Good manners help behaviour and attainment

[Blandmum]

is anyone even slightly surprised at this?????

I work in a school at lunchtimes and the majority of the children (infant age) cannot sit at a table properly, throw food on the floor, don't say please or thankyou, just grunt "open them" at us. I tend to stand and look at them with a wilting look until they say please!
One parent recently came in to school to complain that her son was being bullied, it turned out that the bully was a teacher who asked her son to stop what her was doing and "he doesn't like being told what to do"!!!!!

Good manners are important, obviously, but I wouldn't like to go back to the days when education was about enforcing strict obedience and squashing any sign of individuality. Entirely possible to have good manners and creativity, though.

edam - I think it's more to do with all round civilized and considerate behaviour, rather than victorian textbook rigidity, isn't it?

I agree with mb about it needing to be different in schools. Apart from anything else, the chemistry of a large group is differnt. As any of us will know if we think about having a drink in a pub with ONE friend, or with 12!

edam, what I am talking about is children understanding that the world does not revolve around them alone. That they have to share, take turns and listen when others (other children included) are talking. And that it isn't acceptable to tell people to 'Fuck off' or to push , shove and hit.

Be an induvudual is great, but a polite one

and kids en mass, even the nicest ones, can be very rude and very disruptive if they are allowed to egg each other on. It is all part of being a child. And our role, as adults is to teach them how to behave.

One thing, though, in mu class I do expect total silence if I am talking. I don't expect it for the whole lesson, that would be insane. But when I talk they all listen....unless someone is bleeding or the room is on fire Try anything else and you would have utter chaos on your hands.

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In my experience the British kids were well behaved. I taught in a school for Vienna 15 years ago where the kids would get up and walk out of the class without asking. There were no manners at all. It was in a fairly deprived area but even still manners cost nothing. I have also been in schools in France and Germany. The French were the best. My sister's school had to stop exchanges with a school in a rich area of Germany because the kids were so bad. In my opinion the British kids are fast catching up with the Germanic countries - a worrying trend. I now teach part-time in the UK and have noticed this. Although the two schools I have involvement in are both very strict on manners.

I went on an exchange to one of the most exclusive/expensive boarding schools in Germany. Most of the kids there were horrifically wild, poorly-behaved and shockingly ignorant. There was a strong culture of wilful underachievement. There were pupils who were three or even four years behind their peer group because the "sitzenbleiben" system meant that if you failed a year you simply repeated it. They laughed about how much it was costing their parents to keep paying for them to repeat years. They smoked and drank alcohol in their rooms, roamed the (huge) estate at night, left classes without asking, failed to turn up for subjects they didn't like, sniggered and interrupted constantly during the lessons they did attend - the place was complete chaos. I met a few local people who told me that the people in the town near the school regarded it as a standing joke and thought the kids were idle rich idiots. It was a real eye-opener.

I also went to boarding school here (little, third-rate place which gave me a scholarship) and they certainly didn't teach table manners, or any kind of manners, any more than state schools do. There was just as much food-fighting, bullying, swearing, drinking, smoking, drug-related insanity and general atrociousness as anywhere else. The only difference was that the kids and half of the teachers were stuck with it 24 hours a day instead of being able to go home and recharge.

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Hi Hannahsaunt - I tend to read the BBC website, & pick up the weekly UK newspapers although I find that just normal Aussie news has lots of overseas news. Definitely much more than the US or UK news channels.

Where are you btw? I haven't seen you on the overnight posting list frequented by the Aussie lot.

I remember doing dinner duty and the majority of kids not using cutlery, but eating everything, even baked beans with their fingers.

In Switzerland they are very hot on manners, even little ones shake hands when they arrive & leave & say thank you for inviting me etc. Very sweet.

I'm going to sound reaally old fashioned but I think loads of tv programmes make bad manners and rudeness seem like the acceptable norm. Eastenders is the perfect example. They spend the whole time shouting at each other, are rude without thinking about it, rarely apologize etc etc.Honeslt I couldn't tolerate this behaviour in real life, but it seems to be how many people operate & think is acceptable.
Threads on this site are notunusual with someone who's got a grievance (eg bad parking) and loads of responses encouraging verbal even physical retaliation.

