Rude Boy Worries Adults

Miss Bailey didn't nag or harass him about his rude conduct. She remembered to be courteous to him at all times. It was Chuck's responsibility to correct his conduct and not his teacher's. I commend Miss Bailey's method as constructive child guidance.

MOTHER is disturbed because her James is rude and discourteous. Mother thinks that at age 10 a boy should have better manners than to interrupt adult conversation. “I have scolded him time and again, but it seems to do no good.”

And scolding will never achieve your purpose, mother. Today I saw a new boy in our school behaving in the same way.

A child protested: “Chuck is getting mouthy again, Miss Bailey. I can't study when he starts that.” Chuck hastened to defend him- self. “Well, what if I did? What's so terrible about that? I don't talk any more than the others.”


PUPILS ASKED TO HELP
Miss Bailey saw that if Chuck conformed to the desires of his group, they would have to stimulate the desire for him to do so. She stopped, and asked how many children were willing to take time from their work to help Chuck come to an understanding with the group. “Why shouldn't Chuck talk when he likes?” she asked her class. “He says he doesn't see anything terrible about it. Why do you object, Fred?”

ATTITUDE OF CHILDREN
“It isn't terrible,” replied Fred, “but it's impolite because he talks when it disturbs us to listen.” “What do you think, Jane? You sit close to Chuck.”

“I think if we leave him alone that he ought to be fair with us. We don't talk when he reads or recites.”

Chuck wanted to argue about it, but group opinion proved too much for him. Finally the teacher asked him to write in his citizenship book the rule which the class adopted: “Talking out of turn is disrespectful and rude. It shows lack of consideration for the rights of others.”

BOY REACHES DECISION
Then she asked him to think it over and below the class rule write what he was going to do about it. He didn't write anything until near- ly recess time when he wrote delib- erately just two words: "Keep still." But in those two words Chuck committed himself to conform to his group, and his group will remind him if he errs. With wise guidance he will learn to refrain from annoying others and he will learn self-respect through group approval.

TEACHER SHOWS COURTESY Miss Bailey didn't nag or harass him about his rude conduct. She remembered to be courteous to him at all times. It was Chuck's responsibility to correct his conduct and not his teacher's. I commend Miss Bailey's method as constructive child guidance. – By James Samuel Lacy, 1933

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Table Manners of Young Boys

Table Manners and the 7 year old boy… “ When Charles was a baby he had better manners than he has at 7 years. He was clean and could eat like a grown person, but of late he spills, slops, and upsets everything on the table cloth and is always in haste…”

More “Tuning in With Our Children”

“HOW SOON can we expect children to have good table manners? When Charles was a baby he had better manners than he has at 7 years. He was clean and could eat like a grown person, but of late he spills, slops, and upsets everything on the table cloth and is always in haste. 

“We don't let him go anywhere after dinner so there is no need for his shoving his food down, forgetting to use his napkin, and messing up the table. What would you do?” Being a boy, I would make so much allowance for his wobbly movements, his rapidly developing muscles and take so much pride in his fine appetite, that I would do nothing about it.

Dull Edge of Appetite

However, it isn't a wise health precaution to allow a child to bolt
his food so I would offer him an apple or glass of milk about four o’clock in the afternoon so that the keen edge of his appetite might be somewhat appeased. When dinner hour arrives try to about the day's happenings or tomorrow’s plans.

In any event, one thing I wouldn’t engage him in conversation at table do, mother, and that is nag him about his habits until he was made nervous, uncomfortable and self-conscious.

Wink at Mistakes 

Compliment him when he has eaten leisurely, been thoughtful to pass food or remarks to you and father at table and wink at a lot of etiquette until his muscular development is more stable.

Of course you can’t wink at big weekly laundry problems, but there are excellent substitutes for table cloths that can be wiped off after each meal.

You might try that type of cover with the suggestion that everyone will clean around his own plate. And since he will not like the idea of cleaning up he may become more careful.

Change Will Come

Don't worry, mother, when Charles grows up and goes a-courting, he will develop a table technique soon enough. Just now his mind and body are centered on 2 million more interesting things than table manners.

You could encourage him by suggesting taking him out to dine in public places as soon as he has learned to eat carefully. Suggest that to do so would be embarrassing to you until he improves.– By James Samuel Lacy, 1932

 🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Leisure Time Pursuits and Manners

Children possessed of good manners have more poise and self-respect. We try in our school to find frequent occasions when our boys and girls can practice these gracious social arts.

“Every year we have to fight to retain in our schools the experiences most valuable for our children,” a mother writes. “If the school helps my boy and my girl fill their leisure time full of worthwhile recreational activity, then I know they're not going to turn to crime or debauchery for adventure or excitement.”

