Have a New Kid by Friday - Dr Kevin Leman [48]
If you have a young child, start now by instructing him in what to say. Children don’t learn how to say thank you without some prompting. It’s not uncommon for a mom of a young child to say, “What do you say?” as a prompting when he receives a kindness.
Then the child remembers, Oh, I’m supposed to say thank you. If a mom reinforces this over and over, by the time a child is 3 it should come out naturally, without a reminder.
In the same way, kids don’t learn basic manners without teaching and prompting. So teach your child how to say please and thank you. If you haven’t taught your children basic manners, it’s never too late tostart. Teach her how to put a napkin in her lap, which fork to use first if there is more than one, and how to hold her utensils. Teach her to cough into her elbow rather than into someone’s face or into her hand before touching a doorknob. Teach him that belching and other bodily noises aren’t polite behavior in public.
Why not turn learning manners into creative fun at the dinner table? Play the “Catch Someone Not Using Good Manners” game. Everyone loves it in our house. At the dinner table, put a stack of coins in front of each adult and each child (ages 6 through 10 works best). If you catch someone not using good manners, you get to take a coin off their pile and add it to yours. If you’re a goofy daddy like me, you might chew with your mouth open, just so someone can catch you. You could order, “Pass the potatoes” and wait for someone to correct you with “Please pass the potatoes.” You could even burp. Be creative with the ways you reinforce this. Your child will love it. They need a mom or dad to make a few mistakes along the way. So why not invent a few as teachable moments for the kids?
Let’s say your child receives a gift. After the age of 3, your child shouldn’t be prompted to say thank you. If he doesn’t say thank you on his own, when you get in the car, what could you do? Simply say, “Honey, I noticed you didn’t say thank you to Mrs. So-and-so for the gift she gave you.”
“Oh, Mommy, I forgot,” the child is likely to say.
“Okay, thanks for letting me know. I’ll hold on to this gift until you are able to thank Mrs. So-and-so with a note or a phone call.”
What are you really doing in this situation? You’re not coming down on your child, beating him into the ground for forgetting to say thank you and embarrassing you. Instead, you’re teaching your child to do the right thing by delaying gratification (which goes against the grain of a child who usually wants to play with that toy right away) until the task is accomplished.
Communicating/Not Wanting to Communicate
“How was school today?”
“Fine.”
“How did your test go?”
(Grunt.)
“What did you do today?”
“Nothin’. ”
“Where have you been?”
(Shrug.)
“What did you do with your buddies tonight?”
“Nothin’. ”
Every parent has received the silent treatment. The “fine.” The grunt. The “nothin’. ” The shrug. There’s nothing more exasperating than trying to communicate and having the other end of the two-way conversation not cooperating.
How are you trying to communicate? By asking questions. It works in most conversations, right?
Wrong. Most questions we ask our kids really are nonproductive questions we ask our kids really are nonproductive (“So, how was your day at school?”),
and kids are smart enough to know it. When an adult asks questions, children know what answers the adult expects. And that makes them more determined not to answer.
“But, Dr. Leman, how will I ever know anything about what’s going on with my child if I don’t ask questions?”
Put yourself in your child’s shoes for a minute. If, as soon as you opened your mouth, your parent turned into Judge Judy and gave you an edict, put your ideas down, and put you down, would you want to open your mouth?
Why not switch the paradigm? If you want your children to talk to you about anything, don’t ask questions. Instead,