And footballers spitting!!!!! ARGGHHHHH, drives me nuts. So dirty and totaly uncalled for!!!!!!!!!!!!!

that is a whole thread on its own mb!
I have to admit, when I used to go jogging, I used to spit. But that was on a country lane, nobody else in sight.

Children should be taught the three Rs from birth - right, wrong and respect!

My ds is 2 and he knows when to use 'please', 'thank you', 'I'm sorry' and 'may I' accordingly and he also knows how to behave at the dinner table too! (mainly because I tell him that if he doesn't behave then he'll sit in his old high chair and have a plastic dish, plastic fork and spoon and a plastic beaker to drink out of instead of the same 'big boys' crockery and cutlery that the rest of us are using!)

It makes me laugh that so much money and effort has to be spent on studies to tell us the bleeding obvious !

My favourite one at the mo. is the one that says babies who don't get lots of cuddles, love and attention turn out to have behaviour problems later on, they don't have social skills, are unhappy, etc. and of course the study is based on Romanian orphans (why do they always pick on East European orphans ?)

The best scam in the world is the "Attachment Parenting" concept. Loads and loads of books and research just to tell us that babies and small children need cuddles, love, attention, etc.

Isn't this all obvious to most intelligent parents ?

Koolkat, no it's not obvious to most intelligent parents! What makes me laugh is that so many people think this. Don't you watch Supernanny, House of Tiny Tearaways etc? I haven't very often, but when I have, most of the parents appeared the type of people you would think were reasonably intelligent and well-mannered if you met them at a party. But do they understand without being shown that to get the best out of your kids you need to praise and show affection and stick to the rules you make?? Do they f**k. Some parents - despite being intelligent - just don't have the awareness or understanding or analystical skills required to instinctively know how to discipline your kids in a fair-minded manner.

They do studies like the one this thread is about precisely because it is needed. So many parents don't insist on good manners and they don't set boundaries at home. So then it all goes tits up at school because, as people have said, there is the group mentality at play. Or because children just don't see why they should be polite to people they don't care about that much (teachers), when they aren't made to be polite to the people they do care about (their parents!)

My brother and sister-in-law have never been strict enough - in my view! - with their eldest child. A while ago, when he was six, his father and I were teasing him playfully about something. He got angry and kicked me. I was heavily pregnant at the time. His father and my husband and I all asked him to apologise to me. He didn't, and his father let the matter drop. Later that day I saw the boy kick his baby brother because the baby was gurgling and annoying him. Again, he was told off half-heartedly and the matter was dropped when he didn't respond. He doesn't speak to anyone he doesn't want to, which is most people most of the time. At nursery he refused to speak AT ALL for nearly six months until his parents finally moved him. He didn't just not speak to his nursery teachers, he refused to obey them at all, to the point where when there was an emergency he refused to leave the nursery room along with everyone else. Personally, I would have done something about the problem after a few weeks, but my sil and bil just said "oh it's the nursery, he doesn't like the teachers". The same thing has happened again now he's at school, to the point where the school requested he be tested at the hospital to see if he has special needs. He doesn't, which doesn't surprise me, as I think it's clearly just a case of him not being disciplined properly at home, so that he doesn't respect anyone out of the home either.

Should add that my sil and bil were educated at Cambridge and supposedly very intelligent people.

TaiTai - yes you are right - I guess I meant common sense rather than intellignce. I know plently of extremely well educated people who have zero common sense when it comes to raising kids i.e. most of my lawyer colleagues.

I have watched Super Nanny a few times and find it absolutley appalling. I can't stand the woman and can't stand her methods. Personally I would never allow a total stranger into my house to tell me what to do with my son.

I just think it is bizarre that so many studies are done on things which seem quite natural and instinctive to me (i.e love, attention, cuddles and lots of kisses).

I guess discipline is different though. Although it seems like common sense to me that older children need boundaries, I totally object to disciplining a child as young as mine - at 20 months he does not understand the concept of discipline - I do set rules i.e. re. TV and some other things - but I do NOT put him or a naughty step or punish him if he doesn't do what has been set as a rule. I use distraction instead which is more appropriate to his age.

I have seen toddlers as young as mine being smacked hard on the wrist in public and called "naughty". Again it's common sense to me that this is not appropriate and achieves nothing in fact it teaches a child that aggression is appropriate behaviour. One toddler who had just been smacked by his father then proceeded to push and hit my son. Not surprising as he had been "taught" that physical force was ok.