 Thank you, mother. I think you’re absolutely right. Our children must know how to play if they are to express their best selves. But there are many people who feel that an education consists of a quart or so of facts about arithmetic, history, language and the other conventional school subjects.

But I believe that teaching children social etiquette is more valuable than the multiplication tables. To reduce feelings of inferiority and build self-assurance through the knowledge that one knows and practices good manners is more important than knowing when Columbus arrived in America or where Madagascar is located.

Children possessed of good manners have more poise and self-respect. We try in our school to find frequent occasions when our boys and girls can practice these gracious social arts.

And we feel that training in personal care, hygiene, cleanliness, neatness and proper dress should be emphasized just as much as rules of grammar.

Tells Vital Lessons

I think I’m talking today about vital lessons. We must have a chance in our schools to guide our youngsters into appreciation of the best in literature, art, music, drama, rhythm and human relationships.

We must help them to have eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts to understand the beauty, color, harmonies, truth and goodness that surround us.

Art and morality go hand in hand; they emancipate our children from the bondage of sensuality and enable them to take hold upon things unseen and eternal.

Emotions Ennobled

Music, art, literature bring uplift, joy and beauty into many dreary, drab days. They ennoble and spiritualize our emotions. They lift us out of the commonplace into the mysterious, spiritual, eternal world that surrounds us. – James Samuel Lacy, 1937

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Cheerful Homes Make Happy Children

It requires gay courage to hide the vicissitudes of the day beneath a smile, but your child will get his example of courage or weakness from you. You are the source of his supply. If you let immediate disappointment befog your vision of success you’re vacillating, negative attitude is the pattern your child sees and adopts.

Tuning in With Our Children

“I am so happy I don't know what to do,” said a child to me this morning. “Father has had wonderful luck in his business and mother doesn't have the headache now, and our home is the happiest place in the world.” How susceptible children are to environment! They are bouyant or depressed according to the mood parents reflect. If we are neurotic or worry-ridden they are neurotic or worry-ridden and they are filled with fear complexes for children are more keenly imaginative than we adults.

For that reason if parents discuss the successes and failures of a business day at home they should do so with confidence and optimism or exercise extreme caution about what is said in the presence of their impressionable young folk.

In a home where father expresses pessimism and mother expresses worry the child easily becomes an apostle of failure, for the people in whom he has most confidence have undermined his belief in success.

It requires gay courage to hide the vicissitudes of the day beneath a smile, but your child will get his example of courage or weakness from you. You are the source of his supply. If you let immediate disappointment befog your vision of success you’re vacillating, negative attitude is the pattern your child sees and adopts.

The lives of great men reveal that crowning success is usually the culmination of a series of seeming defeats. It is defeat analyzed and adjusted to overcome the handicaps. The father referred to in this instance didn’t succeed on luck. His effort in adjusting his business to undermined his belief in success.

His effort in adjusting his business to make it pay dividends had succeeded after many serious reverses. He didn't quit trying and so he found the right combination. And it is a happy combination, indeed, that has affected his entire family. It has cured mother’s nervous headaches, and set a morose child to singing the praises of a happy home.

Every home should be the happiest place in the world to its child members. It will be a happier place for grownups as well as when we learn to emphasize our capacities for success and to minimize our defeats as transitory obstacles which courage and effort can dispel. – James Samuel Lacy, 1929

 🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

A New “Agony Aunt” Arrived

“Agony Aunts” have been popular in newspapers and magazine since the late 1800’s. Men and women usually wrote under fictitious names in the 1920’s, but James Samuel Lacy wrote under his real moniker. Being an educator, his focus was on children and parenting. Many of his columns focused on manners and morals. This was posted in the San Pedro News Pilot in 1929, announcing the new feature and requesting letters from parents. We have several of his columns and  advice already posted in our archives. – “Has your experience with your own children in guiding them to paths of beauty and service given you an insight into problems of child training which you would be willing to share with other parents?”

Tuning in With Our Children

By James Samuel Lacy, Chairman of School Education

Do questions arise in connection with the guidance of your children which you would be glad to discuss with a friend who will listen with a sympathetic understanding? James Samuel Lacy is that friend.

Has your experience with your own children in guiding them to paths of beauty and service given you an insight into problems of child training which you would be willing to share with other parents?

Send a report of such successful experience to James Samuel Lacy who conducts Tuning In With Our Children, a feature appearing daily in the pages of this news paper. Your ideas, no doubt, may serve to help other parents, who find themselves confronted with a dilemma as to the proper procedure for their children's best interests.

Tuning In With Our Children is for all fathers and mothers, and for all friends of children everywhere. This is your column. We want you to use it and the expert service of its author to the fullest extent.

