You can start when they are infants. Begin by establishing a culture of respect and consideration early on. You can do this by showing respect and consideration for everyone (including the baby) in the household. "Please" and "thank you" go a long way to creating that atmosphere of respect. "Please" turns a demand into a request and "thank you" shows appreciation. Requests and appreciation are essential parts of a culture of respect and consideration. So make it a habit.
Show respect to the baby. If you're talking on the phone to someone else while you feed him, or you're watching TV, you set a climate of disrespect for him. Instead, sit down in a chair, and take 10 minutes to talk to your baby. It's the foundation for showing him that you respect him which ultimately leads to his own sense of self-respect.
You can also begin teaching basic manners to your young baby.
• That little chat you have while feeding him "teaches" him that meals are social times, too.
• Bibs really are first napkins.
• When you wash his hands with a wet wash cloth before he eats those Cheerios with his fingers, he "learns" that we come to the table with clean hands.
• Even though your eight month old only waves the spoon around in the air, he will begin the association of utensils that go with eating.
• When you're changing a diaper, "Please hold still a minute" shows him how to use magic words.
• A bright "Hi" with a big smile and waving "Bye bye" are the earliest greeting and leave taking.
Cindy Post Senning
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My two sons are now in their 20’s, and one of the most common observations others have made about them over the years is that they are thoughtful and polite. I agree with all of the suggestions the author makes here: the relationship between parent and child is the great laboratory of the very small child’s world in which, for a time, words and deeds are magically merged, a merger which gradually produces one of the central concerns of each person’s life: Why do I do what I do? What are my “motives”? From my “in retrospect” perspective (one that doesn’t allow “do-overs”), it’s clear to me that very young children WANT to learn these things: it is a time when they are very, very receptive to the framework described in the “golden rule” (which, notably, says that one ought to treat the other as one would like to be treated, not as one is being treated). And if that relationship-as-laboratory doesn’t produce the understanding that some motives are better than others—such as “it is better to help others than to hurt others, or to ignore their need for help”—that parent has failed that child in a fundamental way. If a little boy can say “cookie,” he can say “pweeze” and if, “go poddy,” then, “scoose me.” If a little girl can say “TV” (or “TD”), she can say “thank you” (or “tank oo”). And when she has said it and her momma or papa smiles, strokes her cheek, and says, “good manners, sweetie,” she will beam—and she’ll remember (if her mama and papa do as she has done). I remember comforting my younger son when he was three: he’d tripped on a crack in the sidewalk and scraped his face something awful. I sat on the grass, put him in my lap, and told him (repeatedly), “I’m so sorry that hurts. You didn’t want that to happen.” I’ve seen that son talk to the dog this way when the dog had “a bad boo.” And stuffed animals. And a three-year-old neighborhood playmate who tripped and fell on the same sidewalk crack. This is different from the “I’m sorry” I told him when we couldn’t go to the library (the bi-berry) because I’d forgotten that this was the evening they closed early. And all of this comes way before the “I’m thirsty”; “Are you asking me to please get you something to drink?” And, “I know you’re upset, and I would be, too, but are you turning your sad into mad?” My older son’s girlfriend chuckled to me the other day because my son (who is 6’4”) went running over to an elderly lady in the grocery store who was trying to reach something on the top shelf—she was surprised but grateful, and his girlfriend heard him ask the older lady if she needed any more help with her shopping. She declined, but when his girlfriend teased him about it, he very soberly told her that if I had been there and he hadn’t offered, I’d have been disappointed. He also knows that because he did, I am proud of him and have a certain peace of heart that he learned the lesson that other people are as real as he is, that one day he’ll be the one who needs help—and other spokes on the same wheel, such as being happy for others when nice things happen for them (even when you’d hoped that that nice thing would happen for you). It isn’t being polite to be polite: it is teaching our very young children the opposite of superficiality, and, in a world in which loneliness has become an epidemic, I think it should be the basic treatment of choice.
My two sons are now in their 20’s, and one of the most common observations others have made about them over the years is that they are thoughtful and polite. I agree with all of the suggestions the author makes here: the relationship between parent and child is the great laboratory of the very small child’s world in which, for a time, words and deeds are magically merged, a merger which gradually produces one of the central concerns of each person’s life: Why do I do what I do? What are my “motives”? From my “in retrospect” perspective (one that doesn’t allow “do-overs”), it’s clear to me that very young children WANT to learn these things: it is a time when they are very, very receptive to the framework described in the “golden rule” (which, notably, says that one ought to treat the other as one would like to be treated, not as one is being treated). And if that relationship-as-laboratory doesn’t produce the understanding that some motives are better than others—such as “it is better to help others than to hurt others, or to ignore their need for help”—that parent has failed that child in a fundamental way. If a little boy can say “cookie,” he can say “pweeze” and if, “go poddy,” then, “scoose me.” If a little girl can say “TV” (or “TD”), she can say “thank you” (or “tank oo”). And when she has said it and her momma or papa smiles, strokes her cheek, and says, “good manners, sweetie,” she will beam—and she’ll remember (if her mama and papa do as she has done). I remember comforting my younger son when he was three: he’d tripped on a crack in the sidewalk and scraped his face something awful. I sat on the grass, put him in my lap, and told him (repeatedly), “I’m so sorry that hurts. You didn’t want that to happen.” I’ve seen that son talk to the dog this way when the dog had “a bad boo.” And stuffed animals. And a three-year-old neighborhood playmate who tripped and fell on the same sidewalk crack. This is different from the “I’m sorry” I told him when we couldn’t go to the library (the bi-berry) because I’d forgotten that this was the evening they closed early. And all of this comes way before the “I’m thirsty”; “Are you asking me to please get you something to drink?” And, “I know you’re upset, and I would be, too, but are you turning your sad into mad?” My older son’s girlfriend chuckled to me the other day because my son (who is 6’4”) went running over to an elderly lady in the grocery store who was trying to reach something on the top shelf—she was surprised but grateful, and his girlfriend heard him ask the older lady if she needed any more help with her shopping. She declined, but when his girlfriend teased him about it, he very soberly told her that if I had been there and he hadn’t offered, I’d have been disappointed. He also knows that because he did, I am proud of him and have a certain peace of heart that he learned the lesson that other people are as real as he is, that one day he’ll be the one who needs help—and other spokes on the same wheel, such as being happy for others when nice things happen for them (even when you’d hoped that that nice thing would happen for you). It isn’t being polite to be polite: it is teaching our very young children the opposite of superficiality, and, in a world in which loneliness has become an epidemic, I think it should be the basic treatment of choice.