Teaching Your Toddler Manners

Manners are one thing that we have always tried to work on with Cruz. In my eyes, a "please" or "thank you" goes a long way.

Fortunately Cruz picked up on this early and very rarely does he not use good manners. Whether it be "yes please" when I ask if he wants milk with his dinner or "bless you" when someone sneezes, this kid actually does a pretty good job.

For the most part.

For us, some of the most important tips to teaching Cruz to use good manners have been:

• Model the behavior yourself. If you want your child to use good manners, then you should do the same.
• Be consistent. Use the words consistently in every day communication so your child gets used to hearing it.
• Praise good behavior.  When they say please or thank you, tell them thank you for using their manners. A little praise goes a long way with kiddos. Oftentimes, after I say thank you, it's no fail that Cruz will say, "does that make you happy, mama?"

Most recently, we have been working on "may I please be excused" when he wants to leave the table. I mean, I'll be honest when I say that I'm pretty sure I've never said this in my entire life, but remember this is all about making your kiddo waaaay better than you ever were, right?

And don't get me wrong, Cruz is not all please and thank you and smiles and roses.

Case in point...

Sooo, that is supposed to be him saying "may I please be excused, mama."

Uh huh, you heard that right. He instead said, "may I scuse me please, dummy."

My immediate reaction? "Cruz, you don't say dummy!"

"But mama, gran says it."

"Gran?" Who the hell is gran?

"Gran. From the Croods. She says 'we need some more fire, dummy.' Remember?"

Great. The TV I'm letting him watch is not only rotting his brain (or so I've heard) but now it's teaching him to use the word dummy.  Can a mom ever win?

On the other hand, I was more than happy to oblige when he sweetly asked me if he could please wear his "bomb" jacket to school.

Jacket // Camo Pants ($8 at ON right now!) // Nikes

Does it get any sweeter? I'm kind of digging the new 'sweep over' hair style he's been rocking these days.

The hair? It's all his daddy, I can't get it to do anything but stick up all over.

This Morning..

This morning while I was dropping little man off at daycare, I witnessed one of the older infants pushing him around, pulling him back by his shirt and not letting up. I'm pretty sure I had a moment of over-protective mama (like a mama bear with her cubs) and it took all I had not to walk over and take his hands off my little guy.

I stood watching it for a while. Cruz was playing with some blocks and this bigger infant (yes, mind you, we are in the older INFANT room) kept pulling on his shirt - pulling him back, pushing him forward and making little man even more unbalanced than he already is, close to toppling over.

I realize now it wasn't a big deal and the other kiddo didn't know what he was doing, but it gets me thinking of how I'm going to react when Cruz comes home from school and tells me another kid was mean to him, called him names, pushed him, you name it. Let me just tell you, it won't go well. I've already experienced moments of extreme sadness (& slight anger) when my sister told me about times her son, Kayden, had been made fun of for a stocking hat he wore to school and came home crying about it because they were so mean - I wanted to find that little kid and teach him some manners. Or the time her daughter, Dayvaney, was basically unconsoleable because her best friend at school told her she didn't want to be her friend anymore. Or worse yet, the time the principal at Kayden's school called him out in front of the rest of the kids in his class and told him he couldn't wear his hair that way (and didn't have the common sense to tell his parents instead) - dude, he was six, its not like he does his own hair. And THEN when Kayden had the sense to talk it through with Tessa and come up with what he thought was a solution and shared it with the principal, he was told "No, that won't work. That's not a good idea." and it made him even more upset.

Situations like this, while small, definitely get me thinking about all of the stuff we're going to have to deal with. What is the best way to handle these situations? How would parents react to being confronted with this about their child? How do I ensure I'm instilling good manners into our little guy so he doesn't turn out to be one of the bad guys? What if....what if...what if...