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Hello,
I was sitting at Sunday lunch this Sunday and thought about how my children acted during lunch. We have started working on table manners during our family dinners and time together at the table. I was reading the Sunday news paper and found this article.
This article is adapted from " Feeding: The Brazelton Way" by T. Berry Brazelton, MD and Joshua D. Sparrow, M.D. Published by Da Capo Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group.
Installment #2
Practice, Repetition They won't come all at once. Patience, practice, encouragement and repetition will be needed for the child to master good manners. If you expect too much and get irritated, you will make manners into a bother or a burden instead of a way for a child to show respect and win people over.
According to Dr. Brazelton and Dr. Sparrow , even though good table manners are learned at about the age of 4 or 5, parents should model--right from the start--the manners they would like their children to imitate. A parent saying, "Thank you" when handed half a soggy cookie is already encouraging the child to see that such a response is an expectation. A two year old, when asked to say "thank you" cannot be expected to respond except in imitation. By age four, a child is aware of their effect on others and measures themselves against the world around. They want to be like the adults they admire. When a child this age identifies with adults and imitates them, they are ready to begin learning table manners. But, most imporantly, these manners need to be modeled by you.
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