Etiquette and Respect for Children

Not This...                                             Do This!

Points for Parents

Daughter: “Don't wear that fussy red dress when you come to school, will you?” Mother: “If you're going to he ashamed of me, I won't go at all.”

Mother: “Which one of my dresses do you want me to wear when I visit your school? I can remember when I was your age, I cared a lot what my mother wore.”

The way we interpret a child’s concern about our appearance may be an indication of whether we’re immaturely over-sensitive or maturely understanding. — By Edyth Thomas Wallace, 1952

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

Children in Polite Society

It’s impossible for a child to keep interested in what he is eating if he is being nagged about his manners. An extremely hungry child may go on eating, anyway, in such a situation, but he won’t enjoy the meal and it is doubtful whether mother’s pains to change his manners will make the desired impression. 

Robert came in for his dinner, saying that he was “starved.” He started eating rapidly, taking enormous mouthfuls, while mother looked on horrified. But his greed wasn’t as distasteful to her as the fact that he wasn’t holding his fork properly. “Your fork isn’t a dagger,” she criticized, as she took it out of his hand and handed it back to him correctly. The boy scowled and continued eating. But the interruption semed to have dulled his enthusiasm for dinner somewhat and he slumped in his chair. 

In a few minutes, noticing Robert’s faulty posture, mother spoke to him about that. As the boy straightened up, she found other things amiss in his manners and corrected them. “Stop bolting your food. Chew it well. That's better and bind your lips, Robert keep them closed while chewing!” Suddently, Robert stopped eating. When mother urged, “Eat your dinner,” he pushed away his plate. He was fed up with mother's nagging. “I’m not hungry,” he announced. “Nonsense—only a few minutes ago you were famished,” mother argued, as she tried to force him to take more food. Finally, she gave up, thinking, “His appetite is bad, and his manners are worse. I can't do anything with that boy.”

It’s impossible for a child to keep interested in what he is eating if he is being nagged about his manners. An extremely hungry child may go on eating, anyway, in such a situation, but he won’t enjoy the meal and it is doubtful whether mother’s pains to change his manners will make the desired impression. One mother has special sessions for teaching manners and leaves the children alone between times. 

About once a week, she sets the table with special care, as for a party. All dress up for the occasion, which is called “polite society dinner.” Part of the fun of this game is its strict formality. Corrections are matter-of-fact, and no one takes offense, because all are out to learn. “Look, Robert, this is the way to hold a spoon in polite society.” Or, “Alice, we don’t smack our lips in polite society.” Since these sessions were started, the strain has been removed from ordinary mealtimes, and the children's everyday manners have improved noticeably. — By Jane Coward, 1941

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

Etiquette and Parenting in 1912

Childhood is the most favorable time to develop the little habits we carry through life, and the importance of giving attention to these little habits cannot be too strongly impressed upon the minds of parents of young children.

The Failure of Women To Be the Best Mothers Possible 

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Greatest Work on Earth That a Woman Can Do Is to Guide the Manners and Train the Mind of a Child

If the parents of a rough diamond could only realize the handicap they place in their child by starting him out into the world without polishing him as much as possible, I am sure every parent would do his utmost to add a touch here and a touch there to the personality of his offspring during childhood, for it is during childhood that the little habits are formed, which, taken as a whole, do much to influence his future career and station in life. I refer to habits of tidiness, manners, deportment, carriage, table etiquette, care of the toilet, etc... 

"There comes a time in the life of every child when habits of this class have to be formed, and there is no reason on earth why they should not he formed in such a way that in later years they will not be a source of embarrassment to him." —Herbert A. Parkyn M.D. 

I wish these words by one of America's most gifted physicians and metaphysicians, could be written in letters of gold and hung where every mother and teacher in the land might read them daily. Women are pushing forward their claims for higher recognition and every day, and woman are succeeding in almost all the arts, professions and trades formerly pursued by men exclusively, yet women are almost universally failing to be the best mothers possible. 

You who read these words may take exception to such a statement. Yet, employ your leisure hours the next week in looking about you critically and dispassionately for a really perfect, or even "near perfect" mother of boys and girls of that embryo age, from eight to fourteen. 

From 8 to 14, Children Show Mothers’ Teaching 

It is during that period children show forth the training and teaching which has come to them from close association with their mothers. To again quote from Dr. Parkyn: "There are great possibilities in a new wooden barrel, provided it is empty. It is easy to fill it with syrup or kerosene, or any other liquid. But if a barrel be filled first with kerosene, it is very difficult, so completely to get rid of its impressions on the barrel, that the barrel can be used afterwards for syrup, the barrel, as it were, having formed an auto suggestion, which is hard to overcome. 