Address James Samuel Lacy, care of this newspaper.– San Pedro News Pilot

State Chairman of School Education of The California Congress of Parents and Teachers

 🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Etiquette, Parenting and a Pick-Pocket

                                                                                         

It just isn’t possible to be Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde parents. We can’t make one code for ourselves and another for our children. They will insist upon sharing our code. Mother can never hope to teach her child honesty and openly practice dishonesty in her presence. 

Little Lady Pick-Pocket

I know a mother who severely chastised her child for taking money from her purse without permission, and expending it to suit her childish fancy. She punished her, berated her act, and named it theft. And then discoursed on the terrible disgrace of being a thief. She asked the teacher to keep an eye on her to see that she did not appear in school with the fruits of petit larceny about her. How do you suppose this child evolved the notion of appropriating another’s property? I could not but wonder, since she came from a home where funds were ample and the opportunities of a generous allowance were provided her. 

X encouraged the child to make a confidant of me and sought to have her elucidate the problem we were to help her overcome. She explained that she didn't think she was stealing at all since mother took money from father’s pocket-book when he didn’t know it. “And mother,” she suggested, “gets a lot more allowance than I do.” I tried to explain that mother was father’s partner, and that they probably had an understanding regarding the family funds, but the child remained firm and finally said, “Well, just the same they have lots of fights about it, but mother doesn’t stop it.” 

The father confirmed the truth of the child’s statement. This mother was objecting to her own pattern. Where do you suppose she expected her child to get her notion of respect for the property of others? She not only failed to play the game squarely financially herself but subjected the child to the sordid discussions that followed when she picked father’s pockets. It just isn’t possible to be Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde parents. We can’t make one code for ourselves and another for our children. They will insist upon sharing our code. Mother can never hope to teach her child honesty and openly practice dishonesty in her presence. 

Better begin now, mother, to set your child an honest example or you will be shocked in a few years to hear your young daughter say or infer by her attitude that her mother is a hypocrite whose advice she can't afford to take seriously. There is a cure for little lady pick-pocket, mother, and I think it consists in a frank explanation on your part that it is unfair and unwise to take or appropriate the property of another. It doesn’t matter if that person is a member of your own family, and responsible for your care. Why not agree that you will both refrain from a habit that you know leads to unfairness and dishonesty. There’s no disgrace in admitting you were wrong. I think your daughter will respect you all the more if you are sincere and live up to your agreement. – James Samuel Lacy, 1929

 🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Etiquette and Love

                                            

Table Manners Change When They Fall in Love

The many mothers who have asked for suggestions, pamphlets and general helps in teaching their children table manners, especially boys, would laugh to see me wince and shrug my shoulders. It's the hardest job I have been asked to tackle. Perhaps women folks might thing it easy enough, with their delicate appetites and refined instincts, but there is something about being a boy that's different.

I recall so vividly my own mother’s attempts to teach me. I know so well that exasperated look that only mothers can mirror when one or more healthy boys stampede the table. Boys seem to eat everything in sight if company is present. That’s the way mother sees it. And they eat in such voracious fashion that mother thinks the guest may be moved to wonder if her boy is not a cross between a savage and a pig.

Sympathy With The Boys

And yet, shocked as mothers may be, my sympathies are with the boys. Every grown-up on the place assumes that a boy’s meal time is the one opportunity for a lesson in correct eating. On behalf of us boys, I would like to suggest that a better time to teach a bag to stand upright is when it is full. And the same applies to boys.

Demonstrate by example, rather than by precept, the social graces of eating. One thing is certain. To make a boy the brunt of the family wit or sarcasm or nagging because he “gobbles” his food, as one mother puts it, never converts him into a boy with socialized table manners.

Unique Training

A fine suggestion came from a mother with whom I discussed this problem the other day. The children are served apart from the family, either in their own room, the kitchen or at a small table in the dining room. Mother, father or an adult brother or sister may sit at their table. This older family guest at the children's table encourages the youngsters to take turns playing host to each other. They are complimented for conformity to correct standards. A favorite dessert, & small favor, or some interesting small reward should accompany success.

Mothers, please realize that children should not be expected to have perfect table manners before the adolescent stage and many of them not before the end of adolescence. Of course children can be coerced to conform before that age, but to develop the social graces naturally is your desired objective.

Encourage the boy. Exemplify charming manners, yourself. Teach your children to hold a chair for mother at age 4 or 5. Accustom him to the demands of civilization a little bit at a time. Develop one habit at a time. It may seem a slow process. But there comes a time in the life of every boy when correct eating habits develop rapidly.

Interested In The Ladies 

We can usually tell what has happened when a boy becomes tremendously interested in the spoon to use for his soup and the proper fork for his salad. He is interested in the ladies. Up to that time he believes and insists that he is living in a man’s world.

