Prescription: Manners

Are manners the purview of pediatricians? Can you imagine your doctor asking about or commenting on your child's social skills at his or her next check-up? Perri Klasss, MD, whose essays I have long enjoyed, makes the case for manners as a medical issue in today's NYTimes. Writes Klass,

The conversations that every pediatrician has, over and over, about “limit
setting” and “consistently praising good behavior” are conversations about
manners. And when you are in the exam room with a child who seems to have none,
you begin to wonder what is going on at home and at school, and questions of
family dysfunction or neurodevelopmental problems begin to cross your mind.

No wonder her favorite parenting book is written by Miss Manners (another writer I have long liked)! But really, if you define parenting the way she does, it all makes sense:

And that job is to start with a being who has no thought for the feelings
of others, no code of behavior beyond its own needs and comforts — and, guided
by love and duty, to do your best to transform that being into what your
grandmother (or Socrates) might call a mensch. . . .
As a pediatrician, I worry about the trajectories of children’s growth and
development: measuring a baby’s head size, weighing a toddler, asking about the
language skills of a preschooler. Manners are another side of the journey every
child makes from helplessness to autonomy. And a child who learns to manage a
little courtesy, even under the pressure of a visit to the doctor, is a child
who is operating well in the world, a child with a positive prognosis.