Remember Your Manners

Remember your manners: last year I decided this was something I couldn't ask my kids to do because I wasn't sure if I had ever taught them enough about manners for them to know them to begin with, much less remember them later. Because I happened to remember this fact while Christmas shopping, the result was a gift to the Leonard family of the book 365 Manners Kids Should Know: Games, Activities, and Other Fun Ways to Help Children Learn Etiquette by Sheryl Eberly. It has been a simple and straightforward way to incorporate manners lessons into our daily family life. For each calendar day of the year, the book discusses one aspect of manners in approximately two to three paragraphs. So far we have completed units entitled "A Great Beginning," "Family Time," "Getting Along with Other Kids," "Introductions," "Telephone Talk," and are partway through "You Are What You Say." I read selectively from each day's portion at the breakfast table, and then we discuss it.

The book is not without flaws. Some topics seem misplaced on the calendar, like February 16, which discusses rules for using friends' or neighbors' swimming pools. It must have been a challenge to decide on 365 mini-topics that fit into larger units, but some of them seem trivial, like "Frightening Others" (January 24),while others I don't even consider part of manners, like "Allowance" (January 30), which we don't pay in our family. At times we disagree somewhat with Eberly's advice, but the lessons have generated meaningful conversation.

Occasionally the lessons include activities. My children are looking forward to May with the beginning of table manners and an activity almost every day. I have promised them that we will eat all of the different foods specifically discussed after we learn how to handle them properly. So far my favorite morning has been February 28, "Remembering names." The activity was to come up with a rhyming word for everyone in our family's name so we could practice inventing mnemonics for people's names. Karina suggested we come up with alliterative phrases instead, so soon we were all "Terrific Tommy from Tacoma" or "Little Luke from Louisiana."

Ultimately, my favorite outcome from our breakfast manners class has not been my newfound ability to say "remember your manners" and indicate something specific we've read. Instead it has been the days that Tommy and Jack have opened the door for me on the way into church after the "Opening doors" lesson or last week when Tommy introduced his friend Taylor to his piano teacher exactly like the book describes. My children's manners aren't perfect, and the book keeps showing me that mine need quite a bit of improvement as well. Of course! That's why we need it.