A Message From the Principal:
Dear Chesterbrook Parents,
Here are a few friendly reminders.
- Please be sure we have the most recent copy of your child’s immunization records along with the completed Universal Child Health Form.
- Tuition is due every Friday for the following week. A mandatory $25 fee, per our corporate office, will be charged if payment is not given by Tuesday mornings. No exceptions.
- We have an ACH program that allows us to automatically withdrawal the tuition from your account every Monday night. If you would like to take advantage of this, please ask for the form.
- Please remember to sign your child in and out for every drop-off and pick-up. The book is located on the front desk and is labeled with each classroom name.
- Remember that the academic day begins everyday at 9:00am, so please be sure to have your child here by that time.
- For security purposes, please do not share the code to the front door with anyone other than the people named on your child’s Authorized Pick Up List.
- You must give us four weeks’ notice in writing prior to withdrawing your child from the School. If four weeks’ notice is not given, please understand that you will be held responsible for four weeks’ tuition. You must also give us two weeks’ notice prior to changing your child’s attendance schedule.
- Please do not leave your car running or a child in the car unattended at drop off/pick up time. In addition to being dangerous, this is illegal and the state of NJ considers it as abuse and neglect, even for a minute.
- Earn a free week of tuition for referring a family to our school.
- Reminder that we will no longer be honoring make up days.
- Don’t forget to give us your child’s flex schedule in the beginning of the month.
May Weekly Themes:
- 5/4: Mother May I? (Mother’s Day)
- 5/11: Guess Who at the Zoo
- 5/18: From Seed to Flower
- 5/25: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Important Dates:
- 5/6: Original Artworks Fundraiser forms are due
- 5/4-5/8: Teacher Appreciation Week
- 5/8: Mother’s Day Tea & Read, 9:30-11:00
- 5/8: PreK & Kindergarten Field Trip @ TD Banks Performing Art Centre, 11:30-2
- 5/15: Hip Hop Recital, 3:00
- 5/25: Chesterbrook will be CLOSED for Memorial Day
- 5/29: Summer Camp Paperwork is due
Looking Ahead:
- Friday, June 12th: Father’s Day Picnic, 3:00
- Friday, June 19th: PreK & Kindergarten Graduation at Wedgewood Country Club, 1:00. Details will follow
- Monday, June 22nd: First day of Summer Camp!
If at anytime you have a question or concern, please feel free to stop in the office to speak with me…the door is always open.
Stacy and Maggie
School Spotlight
Congratulations to Teacher of the Month for May 2015:
Alex Centrone
Miss Alex Centrone has been a part of the Chesterbrook Academy for over three years now. She originally started as an afternoon assistant but it was quickly realized how much of an awesome teacher she was and she has been our PreK assistant teacher ever since.
It’s obvious to everyone that knows Miss Alex that she has the biggest heart around. And her silly personality, positive attitude, and infectious laugh spread happiness to everyone she comes in contact with! Miss Alex truly loves teaching and enjoys every minute that she spends with the children. We are lucky to have her. Congratulations Miss Alex!!
Classroom Bullets
Infants
Happy May, Infants! Welcome Julianna this month and a very happy first birthday to Roman and Ayla!! This month we will be taking advantage of the warm weather by going on plenty of walks in our Bye Bye Buggy. Please be sure to send in a sun hat and sunscreen for your baby. We would also like to thank you all for your cooperation with our new infant room visitor policy. Hoping our Infant Room moms can join us for our Mother’s Day Read & Tea on Fri May 8th.
Toddler A
Happy May! With the nice weather coming this month, we will be engaging in activities that will help develop, strengthen, and grow our muscles. Our color of the month will be Pink and our shape of the month will be a Diamond. Looking forward to our Mother’s Day Tea & Read & other special events. Let’s get outside & work those muscles!
Toddler B
Spring is here & we are enjoying the beautiful weather! Please remember to switch out your child’s clothing. The children are doing a great job putting on their own jackets. Please continue to encourage them! Please join us for our Mother’s Day Tea & Read on Fri 5/8. Blue is our color of the month. Some of our skills for the month will be counting 1-10, recognizing ourselves in photos, & jumping in place with 2 feet!
