How to reinforce manners with fun

By Stacie Gaetz

Some of the most important skills we can teach our children involve using their manners and interacting with those around them.

Good social skills allow your children to make friends in school, find a significant other, get a job, be promoted and be more successful throughout their lives.

However, when it seems like every lesson you try to teach them about saying their please and thank yous goes in one ear and out the other, it can get frustrating for both you and them.

Yelling and nagging has never effectively taught anyone anything so how can you help your children learn the social skills they need to thrive?

The answer is easy: Add a little fun!

Read books

There are many books out there about how to use your manners and be courteous.

When I have noticed a lack of politeness in our house, my favorite go-tos are the ones that include humor. Berenstain Bears Forget their Manners, The Bad Seed and Dude, That’s Rude are some of our top choices to get our manners in check.

Play games

There are several fun games you can play with your kids to encourage the use of manners. The easiest (and most effective) is to use common courtesy during imaginative play with their toys and stuffed animals. Whether they are having teatime or fighting crime, you can help the toys be kind and considerate and encourage your kiddo to do the same. Other manners and etiquette-related games come in the form of online pintables like The Monster Manners Game where kids sort out pictures of monsters and put them in the closet or under the bed depending on whether what they say is polite or rude.

Watch videos

There are several YouTube videos about the importance of and how to use your manners. We also like TV shows like Sesame Street and Daniel Tiger for this. A great movie to watch together that helps children better understand emotions and feelings is Disney’s Inside Out.

Sing songs

Search “The Manners Song” on YouTube and you will get dozens of ideas. Watch several of them and decide which your family likes best, then break into song whenever your kids need a reminder. This works well because you get to be silly instead of nagging to correct their behavior. Warning – these songs are catchy! Be prepared to have them stuck in your head for a week!

Good Manners Box

Every kid loves getting rewards! There are many ways to make a manners box. Use a box or jar and have the child decorate it however they like. Then you can use pieces of paper with the polite thing your child did or “coins” of some sort to keep track. Every time they use their manners or are polite or kind to someone, it goes in the jar. Watching it fill up can be reward of its own or they can receive a bigger treat (like going out for ice cream) once they have a certain number of papers or coins in there.

Teach T.H.I.N.K

This one has been very helpful in our family, and we even have it posted on our fridge. Often kids say things before they speak, especially to their siblings, and what comes out can be hurtful. Encourage them to T.H.I.N.K before they say something. Have them ask themselves, is it:

T – True

H – Helpful

I – Inspiring

N – Necessary

K – Kind

Crumpled hearts

Empathy is not always a skill that comes easily to all children. If your young child is having trouble understanding why they need to be polite and kind to others, try this simple exercise with them. Draw and cut out a paper heart for each member of the family to represent their feelings. Then get one member to say something mean to another and the one receiving the insult will crimple their heart. Do that with each member until all the hearts are crumpled. Then have each member try to unwrinkle their heart and your children will see that it is impossible to get the heart back to the way it was.

Write thank you cards

Some would say this is a dying art, but it is important to teach our children to be thankful and grateful. Appreciating what you have and giving thanks to those who deserve it can vastly improve your mood and overall outlook on life. These thank you notes can be on paper and hand delivered or mailed, or via email or text. Encourage your children to take the time to really think about why they are thankful for what they received. Rather than “Thanks for the game,” they could write “I really appreciate the Spot it! game you got me for my birthday. We enjoy playing it together as a family in the evenings and it is teaching us about matching!”

Respect bingo

This is a great way to encourage your kids to see the good manners and polite deeds of those around them. When your children see someone doing one of the actions on their card, they get to color it in. Examples of items on their cards can be:

• Clean up a messy area
• Ask permission before you do something
• Apologize without being asked to
• Use kind words
• Help someone who needs it
• Listen and follow instructions
• Take turns
• Be positive about doing something you don’t want to.

The best part of this game is that they are doing everyone a favor if they decide to “cheat” and do some of the deeds themselves so they can color them in.

There’s an app for that

A quick search in the App Store will show you the manners related games that are out there. Sir Dapp! is a great one that is set up like a game show where kids answer questions with what they think is the most appropriate answer. Maddie and Matt’s A to Z’s of Good Manners And Values, A Quest for Good Manners and Little Steps To Good Habits are also great options.

Bonus idea: Learning about the different manners in cultures around the world can get your children excited about the subject. They might be particularly interested to know that in China and Taiwan it is considered polite to slurp your food and burp after a meal or that people in the Middle East, Africa, South Asia and South America often eat with their hands rather than utensils.