Being a good role model.

In the past few weeks I have seen some excellent examples of good parenting and they have come about largely due I believe to two things modelling and consistency.

Most parents want their children to develop good manners and to know when and where to use them. Naturally parents

start with 'ta' but there is no reason that you cant simply use thank you, same with no thank you and please.... as we hand something to our child or want them to give something to us. Often though we arent as careful in our approach with our partner, always remember your kids watch your interaction with other people and they learn by watching what you are doing. So the important thing is to remember to do the same to your child, your spouse or whoever is in the situation. Try to remember it is difficult for a child to learn to say or when to say thank you if you are giving them inconsistent messages by this I mean expecting them to say thank you to you for something but you not thanking them when they hand something to you.

Positive praise is also very important, have you ever asked your spouse/child to vacume the carpet and then the minute the vacume is put away critised the job that was done because when you look at the floor you can see the fluff that was missed? it happens and it happens with a lot of jobs around the house and something you can develop into dare I say it the dreaded "nagging' wife/mother. The first question is why does it happen well for most part I believe it happens because we do a quick demo and expect the same quality job as we'd do, take a step back and consider whether you have demonstrated the task well enough and next time try something diffierent like thanks for doing that next time would you mind trying to go a little closer to the edges so you can get up that fluff?hair? whatever. Often its not what we are saying but how we are saying it and somewhere along the line we have forgotten to speak to others how we would like to be spoken to....I put this into practice and the success was two fold the work was done more efficently and how I liked it done so I was happy and I wasnt stressed and nagging so the other household members we happy.

Speaking politely to each other the majority of the time doesnt happen over night in households where snapping, commanding are the usual forms of communication methods and it won't solve the issues of the world in a day but if we all practiced a bit more Im sure our kids would grow up a lot happier and a lot more confident in using please, thank you, excuse me etc etc