The Hunt for Manners

I wonder if I could attribute it to her age: Melinda often refuses to use manners. No "sorry", "please", or "thank you"... instead, we get a full-blown fit of refusal, usually followed by dramatic crying. As if using manners is going to literally kill her. And that alone would be frustrating... but when you add to it that she used to use her "magic words" constantly, even when she was so young that she still couldn't say half of what she needed because she lacked the vocabulary.... Well, it goes beyond frustrating, and enters the zone of outright maddening.

In fact, I've been having such an issue with her doing something rude (or dangerously harmful), and then refusing to even try to make it better. For instance, the other day she knocked Alex down a la the now-popular Jacob Belly Bump, and Alex was walking around with a sippy cup in both hands. She knocked him down from behind, and he fell face-forward without any hands free to catch himself. His face connected with the cup, and he got a lovely cut on his lip. She wouldn't say sorry, give him a hug, or otherwise acknowledge the wrongdoing in any way other than cowering on the floor and shaking her head in refusal. I finally sat her down for a long talk, and made her a "contract" of what she would do if she pushed again. She and I came up with two options for consequences: My contribution was to say sorry and/or give a hug to make the person feel better. Her contribution was to clean the room.

That's right. My daughter would rather clean an entire room than utter a single two-syllable word or extend a hug if she's done something wrong. And she did push again the next day, and she did opt to clean the room instead of saying sorry or giving a hug. Call me incredulous.

Fast forward to today: We rearranged the dinner table in such a way that Melinda lost her preferred spot - one that has only been available for a few weeks. She started having a meltdown over the seating arrangments, despite being given a million and a half choices. It continued for quite some time, and morphed into a meltdown about the dinner itself, and then into wanting someone to stir her soup for her.

Well, we parental units got stubborn by this point. If she was going to sit there and have a fit over every single little thing, we weren't going to stir her soup (something she's perfectly capable of, anyway) until she said please. And oh, boy, how she continued to refuse!

Jesse, bless his clever heart, really saved the day. He began trying to "find" Melinda's "lost manners". Jesse really has a knack for being silly. It's one of the things that made me fall in love with him, after all! But he really out-did himself tonight.

"Hm, mom, I think Melinda's lost her manners! I wonder where they could be?"
(Melinda continues to sob, but her eyes peek up in interest.)

Jesse started asking a long series of questions, trying to discover where those lost manners might be. On top of her head? Under the bag of chips? Inside the vase? Eventually, when Melinda continued to cry and stubbornly refuse to participate in the quest, he got up from his seat, and started wandering around the room. He picked up a couple tissue-paper-decorated vases from the kids' Art Play class last fall, and held them on his head like antlers. "Are these manners??" He tried getting her attention with no luck, and was soon dancing a silly little jig with those "antlers" on top of his head. I couldn't help myself, when I looked at what he was doing- I burst out laughing. Jacob followed suit, too, giggling his head off. Alex looked at him with obvious delight. Melinda still huddled in her chair, oblivious to the new tactic. I convinced her to look, finally, and she hid a bit of giggles in between her sobs. Jesse moved along, now picking up a thick book from my desk. "Hmm, I wonder if this might be manners? Where would it go? Inside my head? Can I fit this inside my head??" And he suddenly starts making a show of shoving the book into his head (by putting it behind his head). Jacob was now beside himself with giggling, and Melinda was even starting to let obvious laughter escape unhidden. But she quickly reverted back to crying.

After a few more tries, Jesse came back to the dinner table. We sort of hemmed and hawed about what to try next, when Jacob joined in: "I have an idea, Daddy!" And when we asked him to show us his idea, he ran off in search of manners, too. First he mimicked the vase-antlers. While giggling. Nope, that didn't work - not manners! Then he ran to the front room, and came back with a pillow on his head. "Is this manners?? NOoooo!" Giggled and ran off. He kept coming back, with lots of variations of things on his head. It was quite entertaining. Finally Jesse called him back to the table, declaring that he tried hard enough, but needed to finish eating now.

We started using exaggerated manners while Melinda continued to sulk.
Jacob: "Can I have more milk, Daddy?"
Jesse: "What do you say?"
Jacob: "Please!!" (with a grin, even!)
Jesse: "Yes, Jacob, here you go!"
Jacob: "Thank you!"
Jesse: "You're welcome!"

And so on.
Melinda still sulked. Jesse proclaimed that Melinda's manners must be lost for good.
"But what if they're lost somewhere inside her, dad?" I asked. (Yes, I'm one of the ones who always addresses her husband by "dad" when children are present. And sometimes when they're not.) "How are we going to find them if they're inside her??"

FINALLY, Melinda starts playing the game. It's been long enough for me to finish two bowls of soup by this point, even with all the discussion in between bites. "Mommy, I want you to look for my manners," she says timidly. "Oh!! Where should I look?" I pry open her mouth and and exclaim, "Oh, look! There's something hanging down at the back of your throat! Is that your manners?" She yanks her head away from me, now giggling, but nope, that wasn't it. I check her pinky toe, maybe it's hiding them. Nope, not there either. A few more tries, and I'm out of ideas, and go back to feeding Alex a few beans from the soup.

Melinda then gives her spoon to Jesse, without a word. He says thank you for the spoon, and sets it down. Then she gives him her bowl, again without a word. He says thank you again, and sets it down near his own bowl, and goes back to eating. After a few moments, she peeps out a quick "Stir!" followed by something that might have been "please". But it was hard to tell, so we wondered if she might mean that she wanted daddy to stir the cheese. So he picked up the spoon and "stirred" the block of cheese. Oh, the giggles! She's coming out of the ridiculous fit, now! But no, she didn't want the cheese stirred, she wanted her soup (now cold) stirred. So she peeps out another "Stir!" followed by a chirped "please!!"

"Melinda found her manners!!!!" we exclaim with joy. A large round of applause! Oh, Alex likes this game! He joins in with his own exuberant clapping, grinning like there's nothing better in the world than dinner time with clapping involved. And you know what? Melinda's smiling, too! Jesse picks up the spoon and stirs the soup, and hands it back to Melinda happily. She looks so proud of herself!

And then she wants some water - with ice. "Can I have more water, please?" "Yes, you can!! Here you go." "Thank you!" "You're welcome!" And every time she used a manners word from then until we were down from the table, we erupted with "Hoorays!!!" and another round of clapping. What fun! Even Melinda was enjoying the magic words by this point.

It makes everyone happy to use manners, doesn't it??