Whenever I think of this problem I recall the table manners of certain kings and queens of but a few short centuries ago. In those days a leg of mutton was merely a good-sized bite to an experienced diner. And when I remember that those royal diners tossed their bones under the table to feed the hounds wandering about the banquet hall, I am consoled about the table manners of modern youth. – By James Samuel Lacy, 1930

 🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Teaching Respect and Courtesy

Children should be helped to discover that loveliness toward others gets for them what they want. In other words they get what they give. They make the discovery that more pleasures and satisfactions accrue to them if they give pleasure and satisfaction to others. We may cultivate in the hearts of our children this feeling or desire, this urge to please others. It is a spiritual asset, caught as well as taught. 

Tuning in with Our Children

YESTERDAY – I had no desire to preach a sermon on the desirability of parents practicing courtesy toward each other because of the effect on their children. It isn’t necessary to sermonize because everyone appreciates the charm and beauty and desirability of such behavior. Courtesy and respect for each other reflect a fine sweet spirit; they are the product of harmony and love. How to produce this inner harmony is the problem for parents and teachers. That inner desire, that feeling of harmony and love and desire to be courteous to the other fellow is a product of stimulation. The discovery that courtesy pays big dividends stimulates one to feel that way.

CHILDREN PAID IN KIND – Children should be helped to discover that loveliness toward others gets for them what they want. In other words they get what they give. They make the discovery that more pleasures and satisfactions accrue to them if they give pleasure and satisfaction to others. We may cultivate in the hearts of our children this feeling or desire, this urge to please others. It is a spiritual asset, caught as well as taught. 

RESERVE OF LOVELINESS – Our children may catch loveliness by exposure to others who practice it. And they build up a great reserve of loveliness by continually practicing thoughtfulness for others. Every parent and teacher should know that it is not enough merely to create a desire in the heart of a child to practice courtesy. Many a child finds it extremely difficult to act the way he should act, or the way he would like to act. The child tries and fails. Becomes discouraged. Our turn is to stand-by and see that his efforts to practice courtesy are crowned with success.

UNDERSTANDING NEEDED – We must help the child to a definite understanding of his problem. He must be aware of the habit he wishes to break and the new habit he wishes to form. We must help the child define these habits in terms of specific behavior situations. We must help him to determine exactly what to do and what not to do. And keep the following admonitions in mind at all times: Treat the child with the same courtesy and respect that you desire from him.

PRAISE FOR COURTESY – When the child does an especially courteous act, remember to make him happy about it. Give him a thrill. Make the good popular; give it a good reputation. In other words advertise goodness in an attractive way. – By James Samuel Lacy, 1933

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

America’s Youth Lack Manners Abroad

Why does this 1930’s American ad depict a mother looking on delightedly, as her children make a mess with tools and toys, just inches from her feet? All while she attempts to prepare dinner? Was this depicting the American norm of the era? Either this mom, or the advertisement’s artist, could have used some help in the child-rearing department! – “Observation of the current code in one’s surroundings ought to be a part of a child’s preparation for living. Our children, must live with other people. They will invariably get farther in life and be happier if they know the rules of etiquette that will provide the least friction and give the greatest pleasure to their associates.”

Tuning in with Our Children

By James Samuel Lacy

Are American children the most discourteous in the world? I don’t think so. But I had dinner recently with a European hotel proprietor who challenged our teaching of courtesy with the statement that “We dread to see Americans with children come to our hotel. The children do as they please, consider no one’s right but their own. They behave so badly that we consider them nuisances.” I am inclined to think that, in part, this idea was prompted by national differences in the concept of what constitutes freedom for youth. It takes very little foreign travel to convince one that what is courteous in one country may be quite the opposite in another. 

Sorry for Timid Children 

What we style “self-reliance in free play,” may be mistaken for impudence or lack of obedience in countries permitting less freedom of choice to children. However, if a few of our children have gone abroad running up and down flights of stairs, playing hide-and-seek when other guests were trying to sleep, we can still say that generally children are as courteous as they are trained to be. I have often felt as sorry for their timid, thumb-screwed children who were afraid to make any decisions for themselves as they could possibly have felt shocked at our unrestrained youth. 

Need Training in Country

But all argument aside, there is no asset in life so highly productive of social dividends as excellent training in courtesy. And observation of the current code in one’s surroundings ought to be a part of a child’s preparation for living. Our children, must live with other people. They will invariably get farther in life and be happier if they know the rules of etiquette that will provide the least friction and give the greatest pleasure to their associates. A charming, gracious manner is an irresistible asset that we can afford to cultivate, but to do so successfully, we must begin by being courteous with our children and insisting upon their practice of courtesy and consideration in their association with each other. –From the Journal of the National Education Association, 1932

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia