As Jack has gotten older, Mr. Garland and I have begun to focus more and more on being intentional about teaching him certain things. Sometimes I find that it’s easy for us to forget about explicitly teaching some of these skills to him and I end up assuming that he’ll just pick it up eventually. But, as teachers, Mr. Garland and I both know that manners and appropriate communication skills are two things that do not come naturally to most kids and if they’re not taught these skills early it’ll be a lot harder to obtain them later on.

Over the last several months we have become more aware of how we’re teaching him these skills, and I thought I’d round up a few of the ways that we’re purposefully trying to promote manners and independence. Here are 5 simple things we do on the daily to promote communication skills and manners in our two-and-a-half year old:

1) We encourage “ma’am” and “sir” – We’re just getting started with this, but we’re from the south and it’s pretty customary around here for children to refer to adults as “ma’am” and “sir”! We’re beginning to teach this to Jackson and I know it’ll be a pretty slow process. Right now we’re really working mostly on the prerequisite skill of using your words to communicate things and not whines or grunts. Jackson often wants to say “mmmhmm” or “yeah” instead of “yes” and he often yells “no” rather than says it. So we’re getting those basics down, and then once we have that under control we’ll move on to enforcing “ma’am” and “sir” more regularly – for now, we just remind him every once in a while.

2) We encourage him to interact with waiters/waitresses – I’ve been around so many kids who are terrified to speak to waiters when we’re at restaurants, and I remember being one of those kids myself! I was also always petrified to call anyone on the phone (I still suck at it!) and just didn’t do well interacting with people out in the community in general when I was a kid. We’re hoping that if we push Jackson to be comfortable with these sorts of interactions from an early age it will be less of an issue as he gets older. Of course, all kids go through shy phases – that’s just a part of growing up – but the thought is that the more we encourage it now the better off he’ll be later! We always have him tell waiters what he wants to drink when we’re going out to eat, and we’re working on having him tell them what he wants to eat as well (though he often forgets by the time they ask him).

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3) We’re teaching him to chew with his mouth closed – Sounds like a little detail, I know, but this is huge to us. Jack’s at the age where he really understands what we mean if we tell him to keep his mouth closed while he’s chewing or not to talk to us with food in his mouth, so we’re very strict about enforcing this. It’s pretty adorable to watch how proud he is of himself when we praise him for remembering to keep his mouth closed while he’s chewing, and I’m hoping we’ll nip this little problem in the bud early because I’m super sensitive to the sound of people chewing!

4) We don’t let him ignore basic social interactions – I’m that parent who will stop everything and stand there for a solid 30 seconds while I wait for my kid say hello back to the (familiar) adult who just greeted him. I always make him say goodbye to people when we’re leaving somewhere. Even if people try to brush it off and let him get away with being shy instead of saying “thank you” for something, I won’t let up until he does it. There are always exceptions to this rule (obviously you can’t force a kid to say something if they don’t want to) but as a rule I try really hard to never let Jackson get away with avoiding basic polite interactions with other people, and I want him to understand that he’s expected to be polite even when he’s feeling cranky or tired.

5) I remind him to use his words all day every day. Sometimes toddlers get whiny. Sometimes he wants to just grunt for things instead of talking to me. Sometimes he yells things at me instead of appropriately communicating them. He never gets away with that. When Jack whines or asks for something in an inappropriate manner, I simply tell him that he knows how to ask the right way and wait for him to try again. Sometimes if he’s particularly upset it might take two or three tries, but I have a no-exceptions rule here – whining/screaming does not get you what you want. Ever. End of story. He’s learned this rule very quickly, and he knows exactly what I mean when I tell him to try again – and, of course, I praise like crazy when he gets it right!

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I know some of these might sound a little intense or strict for a two-year-old, but it’s worked well for us so far! We’re big believers in manners and communicating appropriately, and we fully believe that he can process exactly what we’re asking for. It’s definitely not a perfect system – we still have our fair share of meltdowns, tantrums, and awful days (and we always will!) but that’s okay!

What do you do in your house to encourage manners and appropriate communication?