How to Raise Polite Kids in a Rude World

By Suzanne Chazin

From Reader's Digest

Minding Their Manners

Mention ill-mannered children and most people roll their eyes at the memory of a little hellion and his boorish parents. I still get angry about an incident that happened last summer. We were staying at a country inn that had a small movie theater. Before every evening's presentation, my husband and I instructed our three-year-old son to sit quietly. Except for an occasional whispered question, he sat in rapt attention.

The soundtrack, however, was impossible to hear. That's because two children bounced on their seats, talked loudly and raced up and down the aisles. Never once did I see a parent. After several evenings of this, I followed the children to the dining room. There sat a man and woman enjoying a relaxed meal.

"My family is having a hard time watching the film with your children running all over the theater," I said. "Do you think if they're not interested in the movie, you could keep them out here?"

The father regarded me coolly. "We've paid for the use of the inn's facilities," he said. "Our children can go anywhere they please."

I was dumbfounded. What could make a seemingly rational couple condone behavior that is so obviously rude? Have we as a society become so consumed with our own needs and the impulses of our children that everyone else's rights are ignored?

"Take a look at television these days, and it's becoming almost commonplace to be arrogant and crude," notes psychologist Thomas Achenbach of the University of Vermont.

Comparing assessments of American children in the mid-1970s and the late 1980s, Achenbach found that children in the latter group were, on average, more impulsive and disobedient than their counterparts a decade and a half earlier. The fraying of the nuclear family and the demands on working parents, many experts believe, have produced a generation of children who can program a computer but don't know how to write a thank-you note.

Even parents who strive to teach their children manners are appalled at how easily those lessons can be undone by what takes place beyond their homes. Leann Aykut of Scottsdale, Ariz., knows this well. One day her 11-year-old son found his sister using his telephone in his room. "Get off my phone," he yelled, calling her an obscene name.

Aykut raced to her son's room. "You've no right to talk to your sister like that," she scolded.

The boy shrugged. He explained that a friend had been arguing with his mother and called her by that term.

"We never talk that way in this house," Aykut said firmly.

While you can't protect your children from what goes on outside your home, experts believe that with patience and persistence, parents can do a lot to make their children beauties in our world full of beasts.

When a 16-year-old Florida high-schooler came home from volleyball practice one day, she appeared troubled. "What's wrong?" her mother asked. The teen explained that her coach chose another girl over her best friend for the varsity team. Her friend's mother was livid. Driving the girls home, she flew into a rage, cursing and calling the coach all sorts of names.

Many parents seem to have adopted the attitude "My child, right or wrong"--with devastating results. "Being a parent means being mature enough to help a child adapt to disappointment," Achenbach says. "Parents who can't accept when their child isn't No. 1 send the message that when you're frustrated, you blame the source of frustration instead of looking for a way to cope." Instead of urging a child to study harder for better grades, some parents blame the teacher. Instead of punishing a child for violating a school policy, they battle the policy.

A better message, experts say, is to teach children that while they cannot always control the outcome of every situation, they can control how they respond. "Children must learn to behave more gallantly than they feel," says "Miss Manners" columnist and author Judith Martin. Being gallant, says Martin, is about more than simply saying "please" and "thank you." It's about not boasting or calling someone names behind their back, about winning fairly and losing graciously, and treating everyone with respect.

Of course, all the training in the world won't persuade a child to behave gallantly if his parents become aggressive, demanding and rude at the slightest provocation. That's why experts agree the best way for parents to improve a child's manners is to improve their own first.

Parents need to be especially vigilant not to say something casually that they may be alarmed to hear later in the mouths of their children. A wife who tells her husband to shut up and a father who calls a neighbor a jerk are likely to hear their children speak the same way to them.

"If we aren't practicing good manners, how can we expect our children to?" notes etiquette author Mary Mitchell.

Prompt and Praise

"You're such a mess; you never clean up your room." "You'd better write that thank-you note or you're not watching TV." "Don't you raise your voice to me." Most parents have said these things to their children. They're meant to correct behavior. Why, then, do they fail so miserably?

