Lauri Berkenkamp

Teaching Your Children Good Manners by Lauri Berkenkamp and Steven C. Atkins, Psy. D. Library section 8K; Life Skills: Building Your Child’s Character. Good manners demonstrate respect for others and make the world a more pleasant place. They are learned over many, many years of everyday living. And of course, we parents are our children’s best models for all behavior, including manners. Kids usually learn to say “please” first because that will often get them what they want – a cookie, a cuddle, a toy. “Thank you’s” take much more prompting. And until a child has felt aggrieved or upset at the hands of another child, she usually won’t learn how to really mean it when she is prompted to say, “I’m sorry” without huffing and rolling her eyes as she says it.
This excellent, funny book covers many topics where manners make the difference between cordiality and disaster: table manners, appropriate language, meeting and greeting, phone etiquette, invitations and commitments, the dreaded thank-you note, manners while traveling, and manners on the sports field. Each chapter begins with The Basics, a list of goals for that chapter. The book then discusses specific methods to teach the goals. For example, in Table Manners, goals are setting the table and helping clean up, sitting at the table and knowing when to start eating, reaching vs. passing, using utensils, talking at the table, and being excused. Each goal is discussed – the reasons for it, and how, when and why children are expected to behave. Then there are age-appropriate activities that can be used at home to teach and reinforce the goals. Questions from parents with the author’s answers follow, and finally age-appropriate expectations help parents measure their children’s growth on these manners as they grow up.
You will surely see your children’s less than stellar manners in some of the situations; I sure did. Potty humor, swearing, or not knowing how to act when being introduced to someone new are common to most kids. This book shows how to explain good manners and reinforce them so you live more courteously at home, and can take your kids out in public without them being an embarrassment to you or to themselves. Good manners make the world a pleasant place where everyone feels good about themselves and others. And if your kids don’t believe you, you can tell them frankly that good manners show that “they haven’t been raised in a pig sty!” More eye rolling, but they will get the point!… (más)