Politeness can be a teaching and learning experience
Use it or lose it, so the saying goes. If we want strong muscle mass, we must exercise them. The same goes for our “Manner Muscles” or our please and thank-yous.
September is National Good Manners Month and is a good time for all of us to do a double-check on how well we are doing in the area of politeness and manners. Take the “manner muscle” challenge and use September to evaluate the strength of you and your family’s manner muscles and see how all are doing. Look for the manner muscles that need a little more exercise and get busy making them strong. Good manners should be something we do and have every day, all year long.
As you purposefully begin this assessment, you will get a better picture of what you and your family’s actions are saying to others. Hopefully, you won’t be surprised at what those actions are telling you. What we do and what we say and what we don’t do and say affect others.
Begin by checking to see if you and your children are acknowledging people when you first encounter them. Could you be so engrossed in playing a game or checking your messages that you don’t even know someone else is around?
Give yourself a great big pat on the back if you are one in a thousand parents who puts their phone down when others are around. Give yourself two pats on the back if you turn your phone off immediately when you are picking up your child at the end of your work day or when you first see your children at home at the end of the day.
Acknowledging the presence of another human being is first and foremost one of the best ways we show our politeness and care for others. It also teaches our children that people are more important than a phone call or other activities that grab our attention.
As you take this polite effort’s assessment of our polite efforts, you may get a better picture of what you and your children’s actions are yelling out very loud and clear. So do a self-check to make sure you are not one that seems to be so caught up with electronics that nobody or anything can distract you from it.
Let’s take another look at the mom picking up her child at daycare. Which one of these moms are you? The first mom is busy chatting away as she enters the center and is still talking when she reaches her child’s classroom. She continues to talk or listen as she grabs her child’s things and drags him out the door without even saying hello or telling her child that she is glad to see him. The second mom turns her phone off before she enters the child-care center. She speaks to the teachers she encounters and asks her child’s teacher about their day. She stoops down and hugs her child as she says, “John, I am so glad to see you. I have missed you all day.”
We have to ask ourselves, “Which scene do I find myself in? Am I teaching politeness and manners to my child, and what is my child learning about his self-worth in the process? Am I telling my child that the cell phone is more important than he is or he is more important than any phone call or game?
The question is: Are we teaching rude behavior as we demonstrate impoliteness in choosing our electronics over people? What could be more important than letting our children know we missed them all day and are so glad to see them?
Another area of assessment is to look at the manners or lack of them at the dinner table. Do your children eat in front of the TV, or are they having family conversation around the dinner table?
Research has proven that when families share meals together and have meaningful conversation, overall children are better behaved and well-rounded. Eating out together counts, too, as families are engaged in conversation with one another. This means everyone turns off their cell phones, puts them away and purposely makes conversation and eye contact with each other. Dinner time should be a phone-free zone.
Yes, table manners are important, too. We all need to learn to chew with our mouths closed and not to talk when we have food in our mouths, to put the hand we are not eating with in our lap, to say the blessing before starting to eat and be willing to share the favorite stuff at the table.
When we acknowledge our children and make them know they are important to us, they, in turn, are learning to do the same – speak to and converse with others as they encounter them. Do your children respond to people who come into your home? Do they look them in the eye as they speak to them? Do they try to have some conversation with them? These skills will benefit your child as he tries to make new friends and when he goes out in life and applies for that new job.
A parent may need to show their child what politeness looks like. When at the grocery store, we can model politeness by: holding the door open for others; helping an elderly or disabled person reach an item on a high shelf; making room for the other person who is trying to get down the same aisle you are on. If possible, allow your child to be a part of the good deeds, too.
Another way we adults can model politeness is while driving. When we allow someone who is waiting to get out in a lane of traffic to go ahead of us, we are showing courtesy and kindness and that we don’t always have to be first.
When we take our children with us to help an elderly person or grandparent, we are teaching them to have patience as the elderly person takes a long time to get from place to place. Are our children learning to share their time with someone who may not be able to do anything for them?
Respecting all people and acknowledging that all people are important is first and foremost in the manners and politeness scale. People love to have someone give their total attention, call them by name and give a moment of their time to acknowledge them.
Good manners moves people closer together; bad manners scatters us further apart.
As we strive to exercise our manner muscles, remember that more is caught than taught. What we do speaks a lot louder than our words.
Dianne Glasgow is a family and child specialist at the LSU AgCenter in Caddo Parish.
She can be reached at [email protected], 226-6805 or 464-2552.
