You can teach your children good manners by showing them model behavior or through games and activities. Make it fun with these 5 Activities That Will Teach Your Kids Manners.
Teaching your kids manners is not all that tough if you are willing to put some time into it. Manners are largely habit based and kids will reflect what they see most of the time. The key here is to use manners in your daily life and your kids will follow suit. The other way to teach your kid manners is through fun activities and games. Here are 5 Activities That Will Teach Your Kids Manners.
5 Activities That Will Teach Your Kids Manners
Play House
One of the easiest activities to teach a kid manners is to simply apply the manners in real time. When you play house together, behave the way you want them to behave. You have a chance to be the kid and do the right thing. This shows them in real time and real situations how you wish for them to behave. Don’t forget to challenge those thoughts by doing wrong occasionally and letting them “correct” your behavior.
Use Flash Cards
Putting manners on flash cards and then working with your young children is a highly effective way to deal with this. Flash cards are wonderful ways to ensure you have shared everything. Manners can slip through the cracks and it is easy to overlook some. Sit down and brainstorm all kinds of good manners lessons to put on the cards and add to them as you think of them.
Take them to a special “grown up” place.
Kids understand the difference between a kid place and a grown up place. Visiting a grown up place is a special thing and they will want to act accordingly. This is one way to elicit the type of attention span needed to truly learn manners. Kids that are invested and want to learn something are much more likely to do the right thing.
Put them in charge of manners at dinner.
Kids love to feel like they are in charge and it will help them to invest in the behavior. Purposefully make mistakes throughout dinner so that your kid can correct you and learn in the process. Manners are important and take the activity seriously to have the best effect.
Observe people in public.
When you sit on a park bench in public, you can literally get a master’s degree in good and bad manners. Spend some time out in the public with your kid and share what you see. Your child will be much more likely to follow examples set like this than if you are trying to correct them as they go. Kids tend to do what we want if they know the requirement ahead of time. Give them the tools needed.
Teaching kids manners is really all about raising awareness and investing the time. If you do both of these things, your situation will change drastically.
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Jean | DelightfulRepast.com says
Alea, these are wonderful ideas. I especially like the idea, in the first and fourth, of letting them “catch” you doing something unmannerly!