But I guess common sense ain't that "common", eh ?

TaiTai- the boy you describe does sound as if he could well have SN tbh. The children I know who get away with it at home are usually perfectly able to behave beautifully at nursery or with people who do set boundaries (when little - I'm not talking about teens with all the peer group stuff as well). Refusing to talk for 6 months is not really normal behaviour.

Some interestng studies have been published showing that praising pupils rather than telling them off works wonders for class discipline and behaviour, and that works well for children with very challenging behaviour as well. Pyramid sell tapes which beep every certian number of minutes (depends on the tape) at which stage the teacher is meant to look around for something (anything!) to praise. Apparently it reduces challenging behaviours dramatically.

Oh dur. More research on the bleedin' obvious.

Ernest I so agree with you. I think the media has a pernicious effect on manners and morals actually. [Mary Whitehouse icon] Soaps are full of people who behave outrageously and there are absolutely no consequences. Very often, they have scenarios where in the real world abmong real people, the police would be called and the characters would be charged with criminal damage. But in soapworld, it's presented as normal behaviour. And the more it's presented as normal, the more it becomes normal.

Hi getbak - I can see your point, I agree it doesn't seem like normal behaviour. However, what I didn't say (and probably should have) is that my nephew is perfectly well-behaved and polite with my mil, particularly when he's on his own with her without his siblings, and I think that's because she sets boundaries. When he didn't talk for about six months that was just at nursery; the nursery kept asking whether he could talk properly, but he talked extremely well (and a lot) when not at nursery. He said he didn't talk at nursery because he didn't like the teachers.

Coolkat, I agree completely with you and your methods and I also agree that Supernanny is appalling. The studies do seem obvious to me, but I honestly don't think they are to some people, or maybe it's that some people need the bleedin obvious reinforced.

TaiTai - I agree with you again.

You are right about the methods used. While many things seem obvious to me, my brother and sister have very different methods in raising their kids. It's because my siblings and I have very different personalities.

There are loads of things my brother and sister do with their kids which I don't approve of, but I have learned to shut my mouth where appropriate as I don't wish to offend and they wouldn't listen to me any way as I am the youngest

As a foreigner I am shocked @ the children I see & the stuff I hear about the behavior in schools etc. To such an extent that we have said that we don't think we would put our 2 in school here but rather move back home.

But surely that cannot be the whole story? Where are the good kids? How do I find a good school where my kids are not overexposed to such "bad" kids?

I think those of you who can't understand that it isn't common sense to a mother you witness swearing & hitting their toddler that that's inappropriate are forgetting that there are so many other factors at work in that mother. She may have come from just as abusive a background, and know no other sort of culture or way of behaving, so will not have it ingrained in her how to treat a child nicely (for those of us to whom it comes "naturally" were probably loved & nurtured well in our own childhoods). Plus, there may be all sorts of horrible things going on in her current life, an abusive relationship, no money, a child with behavioural problems, etc etc.

I can't help judging parents myself when i'm out and about, but I don't automatically assume they don't have any common sense. I assume they have been messed up themselves as kids, and have not been educated about parenting or do not care to educate themselves about parenting etc.

In my own experience, I used to work with people with learning disabilities and I think a lot of my parenting skills- patience being one of the most important imo - have come from having done that job. As part of the job I did courses on personal development etc so I also know a bit about the psychological side of things - attachment theories & all that. I had a chance also to work through my own issues and so was emotionally more healthy and able to deal with dd in a detached way iykwim (ie not loading her with my own issues if that makes sense).

Added to that, re simple manners, saying please & thank you, I must say I followed the example often that a nanny friend of mine set, and tbh i don't think it comes naturally to expect a little toddler to say please, thank you, thanks for having me, etc etc, or to have table manners. It wouldn't have occurred to me if I hadn't witnessed my nanny friend teaching the children she looks after those manners, and I remember one frustrated conversation I had with her possibly even before dd turned 2 "I don't understand how she is ever going to learn to say please off her own bat!" and my nanny friend said, "They do! Just keep at it!" And she was right, and she had that experience of working with lots of children from young ages to know that things do work. I'm sure it's easy for parents to "get lazy" or just not realise all those little things, consistently taught, really are worth doing from an early age.