How To Civilize Your Kids

Don’t pay someone else to teach your children etiquette. Just start early—and make them write thank-you notes. 

By Marjorie Ingall



(Photoillustration Tablet Magazine; original photo Shutterstock)

Last week, the New York Times ran its semi-annual story about consultants who give lessons to children about manners. This piece was well-timed, since I’m hearing lots of post-Hanukkah muttering from bubbes and child-free humans nationwide about children’s failures to send thank-you notes for gifts. The Times piece is essentially the same as every other bemoaning-the-death-of-manners piece the newspaper has run since the dawn of time. (Here’s one on the lack of manners at bar and bat mitzvahs! Here’s one on Petit Protocol classes at the Hotel Pierre! Here’s one on don’t-shriek-when-presented-with-asparagus-soup classes at a New Jersey hotel! Here’s one on some darling African-American children at a charter school who begin every class with Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” and this article is not at all anthropologically wide-eyed and condescending—oh wait, yes it is!) All these stories are really about parents falling down on the job, neglecting to teach civility, and outsourcing the task to strangers—some of whom charge hundreds of dollars for the privilege.

Put away your checkbooks. I will now teach you to civilize your little heathens for free.

You know those Hanukkah presents your children received? They have to say thank you. If they are old enough to hold a crayon, they are old enough to write a thank-you note. You say, “Let’s make a picture for Auntie Sophie! She sent you that fabulous plastic dreidel full of chocolate you ate in a nanosecond, remember?” If the kid is too young to write anything, you write the note on the picture and tell the kid what you’re doing. Believe me, children absorb things the way a latke absorbs oil, especially when these lessons are consistent. If the kid can write his name, have him sign the note. If the kid is physically capable of writing her own note, force her. If the child is hesitant, withhold food. Withhold affection. Our ancestors survived repeated attempts at annihilation; their descendants will survive being made to write thank-you notes.

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