P's & Q's

I came across this drawing when sorting through Sam’s craft drawer this week. It dates back to the fall of 2005, when he was two and a half years old. We used to sit colouring together, and I’d slip in little lessons where I could. “Do you want me to draw a circle? Do you remember what a triangle looks like? These are stripes, and these are polka dots.” The colourful patterns of the world sketched across the palm of my hand. The page filled me with nostalgia. For those stay-at-home mom days, yes — but also for the sheer simplicity of my concerns when raising a toddler. It seemed important then that Sam knew his crescents from his half-circles.

I’m struck by the irony of having so much less time with Sam now, when the scope and import of what’s left to teach him has multiplied exponentially. He’s bound to learn the geometry in school; it’s the basic rules of social living that have to come from his working parents. But when? How do we squeeze in pointers on table manners, when dinner conversation is all we get in a day? How do we stress the value of good sportsmanship, when he loses the first game of Trouble we've sat down for in months? It pains us to have to pepper our quality time with lectures and rules, with coaching and correcting. Is it that important that he minds his P's and Q's?

Yes. Yes it is. I've had it up to here, I tell ya, with the casual “yup” in place of “yes, please” when I offer a snack, the impatient “wha-at?” shouted from his bedroom when I call him for dinner, the petulant slouch at the table once he’s declared that the food is yucky, and the dramatic "oh brother!" eye-rolling in response to being called out on any of this. Worse, he’s taken to offering his own snotty Miss Manners pointers when the opportunity arises: “You just interupted me!” he retorts, when I can’t bear his affected “Could I have. .. could I have …. could I have…” stammer another instant before breaking in and suggesting Mini Wheats as a fine breakfast option. Did I ever correct my mother’s manners? Oh, I think not.

Polite language and behaviour is only partly about courtesy and tactfulness. It's also tied to respect and appreciation — for property, for other people's kindness, efforts, experience ... a whole range of things it'll take a while to teach. There’s a lot more to it than knee-jerk please and thank yous (though we’re admittedly not at reflex levels there yet either). I'm happy that Sam says “pardon me?” when he doesn’t catch a question, that he asks to be excused from the table, rather than coming and going as he pleases throughout the meal. And I have seen a heightened appreciation for people’s unexpected generosity. When the neighbours up the street offered him some Spiderman fruit chews last week, he commented on it repeatedly: “That was so nice. So nice of them to give me this treat.”

But we have a long way to go when it comes both to practising social niceities in an increasingly rude world and to developing the more crucial character traits that are telltale signs of a child well raised. He’s only five, of course. Some would say there’s plenty of time yet before he's in danger of being labelled a rude brat. But it seems I traced my hand for little Sammy just yesterday, filling it with rainbows, stars and happy faces. It’s high time now to take him firmly in hand and show him how to spread a little of that in the real world. Oh, he'll likely roll his eyes at me for a while, but mark my words! He'll learn to do that when I'm not looking...