Reply to At what age can you reasonably expect "please" and "thank you" from a child?

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Reply to "At what age can you reasonably expect "please" and "thank you" from a child?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I actually get the authoritative argument about not making them say please and thank you and this is from the "May I please have" poster.  We have our kids always asking nicely now not by making them but by the response they get from us when they ask in different ways.  They have simply learned that if they ask the wrong way, people are less likely to respond positively and when they ask, "May I please have," the response is more positive -- even when the answer is still no.  I was forced to say please and thank you as a kid and it made me not want to say it -- same with sorry.  [b]You want your kid to want to say these things.[/b][/quote]

Actually I don't particularly care if my kid [i]wants[/i] to be polite or not, I just care that she [i]is[/i] polite. There have been plenty of times when I did not want to say something polite and friendly to someone who was driving me absolutely mad, but I sucked it up and did it anyway because that is what civilized people do.

I mean sure it would be nice if they eventually realized that being polite was a good thing and started wanting to do it for its own merits, but (1) I think that's too much to expect from young kids and therefore I embrace a 'fake it until they make it' philosophy, and (2) even if they never want to they still have to anyway, so wanting to or not doesn't particularly matter.

Only using manners when you decide you want to do so is ridiculous -- I'm not teaching that sort of self-centered nonsense to my kid.[/quote]

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