality types who lack self-awareness too. Though I'm not sure that mainstream modern society doesn't sideline them to jail or psychiatric institutions.

Bink - what my daughter is learning is not programming because she is spontaneously reacting to the feelings she has picked up in me.

What I object to is the school of thought that thinks children learn useful things by eg having "Say thank you" chanted at them repeatedly at a specific event (eg being offered a biscuit) until they remember after the thousandth time to do it for themselves.

Think of mirror neurones - that's what I'm getting at. I want my daughter's mirror neurones to function efficiently and to guide her as to what other people are feeling.

I think the one thing that might be missing from this whole analysis is simply how much easier and probably natural it is for a 3 year old to say please and thank you than it is for say a 6 year old

children get more difficult as they got older not easier

if they are used to the proprieties and expectations of social grace then they will use them

I totally agree with the whole empathy argument too .. as well as manners I do my best to explain and reinforce empathy in my kids

Twig - indeed, when children go to school they copy their peers', not their parents', behaviour .

Though fortunately so far my daughter has only come back with "caca boudin". I fear for the day I'm called into school and told she's been teaching the rest of the class "putain" and "merde" (merci big brothers ).

You can't teach empathy. We are veering off into a nature versus nurture debate here. Manners are deinitely nurure - you can teach a monkey to say please, thank you and whatever else you want it to say but you can't teach them to empathise. In a family their social manners are normally the same but the levels of empathy and emotional intelligence are hugely different.
Thank you for reading.

sorry about my spelling today - definitely nurture!

actually you can reinforce natural empathy by asking 'and how do you think you would feel if that happened to you?', 'how do you think they feel when you say / do that?' tailored to age

so I don't agree about not being able to teach empathy

I definitely think that you can encourage empathy in many ways, and, crucially, in very different ways throughout life depending on the stage of development.

I don't think a monkey example is relevant here Caroline

Oh, and I think the nurture/nature debate is 100% relevant to a discussion of what manners are

Caroline - was that (about not being able to teach empathy) a response to me saying "the fact that your daughter is learning from her experience with you means that you are "teaching" her"?

If so - it's again a different understanding of what "teach" means - I mean encourage, reinforce, and thereby develop, a behaviour. Obviously, if there's nothing there to build on - no ability to learn, no social instinct - then no "teaching" of any kind is possible - I agree.

But in this case, there is that process going on, I think. Anna's nice little daughter's appreciativeness is being encouraged and nurtured by Anna's own appreciation of that appreciativeness - a virtuous circle, and one that is, to me, reasonably described as a "teaching" relationship.

"The point of manners is that they make EVERYONE FEEL LOVED UP AND APPRECIATED"

Depends what you call manners really, if automated please and thankyous are manners then thats utter rubbish.
The reason 'please' is pften used is not as manners as such, it is either a persuasion technique 'please may I .......' OR as an implication that an order is actually a request, teacher 'sit down please'.
Please is commonly used because others do not feel comfortable in speaking to staff, people who are paid to serve you in whatever way, so it became polite to say lease on the assumption that it made the person serving feel at the same level.

However, I find it is irrelevant in many situations, having worked in a bakery I know the builders that would come in and shotu across the shop 'gis a bacon roll when you're ready luv' that would smile and look me in the eye were being a lot more polite than people who would ask for "three bacon rolls please" yet not even look at me.

The please is meant to be an acknowledgement of appreciation, I would prefer a smile, a hello or eye contact when being spoken to than an automated muttered 'please'.

The same goes for thankyou, people use it to end a transaction or a verbal exchange rather than to actually thank someone for what they have done. When we finish our shopping we automatically say thankyou when being given our change, truth is we dont need to say thankyou, that person is doing their job and hear thankyou all the time, I'm sure they woudl appreciate a big smile and a greeting of some form.

This is why I prefer my children to be polite than use manners at times

As for sorry, what really is the point of forcing someone to say sorry?? If you aren't sorry then there is no point in saying so, I'd prefer my DC's to feel sorry than say it because it was the right thing to do.

Sorry if I went on a bit there, I was thinking about this the whole school run!

