Addressing Bad Manners: How Parents Can Cope
There will always be a few exceptions to this rule but most behaviors construed as bad manners could also be considered good manners depending on the circumstances. Let us give it a try. Eye contact in Western cultures is considered good manners. It is seen as a way to respect the person you are interacting with. However, in Asian cultures it can be seen as bad manners showing a lack of respect for superiors. Eye 
contact is also avoided in Latin cultures to demonstrate respect. Bad manners become good and good manners become bad depending on the culture. For your child the school culture is an example where manners that might be good at home or in a certain social settings and are considered bad manners in the school setting. Let us say your child needs to call their grandmother to see if she needs help taking the trash out. At home this call would be considered good manners while using a cell phone in the middle of history class is bad manners. In a general conversational situation it is important to ask questions of the other person. This is considered good manners. However, if the person’s body language is saying, “I need to go”, and we continue to ask questions to prolong the conversation this can be considered bad manners. Other examples of bad manners becoming good manners might be talking behind someone’s back. Where might talking behind someone’s back be good? Planning a surprise anniversary or birthday party would qualify. What about peer pressure? Most often seen as bad manners peer pressure can also be used for good if peers put on a little pressure to go out and exercise or get involved in a community service project. I I am sure you can think of many more examples!
The point of this discussion is to draw attention to the fact that things are not always clear cut good and bad manners. For this reason children need to be directly taught the socially, culturally, and circumstantially appropriate expectations they will encounter in life’s numerous settings. In attaining this knowledge they will be able to confidently and respectfully maneuver the world they live in and better display the good manners appropriate in specific situations.
The key to addressing this and properly preparing your child for changing expectations is a simple three step process familiar to many educators: talk about it, show it, and do it. An example question to ask might be, “What are you allowed to do at home that might be considered bad manners at school and vise versa (talking before raising hand, moving from one room to the next without asking, taking a nap)?” Then show your child what the behavior looks like both inappropriate and appropriate for each situation. Next, they should do the behavior themselves at home with you and at school and report on how their behavior was received. Remind them to note how the two environments have different expectations. Going through this process will help them internalize the appropriate and inappropriate manners with greater strength. The relevance for displaying these appropriate manners is also important to emphasize and surely a point your child will bring up. The consequences they encounter from both the good and bad manners they display will be a good place to start. Functioning in school, passing onto the next grade, showing respect for others, and making friends with others might be areas to discuss.
Other ways to review good and bad manners in different contexts would be to list various actions with your child. Then discuss the circumstances where it would be considered good manners and then bad manners. A few examples might be speaking soft or loud, making a joke, peer pressure, listening to music (i-pod), using cell phone, talking with friends. This will help them begin to understand appropriate manners change from setting to setting and at the same time begin to instill the knowledge of the appropriate manners to use in different situations.
How BoostKids Can Help:
BoostKids is a program that can help increase a child’s confidence by teaching social skills to children and building their character. BoostKids has been and is currently being taught in schools, non-profit organizations, and after-school programs. The program is now available as an at-home training program for children and their parents. The key training tool of the BoostKids program is an interactive CD-ROM that shows kids the right-way and the wrong-way to handle social situations. They learn from real kid actors in real-life scenerios!
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By Charlie Copp - Executive Director of Boost Kids
About the author: Charlie Copp is the executive director for BOOST KIDS, an interactive CD ROM-based program for kids ages six and up, that teaching children social skills and strong character across the nation. His work with BOOST KIDS confirms what Copp has always believed: that kids and teens are hungry for character-building life skills, and with them gain the confidence needed to succeed in the classroom, on the playing field, in their interpersonal relationships, and on the job.
