In honor of my mom, who taught me which fork to use for what when there are three forks at my place setting… and how to eat spaghetti politely… and how to use chopsticks… and how to wait to start eating dessert until everyone is served, I thought I’d review a few children’s books on the subject.
Achoo! Good Manners Can Be Contagious is a fun, modern approach to manners. 3 simple rules taught by farm animals who then learn the golden rule is more important than any other rule. While I don’t agree that good manners will solve all the world’s problems (as the happy ending in this book suggests), I do appreciate its focus on being kind to others as the most important social “rule.”
The Polite Elephant by Richard Scarry definitely falls into the classic book category and it follows a more traditional approach to teaching manners. The polite elephant is held up as an example of what to do when playing, eating, saying hello, etc. I hope Caleb learns to be a gentleman on par with the polite elephant!
Caleb loves both of these books, and the benefit of reading them has been opening conversation with Caleb that we wouldn’t otherwise have. We’ve been teaching Caleb to say “please” and “thank you” even before he could verbalize those thoughts, but these books take good manners a bit further and help me consider what else we should be teaching Caleb. Incidentally, Caleb didn’t know he could chew with his mouth open until we read Achoo! Maybe we should just stay away from the books…
But from this video, it looks like we’d better keep reading. We have a lot of work to do.
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