Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Good manners is a lasting gift for children...
Happy New Year! Have you made your resolutions yet? Have you broken them already? Personally, I have resolved to make no resolutions.... Wouldn't it be great if there was one resolution that lasted all year, made you and your children healthier and happier — and didn’t cost a cent and didn't take any great physical exertion?
KidsPeace (a 125 year old national children's charity) and the author of a new book, “Manners I. Care,” are teaming up to offer weary, overstressed families a different idea for a holiday gift or New Year’s resolution … a pledge to focus on and improve their children’s — and their families’ — lives by helping to improve their manners. This is not, experts say, just a “nice” thing to do. According to child crisis specialists, manners are more than the social glue that holds our society together. Good manners and behavior can greatly improve the quality of our lives and bad manners and behavior can often be signs that something is amiss. As child care provviders, we can help parents aid their children in developing better behavior and discover the sometimes unseen, underlying causes of less-than-perfect behavior, such as increasing stress and unsuspected physical or emotional problems.
“So often, we look only within ourselves for ways to improve our lives,” says KidsPeace President & CEO C.T. O’Donnell II. “The truth is that our greatest happiness generally comes from positive experiences with others. Peace on earth starts with peace in the family — and it shouldn’t last only a day or a week.”
Dr. Herbert Mandell, medical director for KidsPeace and the KidsPeace Children’s Hospital, notes, “Poor social interactions lead to a breakdown in communication, and lack of communication leads to misunderstandings and lost opportunities to help children when they face the normal crises of growing up. A family that improves its interactions improves its communications, and is likelier to become not just happier, but healthier.”
“Kids are under lots of stresses today and these often come out in they way they act,” says Dr. Lorrie Henderson, child expert and chief operating officer for KidsPeace. “We’ve developed some simple ways adults and children can start making their lives healthier and happier — not just for the holiday season or as a resolution for the New Year, but for forever.”
Order the book, take a look at some helpful tips for teaching good manners, and give the gift of good manners to bring peace to the lives of children and families in crisis and that are vital to social order, building mutual respect, tolerance, and cooperation, without which conflict and chaos will prevail.
