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?

kindness without empathy? Never.

of course, you can be kind without giving a toss about the other person

it's often necessary, purely to just oil the wheels

like manners

that's not kindness, that's duty

computer crashed earlier but i stand by my point - please and thank you SHOULD be automatic. emapathy is a wonderful skill and quality that some are better that than others but it is not REQUIRED in order to be polite.

i too have been pondering this while getting on with rl

surely manners are a duty to your fellow human beings?

It doesn't matter whether you call it kindness, or duty, or manners

It's necessary if you are to have any sort of social life

But it does matter what you call it, or else people don't know what you are talking about .

We all need social skills, of various sorts. The issue is how best to nurture those social skills in our children such that they are best equipped to deal with the world in all the circumstances in which they find themselves.

"Manners"/protocol are culturally specific. Empathy and emotional awareness far less so, and therefore provide a better building block.

well if manners etc are culturally specific, surely you just state there that empathy etc is a totally seperate thing!

Not totally separate - empathy is the skill you build on for feeling your way into other people's minds and treating them as they would wish to be treated.

aaaaggggghhhh you twist your own words!

manners = socially/culturally acceptable way of behaving. will differ as per situation/environment/company etc

empathy=awareness and consideration of the feeling of others in a positive way.

(i know that's not what the dictionary would define empathy as but for the purposes of this thread i would define it as that, no?)

meant to add empathy will not alter in different situations, as manners will

I'm sure some of you are hard or hearing. Sorry to quote you twig but:

"quite simply I find children who don't say 'please' and 'thank you' rather brattish and it reflects on their parents thta they don't care about 'formulaic manners' "

...as aforementioned, some of use care deeply about manners /being polite / being considerate and make herculean efforts to instill it in our children, with only varying success. Children are individuals you know, and some of them are less mutable to example.

It grieves me that some of dd's friend's mums might smugly (and wrongly) conclude that I fail to set an example with her...

'hard of hearing'

and some of 'us'

I think all this empathy talk is over-rated

I wouldn't want to bang on about it every day to my children

"But how do you think that makes X feel?"

would be like living with some sort of mother-shrink-priest hybrid

You can't go around obsessing about the importance of empathy all the time or you'd never be able to turn on the news

Just stop whining about your feelings and say Thank You and we'll all be happy

Being POLITE is virtue enough for me, thanks.

hmc, I understand what you mean about some children being less mutable than others. I would also put it in the converse: that some parents would attribute thier children's please and thank yous as evidence of their superior parenting.

Your dcs will get there eventually and when they do, will have assimilated the niceties to a more profound extent.

well nevermind morning paper, your children will be able to wander around flipping please and thankyou's off their tongue, which were introduced into common courtesy due to empathy at others having to be servers, but they will likely not understand why they say it, or necessarily mean it when they do, extremely polite I'm sure

I know what you are saying, mp. You can't harp on about feelings all the time. Some pundits even interpret something like "doing xyz makes mummy sad" as being emotionally manipulative, guilting our children into behaving.

Blimey Lorayn

I say "thank you" about 100 times a day (and always with a smile and eye contact, of course)

If I psychoanalysed it every time I'd explode

Thanks blueshoes

Regarding cutlery thing (may have gone off thread by now, didn't read it all) wrong hands doesn't bother me, being a lefty it's my natural right to use them the other way round, but what I can't stand is holding the knife incorrectly. No good reason, just unwarranted snobbishness.

Whilst doing the dishes I have been pondering the saying "carefree childhood". It basically means a childhood free of worry and I am sure it is what we us parent strive for. All except Anna apparently who wants her daughter - not yet 3 - to be primarily focused on her feelings and the feelings of others.

amic - big lol