Manners

I'm having trouble getting my kids to learn their manners. Can anyone
relate to this?

dragonlady...

You need to be more specific. How old are they? What exactly do you
MEAN by "manners"?

However, in general, for teaching ettiquette, I found "Miss Manner's
Guide to Rearing Perfect Children" both a delightfully entertaining read
and reamarkably helpful.

And the absolute best way to teach children to treat other people with
civilized manners is to display such manners towards them (and everyone
else) at all times.

an588...

I fully agree with this. This includes, for example, never
yelling at the children. (See my web pages on how and why
not to yell at your children on my parenting page,

While showing manners towards the children is probably the
best and most important way to teach them manners, it may
not be enough in itself. the children might imitate the
parents and show manners towards them; or, the children
might get the idea that parents are supposed to be nice
and fetch things all the time and do all the laundry and
generally act like hotel workers for the children, and that
the children's role is to have fun and be looked after.
So it might be necessary sometimes to gently and politely
prompt the children.

The book "Secrets of Discipline" by R. Morrish describes
a number of basic principles. I like the way he describes
teaching a 2-year-old to say "thank you". For the two-year-old,
it's like a game; it's fun, and it's a form of language
learning, while kids that age are usually very much interested
in. Basically, you hold out the glass of orange juice but
pause for a second or two, smiling and waiting, for the
child to say "thank you", before you hand it over. It doesn't
feel like a punishment or a threat or anything. It feels like
a game, or like normal life. The child enjoys it.

There are several aspects to learning manners:

1. Memorizing what the proper manners are, in the
particular society you're in.

2. Getting in the habit of wanting to show good
manners (or of wanting to be nice to other people).

3. Learning to recognize specific situations as examples
of general situations to which manners learned in step 1
apply. For example, having learned to say "thank you"
for Christmas presents, realizing that one should also say
"thank you" for birthday presents -- or for a used toy
casually handed over, etc. This recognition of situations is
far easier for some people than for others. The ones
for whom it's easy sometimes have a hard time understanding
why others have trouble with it, and often think the others
are being deliberately impolite. I believe this skill can
be learned and developed, at least to some extent, though
some will always be much more talented than others.

Jeff...

I teach 8th grade science.

The answer is yes, I can relate to that.

Nan...

What are their ages, and what are you trying to teach them?