I've been thinking a lot today about manners. Partially because of a story I read on KSL. My children seem to have ok manners. I've had a lot of people compliment me on how polite they are. Lately however this has not been the case.
We had taught them that when two people are having a conversation they need to wait until that conversation is finished and then say "Excuse me" before they say what they need to say. Somehow they've gotten away from that and it is a constant "Mommy; Mommy; Mommy or Daddy." It drives me crazy and it's something we are working on on a daily basis. Along with others on the list that make sense to me since I've read them. But some of them I hadn't really thought to much about or focused on teaching to my kids. Though they are all necessary.
Anyway the article I found on KSL was titled Does your child have the proper manners? Check the checklist. And it had some great things to say. They also link from there to an article titled 25 Manners Every Kid Should Know By Age 9. A very interesting article which puts things in a good perspective.
However the thing that has made me thing the most today is in the KSL article where one of the people they interviewed talked about phone etiquette and how her mother would call and "train" her children the "proper way" to answer the phone. She talks about how the "proper" way is to answer the phone by stating your name. For instance "Hello. Coleman's this is 'so-and-so' speaking. Which I've heard before. I however was raised differently. My mother always told us "Don't ever tell someone who you are until they've told you who they are. They called you."
It may not be the correct way but I don't really see how there's anything wrong with it. In fact it seems to make more sense to me. I'd rather my kids not introduce themselves to someone over the phone unless they know who it is calling them. So when someone calls me and the first thing they say is "Who is this?" My response is generally "You called me, who is this." Unless they introduce themselves first. Is that wrong?
How were you taught? And how will you teach your children?
