Raising your kids to be polite is like putting the mirror up to yourself and looking at how your manners really are. If you aren’t polite and you seem to exude a lot of rudeness without realizing it, how can you tell your own children to say please and thank you? It would be somewhat hypocritical, wouldn’t it? And maybe this is the best way forward if you’re looking to raise your son properly. Manners are, in essence, having an awareness of the feelings of others, so it’s very important to get this characteristic down in your child as early as possible. How can you make sure that this sticks?
Make It A Habit
It should be a part of your personality, not just something to pull out of the bag on occasion. And even the best of us find that we forget to say please, whether it’s due to a bad day or just being absent-minded. So, make it a part of everyday life for you and your child, and it will be a habit that’s more likely to stick. This is especially potent when you’re raising a tweenager, who is not old enough to be a teenager but not young enough to be easily forgiven rude behavior.
Learn To Do For Others Without Expecting Anything Back
This is a big thing for every single one of us, and if you can teach your child about being helpful and going the extra mile for someone without expecting anything in return, you will have made a massive accomplishment as a parent. We all get quite petty when we’ve done something for someone and they’ve done nothing for us, especially when they’re close family members, but it’s about recognizing whether what we’ve done is important enough to warrant a favor in return. Besides, if you have an 8-year old who won’t do something for someone unless they get something back, that’s when you really see the error in being petty for the sake of it. It’s important to make a big deal if someone has done something nice for your child, and whether it’s expressing sincerity or sending personalized thank you cards, you’re showing the value of gratitude iwhen someone has gone out of their way for you or your child. It’s a big thing to get over, but to raise a rounded human being, you need to encourage a sense of openness, and this can be done by being helpful.
The Importance Of Tone Of Voice
This is linked to being disingenuous in many ways. So many of us say thanks for something, but we don’t really mean it; it’s purely a formality. This is something you need to iron out in yourself before you expect your child to catch on, and you can tell the difference between someone who means it and who doesn’t. (Kids can too!) This isn’t to say that if you don’t mean, it you shouldn’t say it, but since you want your child to always mean it, encourage (& model) honesty and appreciation.
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