Teaching toddlers their manners – Mummascribbles

I’ve been thinking about writing this post for a while, mainly because I’m a proud mum and among many other things, one purpose of this blog is to document proud mummy moments!

The thing that mostly spurred me on to actually get around to writing it was a recent Facebook post from my lovely blogging friend Mrs H at Mrs H’s Favourite Things. She wrote:

“Little Miss H is hopeless at saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. In fact, the word ‘please’ seems to hideously offend her. Does anyone have any tips on how to help her say these two very important words?”

And why you may ask, did this make me write this post?

When Zach was the same age as Little Miss H, I too had these concerns about his lack of manners. He is only 8 months older than her, however I would say it’s been the last few months that we’ve really got to grips with his manners.

The first thing we taught him was to say ‘ta’. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to go down the ta route but it seems to be impossible not to because it is one of the first words they can say. The problem is of course, that when you hand your little person something and say ‘ta’, they for a while think that if they give you something they too have to say ‘ta’! Owing to this, I started to throw in a bit of ‘thank you’ to try and help him out. I think what is actually really important is to say the word ‘say’ beforehand. So rather than just handing them something and saying ta/thank you, I think it works better to say ‘say ta/thank you’. Once they’ve learnt what the word say means, they then seem to understand that it’s what they have to say when they are being given something.

Zach was soon saying ‘dank-ooo’ at the right moment and if he forgot he would say it if I prompted him with ‘what do you say?’.

Once we’d mastered that, it was time to move onto more manners. and he next mastered ‘please’.

I was as keen to get him to learn this word as I was for him to learn thank you but it seemed a little harder for him to understand.  Also, he found it quite hard to form the ‘pl’ part of the word. It was only recently that he finally managed to pronounce things beginning with ‘p’ properly. My mum taught him a little trick where she made him put his hand in front of his mouth and pronounce ‘p’ properly. From that, he could feel the breath hit his hand and learnt very quickly that he was saying it correct if he could feel the puff of breath. For a while, he used to hold his hand over his mouth for anything beginning with that letter but he soon realised he was saying it correctly and no longer needed to use his hand.

As we did with thank you, when he wanted something, before giving it we would say to him ‘say please’. And he soon caught on and we had mastered this new word and meaning.

The third thing I wanted him to say was ‘sorry’. This is an important one because he has to say it often – for instance the other day when he threw the iPad on the floor in temper! This is a tough one though. He learnt the word very quickly, he learnt the meaning very quickly, it’s just if you try to make him say it, he refuses point blankly for a while.

If he accidentally bumps into you, accidentally kicks you while you are having fun, anything that makes you say ‘ow’ in an accident, he says ‘sorry mummy’. Sometimes, it isn’t even his fault and I’ve clearly told him that he has no reason to be sorry. It’s the times when he does do something wrong, something that he does need to apologise for, that he doesn’t want to say it. He stands there with a glum look on his face saying ‘no’. I am always adamant that I will stand there for ten minutes if that’s what it takes to get an apology out of him and I always win. He will always say sorry eventually, even if it means that we are late for where we need to be! I do it with picking up things as well. He is going through a phase at the moment where he’ll just throw something on the floor. I don’t always penalise him for it, sometimes there is no need, it’s been done in excitement or just for the sake of it, but when he does it in anger, completely on purpose, that’s when I’ll spend half an hour adamantly waiting for him to pick it up. I may have to repeat ‘pick it up’ fifty times, but he will eventually back down and pick it up and then apologise.

So, what have I found has been key to all of this teaching of manners?

REPETITION

This is absolutely key in teaching them their manners (and probably lots of other stuff). Say thank you all the time when they give you something. Say the words ‘say please/thank you’ when you want them to say it. Maybe ask them to get you something, just so you can say the magic words in the right context without having to make them say it. And always make them say sorry. Even if it means you may miss your train!

I am now so proud of my polite little boy. He is two and a half and uses all of his pleases and thank yous in the right places, most of the time off his own back. Yes, he forgets sometimes but he’s little and so long as he does it most of the time, I’m a happy mummy.

A regular conversation will now go something like this:

Me: “Zach would you like some water?” Zach: “Yes please mummy”

Followed by ‘”hank you mummy”, when I hand him said water.