Kids Manners Matter (in the NYTimes)

The idea of someone creating guidelines and then telling me where my child's developmental social skills should be are about as welcome as physical milestones my pediatrician gives me, or like an ob/gyn telling me how to give birth.

BUT... Manners are super important to help communication between individuals and to get through conflicts, to resolve issues and to move forward together. PLUS... these are a wonderful couple of quotes that became an epiphany for understanding my children just a 'little' more:

" “Every infant is born adorable but selfish and the center of the universe,” she replied. It’s a parent’s job to teach that “there are other people, and other people have feelings.”...

But that first big counterintuitive lesson — that there are other people out there whose feelings must be considered — affects a child’s most basic moral development. For a child, as for an adult, manners represent a strategy for getting along in life, but also a successful intellectual engagement with the business of being human. "

AND THEN... tonight my older son, the gentler of the two lashed out repeatedly and finally, he and I got to the point where I could help him through by understanding it's ok to be mad, but not ok to hit because you're mad. That by hurting someone else he's gone beyond our acceptable boundaries.

Trying to balance how to parent a child feels, sometimes, like you're on a tenuously constructed bridge that could bow one way or another or that could be completely steady, depending on your choice of actions. Some of the article's insights make me feel like I can take on my childrens' episodes with a slightly firmer footing now. And teach them, gently but firmly (and consistently) how to be better with how they treat others.