Thanksgiving Live: Table Manners for Thanksgiving

Have little ones with impeccable social graces?

Okay, then, read right here at Cindy Post Senning's website (yes, that Post family), The Gift of Good Manners, to make it better (thanks to Motherlode for the link).

No "Please," Thank You

I would say, "do what I say, not what I do," except I forget to say it.

I forget to say "please."

And not just with my kids but with Mama, too.

Though, I do think I remember with strangers and friends. I hope.

I ask for things nicely, I think, and always as a question, not as a demand. But I forget the "please," often, adding it after a pause and a thought only sometimes.

Which is why my kids aren't great pleasers.

Now, I'm great at "thank you" and "sorry"; subsequently, my kids are too.

They've also picked up all my other verbal quirks, none of which I remember right now, but all of which sound like some older academic specializing in 19th-century literature has inhabited the body of a child. Yep, sometimes they sound pretty precocious. And from a different time period. Like with they way they preface frequent contradictions with "actually . . . ."

But, quirks aside, forgetting to say "please" is not precocious or socially acceptable. And so, I've been trying hard to remember to use it myself. At which point, I will encourage them to "do what I say."