How to Raise Polite Kids in a Rude World (page 4 of 4)

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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."