Etiquette Today: Teaching Toddlers
Think etiquette is too big a concept for teaching it to toddlers? Think again.
Teaching Toddlers Etiquette & Manners
People are not born with good behavioral skills, they learn them. Anyone who has been around kids knows that it is a regular and consistent effort to get them to mind their manners and focus on how their behavior might be impacting others. It’s a huge effort and it takes more than a child’s parent(s) to raise a child to be an adult who is considerate, respectful, and honest. These fundamental principles of etiquette are the tools needed to build strong relationships with family and friends long after childhood.
But how young should you start? Can toddlers learn concepts like consideration, respect, and honesty? Yes and no. While toddlers may not understand abstract principles and concepts, at this age they can practice or even play at basic behaviors and manners that come from these concepts and learn how they work. Let’s look at consideration, respect, and honesty and how manners for toddlers can be taught to support them.
Consideration
Most three-year-olds, are able to understand that sharing and caring (thoughtfulness) make other people feel good. They can see both the smiles it brings to others and feel the good feelings they experience when someone is considerate of them. Reading a favorite story, helping with a runny nose (even if they squirm), preparing a tasty meal. A smile or a reaction of “I love this” or “This makes me feel great, thank you!” is concrete. Toddlers can see the results of positive behavior in the smiles and they can hear it in the responses they get. They can also identify with the feeling they get from making someone else smile—it makes them smile too.
Focus on your kid(s). Put down any phones and turn off any screens, real life face-time is what children this age need most. Make sure that, whatever other demands there are on your time, you do your best to schedule time for just your kids.
Use magic words. Don’t just remind your kids to say please and thank you, make sure you are using the magic words as well.
Offer praise, receive gifts well. Kids are always making pictures or offering things to their parents and loved ones. Receive these items well, praising the work or the generosity. Comment positively on the exchange. It is the foundation for gift-giving, and receiving later in life.
Respect
When kids are little they are learning so much about the world around them and how to interact with it. Learning to respect bodies (“We don’t push each other.”), things ('“I know you want it but that doesn’t belong to us.”), spaces (“We have to pick up in the living-room.”), and feelings (“Can you tell Sam you’re sorry you hurt his feelings?) are all big things for toddlers to learn, but things they are very capable of learning. Listening is another behavior that children learn very young. Show them the way by spending time listening to them. They may surprise you with the patience, control, and connection they are capable of.
Talk about respect. Kids this young really do get the concept if you are clear and concrete in how you speak. Bringing it to the toddler level is as easy as:
“We respect Daddy’s body by asking first before we jump on him. And if he says ‘no’ we do not jump.”
“We say, ‘Thank you’ so Sarah knows we are glad and grateful that she gave us a cookie.”
“We check in with Alan to see if we can apologize after hurting his feelings.”
Teach listening by listening well. If you can, make eye contact, allow your face to react, and resist the urge to interrupt. Ask questions when you can to further the conversation.
Honesty
Protect the value of your words. From the time we first sense that the sounds we make have meaning, each of us becomes responsible for aligning our words and actions with the world that we all share. The better we are at this, the more people trust us. By making truth-telling a foundation of your relationship with a child, you show them how it’s easy to tell it like it is and to take responsibility for the reality we share. Sound like it’s too big for a toddler to understand? Try promising them a cookie a then not delivering. They get it.
In fact, they get it so much, that most adults whether parents or not, experience that shocking moment when a kid first lies to you. “No. I didn’t spill the paint bucket.” Said with paint coated over hands and overalls (yup, in the hair too.) While this is more likely to occur as kids move out of the toddler phase, it’s incredibly important in their first four to five years to be a trustworthy person in a tot’s life. They can explore the bending of truths later on, but in these early years building a foundation of trust with a child in your life is easily done by:
Not lying in front of them. That’s pretty much it. Do your best to never lie in front of your kids. There might be times when you are unable to do what you have said, but that’s different from making things up completely, or lying to avoid a dificult truth.
Avoid tricking or deceiving them. There are some “jokes” you might establish with young ones that might have an element of trickery but it’s often best to be very playful with these. (Like the time Dan taught Anisha how to prank Lizzie by ringing her doorbell and hiding.) It’s important that you represent yourself in a forthright manners and follow through on what you say you will do with kids this age. Doing so will build a strong sense of trust.
Keep At It
It takes time, patience, dedication, self-control, and a lot of repetition (a lot!) but each moment spent instilling behaviors and manners that support the three principles will be worth it in the long run. Even if your toddler goes through a phase or is acting like a ‘threenager’, by continually reinforcing these behaviors you will be building a foundation of consideration, respect, and honesty that your child will lean on for their entire life. It’s well worth it!
SIGNED COPIES MAKE GREAT GIFTS!
A signed copy of our latest edition, Emily Post’s Etiquette - The Centennial Edition, makes for an excellent gift, get yours now to celebrate a newly engaged couple, the graduate in your life, or your favorite etiquette enthusiast’s birthday! Signed copies are available through Bridgeside Books, our local Vermont bookshop.
Thank you for spending some of your day with us. Do you have a funny moment from parenting or spending time with a toddler that you’d like to share? Whether it’s a conversation that cracked you up (or maybe had you impressed), tell us in the comments (Free subscribers can post to the Monday comments thread which is open to all!) Keep an eye out for the Saturday Sip, it’s coming up next!
Until next time,
Lizzie and Dan
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Thank you for your detailed advice for teaching toddlers the foundations of good etiquette. Everything they learn now will inform the adults they eventually become. Giving very young children the tools to participate in real work (child sized sturdy gardening, housekeeping, and food prep tools they have access to, for example) and accessible hosting ware (such as a real tea set with tea to offer guests, as one example). Access to real tools of life comes with responsibility for tidying and putting tools back where they belong. It is a well kept secret that three year olds have a heightened sense of order and will watch and mimic every detail of the example of the adults around them. Thank you so much for your keen insight into the potential of the youngest among us. The time spent with them now is both great fun in the moment and rewarding to see how they grow into it as adults later on.
👍🏻