Misadventures of Good Manners

If this looks familiar to anyone, that's because it was an old post on my other blog. re-reading it gave me a little laugh, so I thought I would share.

I have always tried to instill good manners in my children. To say "Please" and "Thank You" and "Excuse Me". I have tried, with out much success, to teach them not to interrupt. Overall, I think that I'm just trying to teach them to be good Ladies and Gentlemen. I had no idea of how much of an impression my teachings had made until recently.




Exhibit A:
Austin and Nicole were waiting in the car while I was finishing packing the diaper bag to go run some errands.



Erika: "Mom, you need to be my gentleman!"



Mom: "What?"



Erika: "You need to be my gentleman!"



Mom, not really paying attention: "Oh, I need to be your gentleman. (Whatever that means)"



I finished packing the diaper bag.



Mom: "Erika, you need to run out to the car. I'm coming right now."



Erika: "I can't open the door. I told you that you needed to be my gentleman!" At least I know that Daddy opening the doors has made an impression.



Exhibit B:
We recently read "James and the Giant Peach". When we finished the book, I let the children watch the movie version. After watching it a couple of times and seeing how badly James' Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker treated him, Nicole came to me with the following observation:



Nicole: "James's aunts are so mean! Aunt Sponge burped and she didn't even say, 'Excuse Me'".



Exhibit C:
While watching Star Wars with Austin, I heard:



Austin: "Mom, Anakin interrupted that bad guy! He wasn't even finished speaking and Anakin killed him anyway!"



Now that our manners are well in hand, I think it is time to turn to other lessons: treating people kindly and not killing guys, whether they've finished speaking or not!