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?

Ahh Anna
then I suspect you will be ordering the snot soup.

I can't stand people who are rude to waiters/waitresses etc.

morningpaper - if it's an automatic reaction it's not acknowledging anything at all - do robots express anything? I don't think so.

LOL @ pagwatch

Anna - So for you the soup? With extra spittle.

I'd never thought about that before, but I dont say please to waiters, however my tone is polite, I smile when talking to them, make eye contact and then thank them afterwards. I also say thankyou when i'm leaving.

Also, having worked as a waitress in a rather posh restuarant I was never offended by the lack of please, the tone in which I was spoken to was much more important.

Agree with all of that Lorayn .

the funny thing is though you'll never know for sure whether your peergroup shares your opinion on manners because as someone said (can't remember who and excuse paraphrase) 'good manners means putting up with other people's bad manners without commenting'

Anna, are you referring to the english way of saying "yes" when they mean "no" and training children to say nice things to avoid hurting others' feelings?

In the context of a meal, to expect children to praise food as being good, when in fact they hated it? I could be barking up the wrong tree.

Personally, I don't think having to say "thank you" for food indicates whether the food was or was not to their liking. Like another poster said, it is just an expression of appreciation of the cook's effort, whatever the outcome.

If a child says "thank you" joylessly, then I would think that child was a joyless one. Not because he/she said thank you. I would be very impressed if a young child thanked me for his/her food, and then proceeded to tell me why they did not like it (in a nice, non-bratty way), lol.

Except that in RL, unlike in MN, you can observe your peers in situ and see what they do and whether it is the same as you.

Anyway, I think that behaviour in restaurants is very different to behaviour in the family - you are paying for a service in restaurants and are naturally more distanced from the person you are interacting with.

Saying "thank you" but not "please" to waiters is restaurant protocol IMO.

In our case, since 50% of the restaurant managers in Paris have worked for my partner at some point, we tend to get pretty friendly treatment so it's not a standard situation.

blueshoes - I think that the "English thing" you describe is a distortion of what can happen when you train children as opposed to educate the .

Yes blueshoes I know this is an aside to the topic under consideration (gosh I sound so well mannered) I just have to write it down somewhere so others can see how incredible f*ing annoying it is!!!

When my dh hands her a plate of home cooked loveliness she pushes the various componenets round her plate prodding them saying "why've you given me this, I didn't ask for it" !?! WTF

This is in a whole different realm to a lo politley and apologetically declining something when they've given it a go and genuinely don't like it, which is totally acceptable.

this is what I'm up against on a weekly basis.....

them

Yes it should be automatic to acknowledge people, Anna

Just as it's automatic to say "Hello!" to people you know, whether you feel like it or not

I think affording a waiter/waitress with the common decency to speak to them politely is perfectly acceptable, a good waiter/ress will not infringe on your meal, merely take your order and leave, to afford them your full attention and show you are grateful for them to have taken your order is plenty.

I cant stand it when waiter'esses think they are your best friend and try talking away to you, I'm out to eat dinner in a nice surrounding cooked by someone other than myself and spend time with whoever I am eating with, not to befriend the waiting staff.

Anna, I know you enjoy a debate but you are being a bit absurd. Being expected to say please & thank you, even when you mightn't be wholly sincere, is - if it stops there - not the thin end of a pernicious wedge.

Lorayn - I know what you mean about over-friendly waitresses/restaurant staff and I often try to avoid the places where my partner is "known" so that we can eat in peace.

Lots of his family/friends love the special treatment thing though

I'm amazed some people are happy to do without "please" and "thank you". I don't mind how formulaic it is and how much you don't want to say it. If you ask for something and are given something, you damn well say it.

You don't always have to mean the courtesy that underlies manners just as you don't always want to stand up for the pregnant woman on the bus if you are tired and fed up yourself. But you do it anyway, and graciously.

manners are 'nice'. But in the end they mean jack shit about the person. so I encourage ds to say please and thank you but am FAR more concerned that he begins to learn a consideration of others feelings. I have met plenty of kids who say please and thank you by rote and who behave in a nasty way towards their peers if they think no one is looking.

manners are icing. learning to be emotionally intelligent, which begins with it being OK to be how you feel (which might not always involve manners), learning to express that, and realising that others have the same kinds of feelings is the cake.

Anna - Saying "thank you" but not "please" to waiters is restaurant protocol IMO.

In our case, since 50% of the restaurant managers in Paris have worked for my partner at some point, we tend to get pretty friendly treatment so it's not a standard situation.

Spittle 1er Cru?

Bink - like I said, my daughter's first word was thank you (copied from me) - I'm delighted that she uses it.

But I hate parroted pleases and thank yous with a vengeance... like I hate little girls with their hair in bob/hairclip... brothers/sisters in identical clothes...

Yes I saw about her first word.

It was the idea of there being a logical sequence that goes non-spontaneous pleases & thankyous => repression of personality => spirit crushed to psychiatric extent - so the non-spontaneous thing being the top of a slippery slope - that's what I thought was absurd.

Anyway, if you're exercising mental effort on other parents' hairdo choices then maybe you need some real stuff to flex your opinion muscles on. Like a job again

I think you can tell a lot about a man by the way he treats:
a) his mother
b) waiters and waitresses
It is important because how he treats his mother is, eventually, how he will treat you. How he treats waiters, waitresses and other minions is how he will treat his children.

Well I have the job (starts November) but that won't stop me waging internal war on the repression of personality that some parents think is upbringing