Manners For Kids

Q&A: Author Says Etiquette is Children's 'Foundation for Emotional Intelligence'

For this week's Moms Talk, I'm going to try something different. Instead of hearing from Dr. Mom, San Bruno Patch Editor Martin Ricard caught up with Karin Lefranc, a children's etiquette teacher and author of the new book, "A Quest for Good Manners," for a Q&A. She was in San Bruno Tuesday for a storytime at Barnes & Noble . 

Aside from writing about and teaching etiquette, Lefranc runs a children’s store in Avon, CT, called Over the Moon  where she also holds kids yoga classes. She and her family settled in nearby Simsbury after Lefranc traveled the world working for IDG Books to license the “ Dummies ” series into different languages. 

San Bruno Patch: Have you found that a lot of parents struggle to teach their kids manners?

Karin LeFranc: Yes. I think all parents—not just in the United States but around the world—we all struggle to reinforce good manners in our kids. Children are born with a sense of entitlement. When they cry, we pick them up. When they’re hungry we feed them. But I think it’s also important to try to change that sense of entitlement into sense of gratitude. 

Patch: You’ve said that you understand the never-ending quest to teach young boys and young girls to say please and thank you. Why is that important?

LeFranc: That is foundation of teaching gratitude. And there are all these studies coming out now all over the country—University of Florida, UC Davis—that show that adults and children who are taught gratitude or who practice daily gratitude exercises show greater focus, greater self-confidence, more energy, are happier.

So this is not just about some etiquette lesson. This is about the foundation of emotional intelligence. This is about how your child sees the world. 

Patch: Where did you learn about proper etiquette?

LeFranc: Well, from my parents, growing up. I went to an English school in south Africa. Then we moved to England and I learned a lot about manners in school and being a part of the English culture, which teaches the importance of everybody saying please and thank you. And then, later when started teaching, I became certified as a children’s etiquette teacher to really be able to teach it as well take from my own experience. 

Patch: It’s interesting how you said when you were growing up in England they incorporated that into the teaching because over here, in grade school, that’s usually not one of the lessons you’re going to get in class. Usually you learn that at home or it’s a cultural thing. So it’s interesting to see how different people learn what’s proper etiquette.

Boomer Parenting Tips on Tech Manners and Kids, by Bruce Sallan

Inspired by an incident that took place in our home. It’s a perfect subject for another Boomer Parenting Tips article and I expect it won’t be the last one on this evolving and oh-so-interesting change in etiquette and manners in our society.

A young couple came over with their parents, all friends of ours, and couldn’t stop using their so-called smart phones throughout the dinner and evening.  I gently asked them to stop and they did, for a brief while, but then resumed somewhat surreptitiously, in their laps…like kids cheating on an exam.