Teaching manners

dizzycooks

At what age did you start honing in on manners? For the most part, dd does a nice ion eating, saying hi and bye and waiting, but I'd like to see her use her fork more and wonder if expecting her to say excise me is too much. I also have no idea how to enforce these things except repeat myself and keep asking.

jensriot

With my girls, we model and practice polite behavior constantly and used everyday activities as teaching moments (like Lalas said). For us, consistency and repetition were the key.

zbeesma86

Z says please and thank you. She will say hi and bye bye and blow kisses. Sometimes she will be shy and say if after the fact- we will be paying and I'll say bye, and she will just stare and smile. Then we get to the car to load up and she goes,' bye bye store'

We are working on excuse me (when in the way and when she sneezes, burps, or farts). She will cover her mouth when she coughs but not sneezes.

She eats with a fork- but not a spoon. Unless it's yogurt.

I'd say just be consistent and practice what you preach. When DH rips ass I always tell him he needs to say excuse me. She watches him and I and picks up on what we do all the time.

peaceinnature

Watch Mr Rogers.  Seriously I downloaded it from itunes and DS  just loves it and has become so polite since he started watching it.  He says things like "I'm happy to see you" and he started saying yes instead of yeah.  It's a great influence.

Also modelling.  I've always said please and thank you a lot to him so he says it back.  And he hears me saying excuse me and sorry so he's started saying it too, but we're working on learning when it's appropriate.