Mind Your Manners: 3 Tips on Teaching Manners To Your Child

When I was growing up, my parents always stressed the importance of having manners. ‘Manners take you places’ or ‘No one likes a disrespectful person’ are some of the phrases I would hear. It was my parents’ constant reminders as well as seeing an increase in children without manners that made me want to ensure that my kids were mannerly.

Let’s face it- children can be meanies and who can blame them at times? If we don’t teach them the importance of manners and how to behave, we shouldn’t expect them to act as if they have been taught.

MANNERS TIP #1: SAY PLEASE

Right off the bat, this simple behaviour is the least practiced amongst most kids. “Mommy I want juice!’ or ‘I want more!’. To be honest my daughter (my son is still quite nonverbal and is too young ) learnt VERY early that if you don’t say please, you don’t get what you ask for. Instead, the conversation goes like this:

“Mommy, may I have some more juice please?”

Practicing please is one of the foundations of teaching your kids to have manners.

MANNERS TIP #2: SAY THANK YOU

Don’t you love it when you give someone a gift and they take it and walk away, never acknowledging that they even received it? No? Me either and I do not want my kids to be raised that way. When they receive something they have asked for (by saying please) they should follow up by saying thank you.

Have you ever played the card game GO FISH? If you receive a card that you have asked for BUT don’t say thank you, you lose that card as well as the card in your hand. This reinforces the fact that you must say thank you in order to keep playing the game.

MANNERS TIP #3: SAY EXCUSE ME

These two words should be used on several occasions.

The fist instance is when someone is in your way. Pushing or knocking someone over is never allowed. Saying, “Move- get out of my way.” is also not allowed. I never thought I had to teach my daughter this (yes, I admit I was in a parenting bubble) but once C, my son, became mobile things changed. The lovely phrase I quoted earlier showed up and we had to nip it in the bud. Saying “Move- get out of my way” is never allowed no matter how nicely you try to say it.

How did we fix this? We, both my husband and I, did a role play. J thought we were funny and C looked at us as if we were crazy. Nevertheless, J got the point and we simply have to do little reminders on how to say, “Excuse me”.

These 3 tips have been extremely helpful in teaching my daughter manners and I think my parents would be proud after all the years of drilling the importance of manners in my head. If you do have any questions about manners, simply comment below or you can even email me (learning2walkblog@gmail.com). Thanks for walking with me.

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