Teaching a Child Manners Is a Headache

By CHARLES M. GUHRIE
of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
November 5, 1955


   THERE MUST be a way to teach manners to moppets, since some of them are mannerly, but any success I've had in this line is regrettably sporadic. My only solace is that other parents are similarly frustrated. The pals of my 6-year-old seem as averse to the little niceties as he is.
   I've long wondered why it is so difficult to cajole, browbeat, beg and admonish a youngster into saying "thank you," "please," "excuse me," "you're welcome" or "come again." But day after endless day the training goes on, with few results showing until the offspring is old enough to shave.
   They will interrupt conversations, leave the table with a lunge that would do credit to a man whose  pants were on fire, remain seated when guests arrive and act like characters raised entirely by jungle law.

   I WAS drafted for the trick-or-treat caper with my son the other evening. He said he was old enough to case the area alone but we deemed it best that the old man tag along in the shadows to see that he put a courteous arm on the neighbors and not get a dog sicked on him.

   The tour was amply productive of sweets. But it was long also on parental rhubarb. "Say thank you," I called gently when the first harvest dropped into his sack. "Say thank you," I hissed from behind a tree during the second stop. By the third I was bellowing it loud enough to hasten the fall of autumn leaves.
   By the sixth I was spoiling for a showdown. "If I don't hear you say thank you at this next house," I rasped, "we quit and go home. Do you think these people are putting jelly beans and popcorn balls into that sack for exercise? Do you, by some twisted logic, think they owe you that stuff? What is so tough about saying thank you?"
   "I am saying thank you," he protested.
   "Say it so I can hear it then."
   When the panhandling was finished and he had made inventory of his loot, my wife said to him: "Now say thank you to Pop for going out with you."
   He gave me a devilish grin and filled his lungs. His burst of gratitude rattled the dishes. He had learned well.

   WE HAVE raised a couple of children into quite gracious adulthood and I recall days when we were complimented on their deportment. Certain harassed parents even asked us our secret. But I suspect that the child whose character we are now molding is no worse, and no better, than were his brother and sister. They gave us trouble, too, but time is a great healer.
   The main stumbling block in our present struggle to implant manners, I suspect, is that our son regards me as just one of the boys. His mother is blessed with an adequate supply of brains and judgment but I border, usually, on the knuckle-head. When he is reading and needs help he brushes past me and goes to his mother. When I tell him it's bedtime he gets confirmation from her.
   I am only good for such simple chores as helping him to untie his shoes or find his undershirt. My main role in his cosmos is for horsing around. I am the bad guy and he is the good guy and we fight and he calls me a big lug, an endearing sobriquet I tolerate with good grace.
   This is no way to win respect, I realize, but it is a way to allay any fear of you a child might entertain, even when you occasionally lay one on him. I want no fear of me in my son. I'd rather be a big lug.

   A FEW months ago we called on a couple who had two boys. It was a brief, chaotic interlude. They were unshushable, irrepressible jokers who insisted on hogging the scenes. I yearned to slap them bowlegged. I dislike violence as a general disciplinary tactic but there are times when it's necessary. Hellions who make a travesty of adult conversation should be dealt with summarily.
   The other day I ran into the ideal situation. I was out extending the right hand of fellowship to some new church members and telling them where to sign the pledge card.

   AT ONE place a lad of about 12 opened the door, told me to come in and sit down and passed me a plate of mints. Then, while he went upstairs to rout father from his Sabbath siesta, his 7-year-old sister and I ate mints and talked about school, a discussion that continued in orderly, ungiggling manner after her brother rejoined us and until the father, who had won my admiration before I saw him, appeared.
   We talked for 20 minutes without an interruption, the children listening politely and occasionally participating. They may have been on their company manners but I doubt it. It seemed too natural for an act.
   If it was an act it was a good one. More youngsters  should be taught the lines.

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