Mr. Polite

Being from the south, manners are quite important to us. Mostly because you can get away with a lot as an adult if you have good manners. :)  Plus, what mom doesn't want to beam as thier child shows the world good manners? My friends all advised, start early, don't wait, because if you miss the window of them listening to you, you are toast!

So Neb and I have been working on B-Boy's manners. It all started when B-Boy began talking. To encourage him using words, we would reward him by letting him have whatever word he used. Once that was mastered, we began Project Manners.

We first changed the rule. It was no longer ok to just say the word to get what he wanted. At first, we would ask him "Can you say please?" It took a few tries before he parroted back "Please!", which sounds more like "Peas!". It didn't take long for him to realize that if he threw a "Please?" on the end of anything, he got it.

If he forgot, we would ask "What do you say?" and almost always got the correct reply.

We started hearing "Please!" a lot. Especially when it came to watching Elmo.

He then evolved his please to be more musical sounding. He would start at his normal tone on the PL part, but slide up an octave on the end for the EASE. Too too cute. We even found ourselves trying to get him to ask for something just so we could hear the cute new musical Please.

Now, all Neb has to do is look at him with THAT LOOK, and he will add a "Please!" to the end of anything. Heh heh.

Once we had that down, we moved on to the concept of "Thank you!".

I am happy to say, he picked that one up much faster, and often says it without any reminder. He will tell anyone- from Neb to me to the checkout lady at the grocery store- "Tank you!".

I think it is only a matter of time before he starts reminding us to say "Thank you!".

Next up, "you are welcome!".