Forget the Soren Charm School, We Need a Little Manners Training!

Hm, just wondering when it is time to start teaching manners. Soren is pretty good about the most obvious areas, like saying "please", "thank-you" and "sorry." But there are a few finer points that might need just a little work. Some examples...

1) Peeing outside. You know, we live in the country so if Soren needs to pee and we're outside it is usually easier if he just whizzes in the grass or the bushes. No problem, right? Well, the subtleties of exactly where that is/isn't appropriate appear to be lost on him. Recently he was at a birthday party, in the middle of the party, in the middle of the back yard, in the middle of a group of parents chatting on lawn chairs...and, yep, you guessed it. He yanked down his trousers and peed in the grass!

2) Smacking. The sounds of people chewing drives me crazy. And somehow I ended up with the loudest smacking child ever! I haven't focused on it all because I didn't know if he was old enough to understand how to chew with your mouth closed (the fact that I can read without saying anything outloud still totally bewilders and frustrates him!) I gave it a try on Sunday. He was smacking away on his cereal. So I told him to try to chew with his lips put together. I showed him how to do it and asked him to try. He curled his lips over his teeth, and started opening and closing his mouth. He looked EXACTLY like a muppet! In the next bite he did it all again only to lose all the cereal and milk dribbling down his face.

I thought I was doing so well modeling polite behavior for him all these years. Then I made a note of our activities in the bath tub last night. We spend literally almost a half hour smashing rubber duckies against our skin because they made these hilarious farting sounds! Hm, I might not be the perfect teacher for polite social etiquette. Poor kid, he's doomed.