I think this is one area where sometimes parents lag behind but in fact this is one of the important aspects in kid's personality development. A kid learns basic manners like saying "thank you" or "please" from their parents first. Teachers and friends.come in the picture only afterwards. So parents should give importance to use these words from the beginning itself. We should teach him/her how to request politely and also how to disagree without leaving politeness. I think good manners is an important prerequisite to build a peace loving society. There is no wonder why some kids of quarreling parents do not follow the rules of the game.
I see that most kids learn from and follow their own parent's actions and would most likely learn from watching than from just being told. All the kids I've seen are a copy of their parents. When some kids are crude and rude, I wonder what got them like that. It turns out, their parents are exactly the same so the key here is that the parents need to have manners first. Sure, you can tell your child about good manners so that he/she can remember it and pay attention to your mannerisms but nothing influences a child more than their parent's own actions. This is only in most cases, though. Some children are different but it's a good way to start looking at it.
We learn by experience that good values are caught and are not taught. Whatever we do at home we do it right in such away for our children to emulate like using the word please for anything to request from a member of the family. Greetings the old every time we meet them especially our close relatives is exemplified by us as parents. Offering our seats to the senior citizen while traveling is also shown to our kids. And we find no problem in bringing them up to have a good manners for that matter. In short we teach them by example.
Good manner is increasingly important as the kids start getting to the school age. I used to work with kids and a lot of those behavior things tend to play out in the lunch room, so it is just a nice place to avoid by practicing manners early.
I like this thread very much. In another thread, I had posted about my brother-in-law's grandson who is now a spoiled brat because of him (the grandpa). When the father of the boy would scold the boy for discipline, the grandpa would reprimand the father which in effect made the boy develop a disregard for his father and he only obeys his grandpa. Anyway, children can start learning good manners when they are toddlers. Over here, toddlers are taught to kiss the hand of adults as a sign of respect, just like a greeting. Saying "thank you" when receiving something is also being taught to toddlers. And I'd say parents should be aware that toddlers can grow to be brats when they do not learn the proper behavior of dealing with people.
It is true that children take it as a norm to follow and copy whatever the parents do. As most have said be a good example. Always encourage good habits and discourage bad ones with reasoning. Reasoning helps a child understand why such behaviour are inappropriate and should not be repeated.
Teaching your children good manners is obviously important, but these days it seems that a lot of parents themselves don't know good manners from bad, so the children have no chance. Children will automatically replicate the behaviour they see and are around, so if a parent is ill-mannered, it stands to reason that the children will grow up the same way. I've seen parents screaming, shouting and swearing at their children in a public place and humiliating them, and you do tend to think there's no hope for that child. If they grow up to think that behaviour is acceptable, when they have children themselves they will do exactly the same thing. Good manners don't seem to be important to a lot of people these days, and for the ones who do expect a certain standard of behaviour they are often called old-fashioned and out of touch, but in my opinion that's not the case at all.
The simplest way to inculcate good manners in our children would be to teach them and also live that kind of a life before them. Yes, we should teach them politeness and how to show appreciation where necessary. Make it clear to them when these attributes will be fine. Being too polite before people may on its own go awry sometimes. I believe also in letting kids know things well ahead of time to be better prepared and not surprised or taken unaware by events as they unfold. The earlier we are able to teach our kids good manners, the more beneficial from their earlier years it'll be.
