TEACHING COURTESIES
Does your child has an impolite tone or raises his voice when giving a response to you? Do you find your child speak with disrespectful body language? Do you notice that your children’s discourtesy is causing friction in family relationships, disturbing the everyday harmony in the home? Are you receiving regular complaints from neighbors, teachers, friends, and relatives that your child is behaving discourteously most of the time?
For parents, these are some of the signs that indicate your child needs a thorough training in courtesies and gracious manners. Some fine tuning needed is these areas.
Dear Parents, it’s never too late to teach good manners. If you really want your child to be courteous you have to be serious enough, you have to be disciplined and fair enough in coaching courtesies to the children. Parent’s good intentions and the outcome in children’s attitudes are intimately correlated. Well-mannered children don’t happen by accident or an overnight development; it is the result of parent’s conscious efforts and investing a bit more energy into the mission – to watch them grow into civil, respectful, and courteous children.
Children learn new manners, skills and displaying them by seeing an example; how it is demonstrated by adults close to him. Parents, teachers have to be the example of what they want to see in their children. Many of the children learn new skills by imitating the adults or by observation. The more children are surrounded by responsible, courteous adults the more the children benefit from following them as examples of reference.
Parents have to support the child’s attempts to be polite by letting them know they are appreciated. They are aware of his good efforts. Just make sure to point out what your child did that was polite so that it further encourages him to repeat the good manners again and again.
For parents, the best way to reinforce courteous skills is to take help of the teachers, caring adults, grandparents to assist in creating the courtesy improving ambiance at home and in school.
Some of the essential manners your child can learn from an early age are:
“Saying please, hello, thank you, excuse me, I’m sorry, you’re welcome, pleasant way of smiling, shaking hands with a firm grip, looking into person’s eye while speaking, listening without interruption, a pleasant tone of voice”
Parents need to see that the child follows the essential courtesies; if they are not quick to learn, slowly help them to cultivate them. The best practice is to encourage ‘a manner a week’; post the ‘manner to be followed’ on the refrigerator as a reminder so that everybody is practicing the same manner together.
Children learn any skill through repetition: give them as many opportunities to know and practice as many new manners he possibly can and provide him situations to apply them confidently.