Bink - It was really meant for Anna. I should perhaps have said that it is impossible for a two year old to be emotionally mature enough to fully empathise with an adult. So manners come before the empathy in my opinion, therefore silly for Anna to say she wanted her daughter to "feel" grateful/apologetic but not necessarily say thank you/sorry.

Manners are a very cultural thing, for instance my Italian niece finds my constant pleases and thank yous quite grating when she is in England as it sounds very ingatiating and quite 'subservient' to her predominantly Italian ears.

Italians don't use please very much, or even thank you as much as we do. It is just not part of what is considered polite. They definitely have ways of expressing polite manners but they are different to ours.

I agree though that in this country we have a way of being polite and children who learn this early on will get on better generally as reactions to them will generally be more positive than those who don't show good manners (as evidenced by the strong reaction of some parents on this thread to what they consider to be bad manners).

The point of manners is to oil the social wheels - so to speak. If your child is emotionally and socially confident they will learn very quicky what the polite forms are (assuming you model them) and will want to use them. They will understand in a viceral way that manners (however they are expressed in a particular culture) are what oils social discourse.

I therefore agree with sophable that encouraging social and emotional ability is the cake and the actual form of the manners is the icing. There is a place for both of them but without the cake the icing doesn't stand up to much.

Anna - the thread is about manners - nurture only. Empathy, easy-going nature, charm, beauty are all mostly nature.
You can be charming and have no manners whatsoever. I thought we covered this hours and hours ago. Before I got irritated by you "hating girls with hairclips/bobs" and went off to clean my kitchen .

Caroline - two (almost three) year old can have empathy, with adults and children - what are you talking about?

When my daughter hears a little baby crying, what makes her look at me with a sad face and say "Mummy, there's a sad baby"; when I a hurt face, why does she put her arms around me and give me a cuddle?

Obviously she can't understand or analyse complex emotions - but she has a very good idea of happy / sad / frightening, for both herself and others.

I'm now thinking - what emotions does she understand?

"Grateful" - yes, she understands about giving and receiving. She understands that you can't have everything you want but have to delay gratification - to tomorrow, next week, when Papa is home etc. She understands about having to pay for things, both in a shop and by doing something nice for someone at home in return.

"Hurt" - yes, she understands hurt in herself and others - she likes to have a kiss where she's been hurt and she readily kisses others where they've been hurt (no asking/prompting).

Caroline - wait a few months. I'm sure your daughter will get there

Anna - I said fully. Interesting that your daughter (nearly 3) should say "sad baby" on hearing a baby crying. We have a 3 month old in the house and my daughter (nearly 3) says "pooh" whenever our baby cries. He is never sad but often hungry, wet, tired, smelly etc.

Oh crikey, my DS is about the same as as your DD I think Anna, he will be three in december and he definitely empathises with people, about things he doesnt understand.

I was being sick the other day (morning sickness) and he decided the baby must feel sick and started stroking my tummy telling baby its ok, and saying 'poor baby' surely thats empathy in a 2/3 year old way.

He may not quite understand that someone put a lot of effort into making dinner or w/e but he does understand other things, like not to rip his sisters books because it makes her sad.

TBH it's a lot easier to make him empathise with someone and therefore not do something than to give him another reason 'make mummy sad' means an awful lot more to him than getting told off as such.

Caroline thats obviously different, your DD is used to the reasons why baby is crying because she lives with it!!
If a lady in the street was crying do you think she'd assume lady was sad? or say 'pooh'? I'd assume it would be the former.

Lorayn - completely agree, it's much easier to explain emotions to get empathetic behavioural responses than to try to enforce behaviours . And you can start doing it when they are tiny.

Manners come before empathy. That is absolutely right. But you can also be perfectly polite and kind without ANY empathy. Empathy is not necessary for being polite and kind.

Your argument seems to be that because you can say "Please" and still be rude, therefore there is no point teaching children to automatically say please. I think that is rubbish. They SHOULD automatically say "please" and they SHOULD automatically say "thank you". Sometimes they will feel empathy. Sometimes they won't. But they can ALWAYS be polite and acknowledge people.

Earnest talk about EMPATHY over please and thank-you, frankly, is over-egging the pudding.

anna, i think you need to go back to work

bossykate - I'm fed up with people saying this, I have a job starting after half-term