Because rude behavior in children is more often the result of thoughtlessness than of deliberate aggression. Criticism, name-calling and orders only make a child angry and defensive. They reinforce the notion that the child is incapable of good behavior without coercion.

A better approach is something Alan Kazdin, a psychologist at Yale University, calls prompt and praise. Before an event the parent explains the expected behavior in a noncritical way: "When we visit Aunt Mary today, I'd be so proud if you could shake her hand and pull out her chair at dinner." Afterward, praise the child: "I really liked the way you shook Aunt Mary's hand and offered a chair."

Says Kazdin, "The idea is to do this often enough so you can eventually move away from the prompt and just give the praise."

But what about the times when a child has already committed an offending act? "Correct the child by blaming it on the house rules," advises etiquette consultant Joan Hopper. Every family should have some basic rules that everyone agrees on and will follow.

So rather than saying "You're such a slob. Get your elbows off the table," a parent can simply state, "Our family rule is that elbows don't go on the table." By correcting the behavior rather than the child, you defuse a child's defensiveness and keep the correction from sounding like an order.

A criticism delivered this way does tend to get results, as Ellen Weeks, 15, of West Hartford, Connecticut, will attest. Every morning Ellen's parents or one of her friends' parents would drive a group of students to school. When the car pulled up, Ellen used to wordlessly plunk herself in the back seat, sit silently, then rush out of the car at the school curb.

One morning after Ellen had hopped into the car, the driver, a father of one of the girls, turned around and asked, "How come no one says 'good morning' to me?"

"I'd never thought about it from his perspective before," Ellen admits. "I'm glad he told us how he felt." Now she and the others say "good morning" when they get into the car.

Develop Rituals

Coretta Jefferson's household is like many across America. The mother of two in Weston, West Virginia, often doesn't have the energy to coordinate everyone's schedule around a sit-down dinner. Her eight-year-old son plays baseball and soccer, and her husband has a pool tournament two nights a week. "Gathering together for dinner is important," she says, "but I can't see it happening in my lifetime."

Experts say that a half-hour to an hour of sit-down family time each day may be the most important thing parents can do for their children. "Cooperation, punctuality, conversation skills and respect are all learned around the dining table," says etiquette teacher Tiffany Francis.

Even if a family can't eat together every night, they should strive to get together at least once or twice a week. That means switching on the telephone answering machine and shutting off the television. "Dinnertime is not simply about eating but about sharing your day as a family," says Mary Mitchell. It's a time when parents can gently impart their values and morals without sounding as if they're lecturing.

Develop Rituals

Attitudes of respect, modesty and fair play can grow only out of slowly acquired skills that parents teach their children over many years through shared experience and memory. If a child reaches adulthood with recollections only of television, Little League and birthday parties, then that child has little to draw on when a true test of character comes up -- say, in a prickly business situation. "Unless that child feels grounded in who he is and where he comes from, everything else is an act," says etiquette expert Betty Jo Trakimas.

The Dickmeyers of Carmel, Indiana, reserve every Friday night as "family night" with their three children. Often the family plays board games or hide-and-seek. "My children love it," says Theresa, their mother.

Can playing hide-and-seek really teach a child about manners? Yes, say Trakimas and others, because it tells the child that his parents care enough to spend time with him, he is loved and can learn to love others. "Manners aren't about using the right fork," agrees etiquette instructor Patricia Gilbert-Hinz. "Manners are about being kind -- giving compliments, team-playing, making tiny sacrifices. Children learn that through their parents."

While children don't automatically warm to the idea of learning to be polite, there's no reason for them to see manners as a bunch of stuffy restrictions either. They're the building blocks of a child's education. "Once a rule becomes second nature, it frees us," Mitchell says. How well could Tiger Woods play golf if he had to keep reminding himself of the rules?

Judith Martin concurs. "A polite child grows up to get the friends and the dates and the job interviews," she says, "because people respond to good manners. It's the language of all human behavior."