William's manners

As a parent I feel that one of my main lessons to William should be how to have civil interactions with other people in order to get things that he wants, live happily, make others happy, and coexist peacefully with anyone, even if they do not share the same civil code. Although I hope to achieve this by living by example quite often my girlfriend and I need to take him aside and talk to him, hoping his almost two year old mind comprehends the gist of what we are saying. At the moment our lessons revolve around the use and meaning of three phrases: Please, thank you, and excuse me.

Thank you was the first one of these that William learned, as usually we would give him things because he didn't know the words to ask for them. Most of the time his "thank you" comes out more of a "doo you" but we get the point. Somewhere along the way though he learned that "You're welcome" means that he needs to say "Thank you" again. This has lead to great car discussions where either his mother or I will give him something, he will say "thank you", we will say "you're welcome", then he will say "thank you" because we said "you're welcome" because he said "thank you", so we will say "you're welcome" because he said "thank you" because we said "you're welcome" because he said "thank you". Rinse and repeat until a car ride is over.

In theory please is the easiest form of manners to learn. If you want something you say "please", and then the other person shares it with you. In practice there are 2 ways this goes wrong. The first is that kids don't always want to share (and in truth don't need to share, if it is theirs it is theirs, not Williams) and then the lesson is that "please" doesn't get you anywhere. This is a hard lesson, as I have to teach William that in some cases it's ok not to share, because he doesn't have a right to everything, nor do kids have a right to everything of his. The second, and most challenging, way that it goes wrong is when William thinks please can get him away with taking things. Using the dreaded word "Mine" he will take something, and then proceed to say "Please" as if that will make up for the fact he took something that is not his.

The third, and final, lesson that William has learned is "Excuse Me." His first use of this was when we were in the mall playplace yet again. A older child (who was too old to be in the play place by the height chart) was playing with a ball game on the wall. It was a simple maze with three balls that you can move along the different paths. William went over to the boy on the opposite side and tried to play with one of the balls. The kid promptly moved in his way. William walked to the other side. The kid moved in his way. At around this time I went over to William and said, loud enough for the other child to hear, "Hey William, you should say 'excuse me' to the boy, and maybe he will share one of the balls with you, as he doesn't need all three to do what he is doing." William went over and said "Cooze me" in the most adorable voice, which caused the little boy to jump onto the game, his whole body covering it, and gave out a high pitched squeal. I decided I'd take William out for ice cream in order to make sure at least some of the lesson got through.

All of these lessons are still hard. William has had little interaction with other kids, and is used to having things be his. We went to Chuckie Cheese the other day and he was playing on a basketball hoop game. A little boy walked over within 5 feet and William stopped smiling, stared at him, screamed at him and shook his hand at him. We picked him up and left, telling him that until he learns how to at least share the air with other kids he wouldn't be going to play places like that any more.