Beginner A
We are welcoming May in Beginner A! We hope that you will be joining us for our Mother’s Day Tea & Read on Fri 5/8. Our focus this month will be to review previously learned skills. We will also learn three new Spanish terms: maracas, elefante, & violeta. As the weather is getting warmer, we encourage parents to check their child’s cubby for weather appropriate clothing. We also ask to bring in sunscreen and bugspray to be applied for outside play. We look forward to another great month in Beginner A!
Beginner B
Welcome to May in Beginner B! This month we will celebrate Mother’s Day! Our Mother’s Day Tea & Read will be on 5/8, so we hope to see you there. Since our school year is coming to an end, we will be reviewing everything we have learned. The children will review their language & literacy skills by tracing their names and working on holding a writing utensil correctly. Like previous months, our self-help skills, such as bathroom procedures, will be worked on. The children will also explore their sense of touch by exploring textures of various objects. Looking forward to a great month!
Intermediates
The Intermediates class is cruising through this year! We are flying through our letters and number recognition. This month, we will be discussing our wonderful mothers. We will be discussing zoo animals and where they live and what they eat. We will be discussing automobiles and how we get around all different ways. We will continue with letters, numbers, our names, and our social-emotional skills! Keep up the great work, Intermediates!
Pre-K
PreK is getting ready for all of our fun end of the year activities! We’ll be reviewing all of our skills we have learned this year in the upcoming weeks. Hope to see you all for our Mother’s Day Tea & Read on Friday May 8th from 9:30-11:00, then we ill be heading to our field trip to see a play from 11:30-2 (Please wear a blue shirt!). Please be sure to arrive by 9:15 daily because we will be practicing for graduation!
Kindergarten
Everyone did a great job during testing week! Results should be in by the last report card. Moms- please join us on Friday May 8th for our Mother’s Day Tea & Read. The event will take place between 9:30-11. After the Tea & Read, we will be heading to our Field Trip to the TD Arts Centre. Please pack a lunch for your child that day, and send them in wearing a blue shirt. Our trip will be from 11:30-2. Looking ahead…Kindergarten graduation will be on Friday June 19th at 1:00 pm at the Wedgewood Country Club. Looking forward to another great month!
Your Child’s Health
Managing Allergies at School:
Help Keep Your Child’s Allergies on the Ball
By Gina Shaw
Does your child miss school due to allergies? If so, you’re not alone.
Seasonal allergies are believed to affect as many as 40% of U.S. children. On any given day, about 10,000 of those children miss school because of their allergies. That’s a total of more than 2 million lost school days every year.
Even if your child doesn’t miss school, allergies can get in the way of a productive school day, so managing allergies at school is an important part of caring for your child’s health.
Managing Allergy Symptoms at School
Symptoms like fatigue, headache, sneezing, runny noses, watery eyes, and itchiness can get in the way of attention and concentration, and the medications taken to manage these symptoms can also interfere with school performance. What’s a parent to do?
At home, you can do a lot more to control your child’s environment and limit exposure to allergens than you can at school. But it’s worthwhile to ask your child’s teacher or principal how they handle allergies at school, and if they will consider measures such as:
High-efficiency air filters
Keeping windows closed on high-pollen days
Asking the lawn crew to mow the lawns when children are not present.
Treating Allergies at School With Prescription Nasal Sprays
If your child has moderate to severe allergies, simple environmental control measures and over-the-counter medications probably will not control their symptoms well enough.
For these children, the best method of controlling many allergy symptoms is prescription nasal steroids, says childhood allergy specialist Charles E. Lowe III, MD, a pediatric allergy and asthma specialist in Pikeville, Ky.
“You only need to use a prescription nasal spray once a day, and they work best at controlling [nasal] allergy symptoms. They’re the preferred first-line treatment,” Lowe says. “But kids don’t like spraying liquid up their nose, and there’s a misconception that you can get hooked on them.”
In fact, prescription nasal steroids do not cause dependency problems. (Over-the-counter sprays can cause dependency and rebound symptoms.)
Lowe recommends that a child begin using a prescription nasal spray at the beginning of local allergy season, and use it throughout the duration of seasonal symptoms.
To avoid that unpleasant taste in the back of the throat, the child should be taught to take a big sniff right up the nostril.
Turning to Antihistamines for Allergies at School
If you can’t get your child to use a nasal spray, or if the sprays aren’t completely controlling your child’s allergy symptoms at school, then antihistamines are your next step. Antihistamines help reduce the symptoms of itching, sneezing, and runny nose.
