Feel like cringing every time you witness another adult waiting in awkward silence for your child to say “Please” or “Thank you”—and it doesn’t happen?
Feel like cringing every time you witness another adult waiting in awkward silence for your child to say “Please” or “Thank you”—and it doesn’t happen? Dr. Nanika Coor explains how to handle these unsettling situations and how to help your child develop the ability to use appropriate social behavior at the appropriate times.
Project Parenthood is hosted by Dr. Nanika Coor. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Hey parents! You're listening to the Project Parenthood podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Nanika Coor, clinical psychologist and respectful parenting therapist. Each week, I’ll introduce you to the same respectful parenting practices that I use to help parents repair and deepen connections with their children. You’ll get tips for cultivating more parental self-compassion, more cooperation from your kids, and more joy, peace, and resilience in your relationship with them.
In today’s episode, I’m talking about how to help your child understand and use manners, politeness, and consideration for other people. Stick around till the end to learn how to respond when your child demands something of you without adding “please”!
Adults can get really triggered by the fact that their small children aren’t picking up on what seem like obvious social cues. Parents want to know when their child will reliably and consistently start to say things like please, thank you, and pardon me.
It’s common for parents to view child behaviors through the lenses of adult-to-adult interactions. But it doesn’t make sense to hold a 4-year-old to the same standard as an adult. Little kids don’t always know how to use words to get their needs met. Children don’t understand the ramifications of their words and behaviors (or lack of them) or what that might mean in a social and/or cultural context.
So how can parents help kids develop consideration for others’ feelings, needs, efforts, and personal space? How do kids learn to follow social norms and cultural codes of conduct?
A key component for using appropriate social behavior at the appropriate times is the capacity for empathy. Beginning from a few hours after birth until about 9 months of age, babies can experience “contagious crying” in the presence of another crying baby. This is called affective empathy—an automatic and reflexive emotional reactivity in the face of someone else’s distress. Between ages 1-3, children begin to show their empathic concern and emotional reactivity to others’ emotions in more complex ways—vocally, and through their facial expressions and gestures. These displays of concern are rudimentary forms of later prosocial behavior, which are voluntary behaviors that benefit another person.
At age 4 kids are just starting to understand and be able to verbally describe another person’s perspective—this is the beginning of cognitive empathy development which continues to develop through adolescence. Kids get better at identifying simple emotions like sadness in others around age 7, and more complex emotions like disgust around ages 10-13.
Having empathic concern for others is a component of a child’s conscience, which are the internal standards a child develops for determining ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ behaviors and which to use when. A child’s conscience is shaped by their reflexive emotions experienced in response to real or imagined consequences of their behavior, their capacities for self-control, and the parental values and standards that kids allow themselves to be influenced by.
The desire to modify their behavior due to its effect on others depends on your child having empathic concern toward others. And the desire to change a behavior to avoid displeasing or disappointing a parent, teacher, or peer depends on your child being able to recognize and care about someone else’s emotions.
Parenting practices that enhance the development of empathy include:
Joining in with parents to do prosocial activities together can also increase your child’s likelihood of using prosocial behaviors with others. Invite your child to participate in household chores and caring for other family members. As young as 13 months, or whenever your child starts walking on their own, you can invite your child to ‘help’ you wipe the table or sweep the floor. The goal isn’t for them to do the task efficiently, it’s to learn that the task exists and a little about what it feels like to be an active and important participant in the family.
Parent educator Robin Einzig suggests that parents trust that modeling the behaviors you want to see in your child is enough, and that when your kids are ready, they will use the behaviors you’ve been modeling. Be sure you’re using your own pleases, thank yous, and I’m sorrys consistently in your child’s presence.
You can use invitations to help with everyday household tasks to model graciousness. You might clean up a spill they’ve made and allow them to refuse. If they do refuse, simply state. “That’s okay—I’m sure you’ll help next time,” drop the issue and clean up the spill yourself. Instead of reacting from a place of worry about their future of laziness, resentment about being your child’s personal housekeeper, or punitive anger that leads to you retaliating against them in some way—model what it looks like to be generous, helpful, and altruistic. Clean up the spill with neutrality rather than rage if you can, and move on. Trust and believe that when your child is ready, they will act in altruistic and helpful ways as well.
When you’re reading books or consuming other media with your child where someone is using good or bad manners, point it out. Take these opportunities to talk about how a character’s manners helped or hindered them socially.
Let kids know why you’re doing or saying certain things—that manners convey connection, respect, and consideration for others, and shows your friendliness or kindness. This can also be done proactively. Before heading to the playground you can tell your child that you might run into some neighbors on the way who may say hello to you both, and when people say hello to us, they’re expecting that we’ll say hello in return. You can ask them ahead of time if they’d prefer to say hello with their words, a wave, or a high-five, or if they’d rather you just say hello. These kinds of conversations give kids a window into someone else’s perspective.
Start a “2 Kind Things” practice with your child. At dinnertime or bedtime, each person states one kind thing they did for someone else that day, and one kind thing someone did for them—and how they showed their appreciation for it. If your child can’t think of anything, just offer your own two kindnesses or perhaps a kindness you saw them give or receive.
For this week’s parenting challenge, try to model graciousness when your child omits the language of social niceties. Without shaming your child or withholding something they want until they say the “magic words”—gently give them a replacement phrase they might use in the future. Here are some examples to get you started.
Child: I want milk!
Parent: You want a glass of milk, please? Sure!
Child (to restaurant server): I want lemonade!
Parent (to server, with a gentle hand on the child’s back): She’d like some lemonade, please.
Child: rips open a gift that Auntie has just given them, tosses it aside, and asks for the next gift.
Parent (to Auntie, with a gentle hand on the child’s back): Thanks so much for the toy, Auntie!
Your Child: accidentally bumps into Sam, who falls down.
You, to Sam: I’m so sorry that happened, Sam. Are you OK?
You, to your child: You bumped into Sam and he fell down. That hurt his body and now he’s crying. Let’s see what we can do to help him feel better.
Let me know how it goes!
Encourage and model empathy and altruism in the moment and proactively. Even role-playing games where you get to play an unruly ill-mannered character who eventually figures out that being kind and polite is a better way to connect with others and to have others interested in being connected with you.
Very young children are only at the beginning of their many-year journey of learning how to be a functioning person in the social world. They’re muddling through how to be with each other and what it’s like to have an impact on one another. They need many bite-sized bits of information about navigating social situations and understanding social expectations. Think about teaching manners as a long game: you’re going to have thousands of chances to have one-sentence conversations about appropriate social behavior. So call up your patience and compassion and let your kids know how manners help make social interaction so much smoother!
I hope that’s helpful! You can learn more about my work with parents at www.brooklynparenttherapy.com and on Instagram at BKPARENTS.
If you have more questions about your child using good manners, or any other parenting questions or stories, leave me a message at (646) 926-3243 and be sure to let me know if it's okay to use your voice on the show. Or, send an email to parenthood@quickanddirtytips.com. And don’t forget to subscribe to Project Parenthood on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Catch you next week!