Leading by example

MY three-year-old sometimes flings out her arm at strangers and shouts rudely.

She generally does it when she’s tired, or after a ‘row’ with another child, but it never fails to embarrass me.

In a situation like this, I’m told parental modelling of good behaviour is the way to go so, one afternoon in the supermarket — with my daughter in full arm-swinging-shouting mode — I smile cheerily and say ‘hi’ to perfect strangers. It works — soon my toddler is charming everyone in the aisles with her friendly good manners.

I congratulate myself — until we get to the exit. She spies a tiny peer in a toy tractor and — with vigorous aplomb — out comes the arm, out comes the shout. But I’m still a dogged devotee of modelling the behaviour you want.

Parent coach Marian Byrne agrees. When it comes to teaching children good manners, she says the overriding maxim is ‘what you [parent] do speaks so loudly, I [child] can’t hear what you’re saying’. “If you stand on the bus to let someone older sit, if you bump into someone on the street and say sorry — your child is seeing this behaviour being modelled and, subliminally, they pick this up and do it too,” says Byrne.

Some parents allow kids to tweet while at the dinner table, so teaching good manners might seem a tad old-fashioned. But saying ‘please’, ‘thank you’, or allowing others go first, are not just simple niceties. They’re fundamentally important.

“Good manners are ways of acting and interacting with people that are respectful,” says Byrne, who recalls saying ‘pass the salt’ at table, her dad picking it up and looking questioningly at her and she then remembering to say ‘please’. “You then went out in the world and did it naturally.”

When children behave in ways that aren’t mannerly, it helps to note they’re not doing it to be ‘bad or bold’, says Byrne. It’s often out of exuberance or lack of knowledge. So — best not to scold. “If you’re giving out all the time, it becomes a battleground.” For example, if junior interrupts while your friend’s talking, make eye contact and say ‘when Mary’s finished, we’ll listen to your story’. And what of the arm-flinging toddler? “Come down to eye level with her, use her name and create a picture — ‘we keep our hands down by our sides until we get home, imagine your hands stuck to your sides with glue’,” advises Byrne.