Toddler Manners

Learning good manners is an important (and these days often over looked) part of growing up. Teaching your child good manners usually just involves reinforcing these lessons in relevant situations. Then things like saying please and thank you become second nature.

You must also (and I can't say this often enough) lead by example, if you are not polite, then you cannot expect your tot to be either. This is the age to teach them.

Teaching Good Manners

  • Remind you child about saying please and thank you. And make sure you always use them when talking to your child.
  • Help them to learn good behaviour at the dinner table.
  • When it comes to bad habits the key is usually to try to ignore them where possible. A prompt of 'Stop picking your nose' for example is good to get the message across that its not nice, but try not to make a big deal about it. Try to distract them with another activity.
  • All toddlers will interrupt at times, they don't see that any other conversation rival what they want to say. It's normal and as they get older they will learn to wait. Tell them when they interrupt, that you will listen to them when you have finished and teach them to say 'excuse me'. But as all us parents of toddlers know, getting to have a full conversation is a real achievement!
  • Encourage your child to listen when someone else is talking.
  • Help them with turn taking and sharing. You could role play situations with them where they are sharing or taking turns with you. When they do it in pretend or real situations then praise them.
  • Try to get them to replace 'I want' with 'May I have'.
  • Breaking wind, burping and saying poo are comedy genius to toddlers! Again try ignoring this behaviour. Teach them that its polite to say pardon me. Saying poo is a phase, they will grow out of it. State calmly and quietly 'Please don't say that', give no more attention to it.
  • If your toddler is swearing is often best to ignore one-off useage.

Remember they are still very young and won't always get it right. The key is to gently remind them when they don't and praise them when they do.