A young child's mind is very much like a barrel, so far as its first impressions are concerned. Its mind is an empty thing, waiting to be filled with any kind of impressions, and the impressions of childhood are by far the most lasting. Childhood is the most favorable time to develop the little habits we carry through life, and the importance of giving attention to these little habits cannot be too strongly impressed upon the minds of parents of young children.

So many parents believe that if they teach their children what is right and wrong, from a moral and ethical point of view, clothe them and send them to school, they have done all that is required of them, and that the children will do the rest themselves and make a success in life.” 

Habits Can Be Developed Best During Childhood

Mothers of culture and education are to be found all about us who have allowed their little sons to pass through the formative period of childhood without one distinguishing trait or habit of refined, considerate manhood, and who consider the brusqueness and boorish deportment of their offspring as natural phases of boyhood, which will be eventually outgrown. 

In America, children are allowed to occupy an unnatural position in the home and are permitted to demand favors of their elders, where foreign children gently request to dispute, and flatly contradict, where others would only question or remain silent, and to sit in the presence of their parents and grand-parents without waiting for permission or observing whether any one is discommoded, by their conduct. 

Mothers permit their little sons to interrupt conversation; to enter a room noisily, without removing their hats; to be first at the table, without showing the courtesy of seating the mother or sister or guest, and to air their ideas and opinions aggressively in the presence of older people. 

The very greatest work a woman can do on earth is to guide and train the mind and manners of a little child into gentleness, kindliness, courtesy, consideration, politeness, respect and reverence for whatever is great and good, and to teach the embryo man or woman those small refinements of deportment which mean so much In life. No matter what other work a mother may be doing in the world, if she is neglecting this work, which is the work God has given her, she is miserably failing as an individual and a citizen, as well as a mother. 

Not One Woman in 100 Is a Scientific Mother 

However bright a boy may be in his lessons, however he may excel in the athletic field, he is not growing into admirable and excellent manhood unless he is receiving the delicate and gracious touches of education which a mother should consider it her great privilege to give. 

But this cannot he given in a day or a year, it must he done day by day, and year by year, unobtrusively and tactfully, until the child has absorbed the wholesome and refining system unconsciously. And we do not find one American mother in one hundred who is unselfish and patient enough to bestow so much time and thought on the, profession of scientific motherhood. — Written for The Evening Herald by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 1912

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

Etiquette and Parenting

There are none so ready as young children to assume airs of equality; and if they are allowed to treat one class of superiors in age and character disrespectfully, they will soon use the privilege universally.

If parents allow their children to talk to them, and to the grown persons in the family, in the same style in which they address each other, it will be in vain to hope for the courtesy of manner and tone which good breeding demands in the general intercourse of society. In a large family, where the elder children are grown up, and the younger are small, it is important to require the latter to treat the elder in some sense as superiors. 

There are none so ready as young children to assume airs of equality; and if they are allowed to treat one class of superiors in age and character disrespectfully, they will soon use the privilege universally. This is the reason, why the youngest children of a family are most apt to be pert, forward, and unmannerly. — From American Woman's Home, by Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

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

Etiquette, Respect and Wise Mothers

She does not begin with exhaustive attention to the minutia of etiquette, knowing that way lies the danger of making her boys prigs and her girls self-conscious society misses before they are in their teens. 

The Wise Mother

Your wise mother is not given to worrying over trifles, says Harper's Bazar. She does not expect perfection in a day. And she has put from her, as far as the East is from the West, the ghastly possibility of setting vanity up in the room of love. So she does not begin with exhaustive attention to the minutia of etiquette, knowing that way lies the danger of making her boys prigs and her girls self-conscious society misses before they are in their teens. 

She lays down as the law of her household the broad principles of respect for elders, reverence for women, kindliness for all; and she permeates the home atmosphere with her finest conception of the deference and the sympathy due from soul to soul. Her children very early delight to place a chair for grandmother and to save father steps. They learn to be proud of that restraint, which enables them to keep self in the background, and to defer to brother and sister. It never enters their heads that servants are less worthy of respect than other people. 

They are unabashed in the presence of wealth and power as they are tender toward suffering and poverty. When she teaches them from time to time her code of manners — and she is careful to perfect it according to her best judgment—she teaches it for home use, and it becomes fixed by becoming natural. –The Daily Alta, 1891

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

Etiquette, Manners and Intellect

Einstein understood treating others with respect.

