In our studying deference we are going to do a little blitz on manners.  The children’s Character study assignment earlier this week, was to look through a book on manners (I have a few) and find 3 manners that either they need to polish up on or the whole family could work on.  They then needed to make a poster for one of those three.  We will use these posters as reminders – they are on our pantry door (which is near our dining table) – a place where we will see them often and be reminded. (read about our Reminder Wall) Deference:  considering the preciousness of the other person and putting their needs before your own. [Tweet “Good manners is showing deference – putting the needs of others before your own.”]

Nine manners we are working on at the moment:

1. Posture – good posture
2. Sloppy language – watching slang and annunciation
3. Eye contact – making eye contact while talking or listening
4. Braces (only relevant to one of our children) but we could all take a reminder to keep our teeth clean and breath fresh
5. Sneezing in public – how to do this discreetly and hygienically – I’ll add coughing and snuffling (or blowing your nose) to this one.
6. Don’t interrupt when someone is talking
7. Knock before entering someone’s room
8. Wash faces and combed hair before dinner (I’ll reword this one to be ‘freshen up’ before meal time)

Here are the ‘notebook pages’ or reminder posters that the kids made, reflecting their choice of something they need to polishup on. We used a digital scrapbooking software for these notebook pages.

 

 Poster made by Daniel

The kids enjoyed flipping through the few books I had on manners – it became a cross between a discovery for themselves and a self-assessment activity instead of me just telling them that they were a bit lacking.  Starting from the character response of ‘deference’ where we want to consider that other people are precious and we want to put their needs first gave us a heart-based motivation to improve our manners.