Teaching Thankfulness

"Please" and "Thank You" from a child are music to Mother's ears. How can you make those melodic phrases frequent in you child's speech? By focusing on them while Baby is learning language in the first place!

Here's how we do it:

*Before each meal, we say grace. This means that our 8 month old must hold Mommy and Daddy's hands without squirming while we thank God for the food. We began around 7 months, but probably should have begun when we started solids at 5.5 months. I just didn't think of it then. The first few times we did this there were protests, but after a week of squirming, our son now willingly pauses before the meal. I doubt he fully understands, but we are training
a habit of the heart.

*When I see he wants something, I often say "Another cheerio (or whatever it is), please?" before giving it to him and "Thank you, Mommy" after. Babywise II suggests doing this because as he becomes used to hearing these phrases, he will imitate them and politeness will become second nature to him.

I love the phrase that Babywise II uses, "Train, don't retrain." The idea is to consciously encourage positive behavior rather than allowing a negative habit to develop that you'll have to work harder to counter later. Hopefully all my "please" and "thank you" will reap rewards when Junior learns to talk.

RESOURCES

BabyWise II