The scorn for manners and conventionalities manifested by a large contingent among our intellectual men and women is, according to a writer in Harper's Bazar, one of the unfortunate features of society as it is now constituted. She says:

It is only in leasure that manners can be brought to the pitch of art, but in any well ordered home, however humble, much may be accomplished in this direction by constant insistence upon the observance of the best known rules for outward conduct and by dwelling upon the importance of cultured manners when the morals and the mind are under training. 

Every opportunity should be seized for imparting to children ease and naturalness of bearing in company. The conductors of all kinds of institutions of learning should see to it that a certain ceremony is scrupulously kept up during all of their receptions and parties. 

It is impossible always to tell how much the intellect or the heart is profiting by instruction. Progress made in the culture of the manners, on the other hand, can be gauged by the commonest observer. It is true that the very finest kind of manners cannot exist without the highest development of the inner soul, but “society” manners are exclusive of such lofty standards, while conversely our good Dr. Holmes wittily, and not unjustly remarks, that “there are two virtues which Christians have found it very bard to exemplify in practice. These are modesty and civility.” It is high time that the real aristocracy of the earth —its learned men and its men of genius—should bear the outward signs of what the earth has always called its “best society.” 

No intellectual person can aspire to the position of a social “swell.” But if social usages were taught, as they might be, in intelligent homes—these “minor morals” which so much affect the future of our boys and girls—scholars would not lay themselves open, us they do now, to the too often deserved charge of “boorishness,” and would not be the victims of covert sneers from the gilded youth upon whom they may have an opportunity to impress perhaps the first worthy ideals." – Harper's Bazar, as published originally in The Red Bluff Daily News, 1893

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

Etiquette, Manners and Flapperism

The disposition on the part of young people to conform or not to conform to the fundamental requirements of morality is not to be gauged by adherence to ballroom rules or dictates of an etiquette not of their choosing.

Every generation lives in its own world. Happy the parents who can recognize this fact and keep the confidence of their children by sympathetic tolerance of new things. 

The press is manifesting the growth of public interest in flappers. We are being treated in news dispatches to definitions of the term —efforts to define the indefinable. Clergymen are giving their views, statesman are called on for theirs. "Bathhouse John" of Chicago contributes his. Twenty years ago this social autocrat declared that any girl who smoke cigarettes "degenerates herself" —the distinction between the transitive and intransitive verb being one he had neither the patience nor the narrowness of mind to observe. When the subject comes with in the ken of "Bathhouse John" it has reached the dignity of a public question.
                                                        

The bobbed hair of flapperism.

To the apprehensive, the question of flapperism is a solemn and portentous one. When the flapper was born it was supposed that she would do exactly as her parents had done before her, and to their shocked surprise she seems to have found a new set of manners not at all like theirs. Those parents should reflect, however, that their manners were at many points unlike those of the flapper's grandparents, whose manners were undoubtedly different from those of her great-grandparents. If ways never changed the world could not progress.
                                                           

It's not the polka, mother!

An expensive trend in its day.

That there is more real evil in society for these changes of manner we strongly doubt. The disposition on the part of young people to conform or not to conform to the fundamental requirements of morality is not to be gauged by adherence to ballroom rules or dictates of an etiquette not of their choosing. They bob their hair. Long hair is not a prerequisite of sanctity. They shorten their skirts. That is sanitary. They go on long hikes. That is healthful.

Flapperism is not serious, but superficial. The best thing to do with flappers, is to let them flap. But not too much. - From S.F. Journal reprinted in Red Bluff Daily News, 1922 

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Etiquette and "Mother's Secret"

He looks angelic, but were his manners as assured and correct as those of a grown man?

I once knew a lady whose son, a little lad of ten, was the admiration of everyone for his beautiful manners. While he was perfectly simple, frank and boyish, his manners were as assured and correct as those of a grown man. His mother could send him in a carriage alone to the station to bring a lady guest from the station, certain that he would give her every needful attention. He would take the checks, care for the baggage and bring her to the house with every courtesy. And always when visitors were at his home, he did his little share of entertaining them. He was quick to wait upon them and to show them every respect, and, though he was not forward, he was ready to converse with them if they seem so inclined.

"How do you manage it? What course of training do you pursue?" People used to inquire. "Well," I heard his mother answer, laughingly, at one time, "for one thing I never snubbed him. He has no idea that there are people in the world who do not like boys. He supposes that everybody is as friendly as himself. Then I have always brought them up to take care of me, and to be polite to me, and I am as careful to be considerate and courteous to him as I am to his father. So he never has to be put on his good manners; they are the habit of his life. I think that is all about there is to it." —From American Youth, 1893

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