Parenting Basics: “What’s the Magic Word?”

Grandma was right! There is an easy way and a hard way to raise kids. By and large, today’s parents are choosing the hard way. This series of blogs will tackle familiar phrases that used to be commonplace but fell out of favor during the last few decades of the 20th century—and why parents should not be afraid to follow the sentiment expressed in the phrases.

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I’m often asked how you teach manners. The simple answer is just like you teach everything else: by example and instruction. If you’re not minding your own manners, then your children aren’t going to mind theirs.

For example, my husband and I realized a while ago that we were not setting a good example at the dinner table. We were mumbling around food in our mouths and interrupting each other and our children. So we instituted a “game” that would call out the offender for those infractions in a fun way—and as a result, we’re all eating more pleasantly and not interrupting nearly as often as before.

Start teaching manners when your children are young and add to the expectations as they grow. Parents have been using, “What’s the Magic Word?” to prompt usage of “please” for years, a phrase that is still in use today. That phrase works only on young children, though. Once a child is older, you should expect that he’ll remember to say “please” on his own. The prompting is for a toddler who doesn’t recall the proper way to ask and is more likely to demand than request.

Remember that manners are for others more than for oneself—and teaching our children respect, compassion, character, civilization and a better family through manners is no easy job. The small ways in which we honor others by thinking of them first--that's what manners are really about!--can often enrich the lives of others in ways we may never know.

So when it seems like no one else is instructing their children in manners, take heart and keep plugging away. Teaching manners is a gift we parents give to the community at large. Our job to civilize the little heathens that are our children can be thankless at times, but we are sowing seeds that will reap a harvest in the years to come.