Having manners is a lost art these days, and don’t hold your breath on receiving a please or thank you.
Sad thing is, as adults we are subconsciously adopting these practices and although we know better our kids don’t and they are mimicking what we do.
I make a conscious effort to display proper manners to my family and people that I come in contact with while in public. I want my children to learn from example that they should be kind to everyone and please and thank you should come as second nature.
Getting my children and husband to understand the importance of saying please and thank you isn’t an easy job. I promise at times he is worse than the children.
What better reinforcement than Barney, or Big Bird calling your child by name and letting them know you are proud of them for displaying manners. I was kind of hype to learn about Sprout’s Kindness Counts program, cause you know they listen to those characters more than they listen to you.
You go online, input your child’s name, the act of kindness that you would like to recognize them for and you select a character and a video is created with the character saying the child’s name and the act of kindness they are being recognized for.
Addison looooved it. I tried to video her reaction but it wasn’t the same the second time around.
Go online here to play with the program.
*I was provided information regarding this program but all opinions are my own*
3 Comments
YUMMommy
June 30, 2012 at 4:39 pmWe love Sprout! Moo has her moments when she likes to clean up but you put on that clean up sound from the Goodnight Show with Nina and Star and she gets to work. I don’t know what it is but I appreciate because it prevents a lot of timeouts from going down over here.
Mrs. Pancakes
July 1, 2012 at 12:23 amWhat a great program…something I have to try when little man gets here!!
KalleyC
July 2, 2012 at 11:04 amI’ve never heard of sprout, but I think I will go check it out. I agree with you, manners has gone away with the times lately. But with Zee, since she was little, I always said please and thank you to her, because like you said, they do copy what we do.
The good news about doing that with your child, is that they pick up on it, and they don’t even need reminding. Zee now says excuse me when someone is in her way, thank you when someone does something nice for her, and please when she wants something.
I agree with you though, its hard to get the whole family on board with it though.