While many children learn manners in the home, preschool teachers also are responsible for teaching and reinforcing manners. As young as 2 years old, children can learn the basics about manners by being taught to say “Please” and “Thank you” when appropriate, even if they do not understand the reasons for being polite. As children complete preschool, they will learn more about acceptable and unacceptable etiquette.
Acceptable Public Behavior for Preschool Children
For children ages 3-5, acceptable public behavior includes being able to sit quietly in a restaurant and entertaining himself while the adults are eating or talking. Preschoolers can also be expected to walk around in public places without running ahead of the parent or grabbing everything they see.
They also learn how to use their “indoor” voices. For preschool aged children, it is also appropriate for teachers to remind the child to extend his or her hand, look others in the face, and say, “Hello”. Manners for public behavior are still developing and preschool children need lots of practice in this area.
Table Manners for Children Ages 3-5
For preschoolers, table manners are better “caught” than “taught”, according to Brenda Nixon, author of Parenting Power in the Early Years. “When parents, or the important adults in a child’s life, model appropriate table manners, such as no elbows on the table and saying, ‘Please pass the salt’, children eventually absorb the teaching and use these manners, too,” says Nixon.
In addition, teachers should be saying, “Please” and “Thank You” in their daily conversations in the classroom as a natural way to teach manners.
Friendship Skills for Preschoolers
In preschool, friendship skills should be monitored to see what the individual child is capable of easily and successfully.
Sharing is a manner that is important in friendship. “When fighting erupts over toys, the teacher needs to empathize with the child’s frustration rather than get angry at her inability to “play nicely”; a concept the 3 and possibly 4 yr. old does not understand,” says Bonnie Harris author of Confident Parents, Remarkable Kids: 8 Principles for Raising Kids You'll Love to Live With [AdamsMedia, 2008]. When something is too frustrating for the child, the child care providers should calm the child and after the child is calm, give the child a choice about what he or she would like to do next. Options allow the frustrated child to have some power and help him or her regulate.
Friendship development, in the sense of getting along with others and sharing can happen at around 4 to 5, but it is not until around 6 to even 8 years of age that children really know what it means to be a “friend”, says Johnny Castro, faculty member in the child development program at Brookhaven College in Dallas.
As a child matures, he or she will remember more often appropriate manners and need fewer reminders. In the meanwhile, model good behavior in the classroom as this is how children learn best.
