Homeschoolers and Cultivating Good Manners
Pardon me, please.
An important aspect of learning to get along with others is learning to be considerate of others. Courtesy is not in born: he just talked courtesy does not well up from the depths of the child loving desire to see other people happy at the cost of his own convenience inconvenience. He does not just naturally like to take his turn, to wait for an older person to go ahead of him, to take the smaller cookie so that Johnny can have a larger one. This is not the way human beings are made up: they have to be taught this kind of conduct.
As the child grows older, he’s going to find himself in social situations, which will be cumbersome for him, unless through parental teaching, he has the tools with which to cope with these exigencies. The more tools with which the youngster has been provided through his early training, the better prepared. He is to handle these new social situations, which he will be things. I surrounding the boy or girl with an atmosphere of politeness in the home, I teaching him or her to say, pardon me, please, thank you, I’m sorry, parents are teaching the child valuable social skills which he will need later.
Some object that the small child should not be taught these niceties of behavior until he is old enough to understand the meaning of what he is saying. Teaching the child what to say and when to say it may not have much meaning for him in his very early years, but the child who has been taught these courtesies gradually comes to feel the meaning behind them. This is especially true if the child is exposed to the climate of politeness in the home. Having cultivated these niceties of conduct, the child is more comfortable with himself and with others.
This learning of good manners is closely related to the child’s development of social skills. When he expresses the discourtesy his consideration of others, other people warm-up to the child were madly: they like him more sincerely. This in turn causes the child to like these people more than he otherwise would. We are, as we’ve seen, concerned that the child develop self-confidence and inner emotional security. In doing that is, let’s not forget that external security is equally important. We work against the child’s developing external security. When we fail to cultivate in Hindi habits and attitudes of courtesy.
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