Tips for Teaching Character - Manners for Kids

Tips for Teaching Character: Manners for Kids

When we teach our kids manners, we are teaching them essential social skills for life - skills they'll use to impress a date's parents, get their first job and work with colleagues in the future. Don't sell your children short. Start teaching them the social graces they'll need to be successful.

Teaching character: Be Polite, Expect Politeness
When our children see us being polite to others, they are given the best role model. If we expect this of our children, we should also say “please” and “thank you” when asking them to do something. Too often I’ve found myself ordering or demanding my daughter do something, then turning around and complaining when she does the same to me.
Point out when another child has done something nice and say, “Wasn’t that a polite thing to do?” Always recognize your child’s polite moments. Praise her for her good manners. When a child, any child, is polite to you, remember to acknowledge them. By doing so, you’re reinforcing polite behavior.

Use a toy telephone to teach your child phone manners.
It’s best if they do not answer your phone until they understand proper phone etiquette. It may sound cute to you, but not to the person calling, when a child yells into the phone: “Who is this?” or “What do you want?” Once you begin allowing him to answer the phone, make up a small list to set beside the phone giving him instructions.
“Hello, Clark residence?”
If the caller asks for someone else in the house, say, “Just a minute please” and take the phone to the right person.
If not available, ask to take the caller's name and number and write it down. Or, ask the caller to please call back.
Remember, NEVER tell anyone that a parent isn’t home. Tell caller the parent is “not available.”

Kindness Counts in Toddler Parenting
Kindness to animals can be taught at an early age by showing babies and toddlers how to pet and be gentle with stuffed animals. The same technique can show them how you are kind to your animals. Model kind and gentle behavior with pets. Then watch how your child reacts to other people’s pets. If your child seems afraid or unnecessarily rough, perhaps he is not ready for a pet in the home.

No one likes to be teased or mistreated.
Never make fun of or ridicule another person in your child’s presence. Talk to your child about feelings and how everyone has them. Refrain from telling or laughing at ethnic jokes. If your own child is teased by another, encourage him not to respond similarly, but to think of all those who are kind to him.
Chldren often show their anger by hitting or screaming at other children. Teach them how to properly handle anger toward others. Encourage your child to clasp her hands together and count to ten in a silly way whenever she is mad: “One elephant toe, two elephant toes…”

Manners for Kids: Honesty--More than the Best Policy
Encourage honesty in your children. Tell them how sad someone must be to have lost what your child has found, whether it’s money or a toy. A lost dollar bill may not seem like much, but honesty in the little things instills a desire to be honest in bigger ways. I’m amazed and humbled at how my daughter will go out of her way to give a dropped penny or quarter to a customer ahead of us in line. As with other issues, I always try to let her see me return the incorrect excess change, stamps, or other items I may be given.
If you know your child is lying, don’t accuse. Instead, tell him how special the truth is and how proud you are when he is truthful. Then wait for his conscience to go to work.

Happy Teaching

Discipline...Why a Bad Word

Discipline...Why a Bad Word?

Those, like our parents and aunts and uncles, who raised kids over the past couple of decades, are sad to see what a "bum rap" the word
discipline is getting these days. They think back nostalgically to people complimenting them because their children "were disciplined".

In the dictionary the definition for this much maligned word is...

Discipline (dis e-plin) noun: Training expected to produce a specific character or pattern of behavior, esp. training that produces moral or mental improvement.

But what has changed? When did discipline become a bad word? There is certainly nothing in the definition of discipline that suggests abusive
treatment, spanking, shaming, yelling, screaming or generally losing one's marbles.

So why are we afraid of disciplining our children?
And why do we resort to bribing them instead?

Don't children need and want to be reigned-in? Isn't it a loving parent who sets limits on inappropriate behavior? Don't children become anxious when they are allowed to lose control, to hit, to scream, to throw the items out of the grocery basket, to use bad manners, to act out in school? Is it shaming a child to point out and correct bad behavior? No!

But it is a shame when our children approach adulthood without the necessary tools to be a welcome and productive member of society. It is a shame when our children don't have the skills needed to function appropriately in social settings, in school, and out in public. When parents establish behavioral standards, make
their expectations clear, and respond consistently when standards are violated, they are introducing the basic tenets of a civilized culture. Our children deserve no less.

Believe in starting early to shape our children. Support a loving, gentle, supportive, non-aggressive and calm approach to parenting and teaching good habits, respect for others, and manners.

So, discipline your kids, they will thank you for it...and so will their kids. And most important, love your kids up one side and down the other!

Happy Discipling...

Thanks Elena