Doctor Perri Klass writes For kids' good health, teach them manners
My favorite child-rearing book is "Miss Manners' Guide to Rearing Perfect Children," by Judith Martin, who takes the view that manners are at the heart of the whole parental enterprise. I called her to ask why. "Every infant is born adorable but selfish and the center of the universe," she replied. It's a parent's job to teach that "there are other people, and other people have feelings."
The conversations that every pediatrician has, over and over, about "limit setting" and "consistently praising good behavior" are conversations about manners.
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I like Miss Manners' approach because it lets a parent respect a child's intellectual and emotional privacy: I'm not telling you to like your teacher; I'm telling you to treat her with courtesy. I'm not telling you that you can't hate Tommy; I'm telling you that you can't hit Tommy. Your feelings are your own private business; your behavior is public.
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But that first big counterintuitive lesson - that there are other people out there whose feelings must be considered - affects a child's most basic moral development. For a child, as for an adult, manners represent a strategy for getting along in life, but also a successful intellectual engagement with the business of being human.
I love the graphic by Jillian Tamaki that accompanies the piece in the International Herald Tribune.