Many parents worry that prescription antihistamines will leave their children groggy and unable to concentrate. Although antihistamines can have a slight sedating effect, Lowe says untreated allergies will make your child even drowsier and distracted.
“A lot of studies have looked at this. While kids who don’t have allergies at all certainly do better in school in terms of alertness and staying on tasks, the kids with allergies who are treated do better than those who are not treated. You can’t get them to be perfect, but you can get them a lot better,” says Lowe.
Talk to your child’s doctor to get a prescription for one of the antihistamines approved for young school-age children. There are quite a few available, including Allegra, Claritin, Xyzal, and Zyrtec.
Other Treatments for Allergies at School
Parents may be concerned about whether or not to treat their child’s allergies with Singulair, a different class of anti-allergy drug, after the FDA began investigating whether or not the drug played any role in the suicide of a 17-year-old boy who was taking it.
The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology recommends that children taking Singulair should be monitored closely. “If they show no signs of depression or anxiety, they can stay on the drug,” says Lowe. “But if they have any problems, they should be taken off.”
Experts have also recently revisited the question of allergy shots for children. Previously, immunotherapy was not recommended for children under age 5. Now, as new evidence has accumulated that immunotherapy may be able to prevent the onset of asthma, new guidelines leave the question of whether or not to start allergy shots before age 5 up to the child’s doctor.
“If your child has very bad allergies and a significant family history of asthma, and perhaps they’re starting to wheeze when they have a cold, you might want to go ahead and start immunotherapy before age 5,” says Lowe.
“If they’re not responding to antihistamines or nasal steroids, immunotherapy is a good option. It’s not one of those last resorts anymore, because it lets us actually modify the disease and prevent the onset of asthma.”
Your Child’s Education
Teaching Kids to Mind Their Manners
By Isadora Foxx
P’s & Q’s for Parents Etiquette guru Emily Post once said, “Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.”
The operative word here is awareness. Around the 18-month mark, a child begins to understand that other people have feelings just like his, so this is the time to start teaching kids that their behavior affects others. Easier said than done, of course. What parent hasn’t looked the other way when she hears the greasy thud of a chicken nugget hitting the kitchen wall? Here’s what you need to know and how to get started.
Fact #1: Good manners are a good habit. “Behaving politely is a way of life, not just something you pull out when you’re at a wedding or fancy restaurant,” says Robin Thompson, founder of etiquette-network.com and the Robin Thompson Charm School in Pekin, Illinois. “It’s important to start as early as you can so manners become something a child does automatically, whether she is at home or away.”
Fact #2: Polite behavior will help your child’s social development. Kids who aren’t taught social graces from an early age are at a distinct disadvantage, say experts. An ill-mannered child is a turn-off to adults and kids alike; while children aren’t likely to be offended by a playmate who neglects to say “excuse me,” they don’t relish the company of a child who doesn’t know how to share or take turns. “You wouldn’t send a child off to preschool without a healthy snack,” says Sheryl Eberly, mother of three and author of 365 Manners Kids Should Know (Three Rivers Press, 2001). “Sending her into the world without knowing social graces is equally problematic.”
Fact #3: Learning manners is a lifelong education. “It won’t happen overnight, and you need to take it slowly,” says Eberly. Introducing one new social skill a month — teaching your 2-year-old to say “hello” when another person addresses him, for example, and rewarding him with praise when he does so — makes the process manageable for everyone.
Equally important is keeping your expectations in check. “There’s only so much a small child can do,” reminds Eberly. That same 2-year-old is not going to curtsy when ancient Aunt Mabel comes over for Sunday dinner. But she can greet her at the door and sit happily at the table for a limited period of time.
Fact #4: Your behavior counts. “That means that when you ask your partner to pass the salt, you do it with a ‘please’ and a ‘thank you,'” says Eberly. But it goes beyond that. Think about it this way: How would you feel if your child gave a fellow tricycler the finger when he cut her off on the sidewalk? If the thought doesn’t thrill you, keep your hands and fingers on the wheel while driving. Inappropriate expressions of anger are rude, too.
Fact #5: Consistency is important. Acquiring good manners takes lots of practice and reinforcement, so make sure that you, your partner, and your caregiver are encouraging (and discouraging) the same behaviors. If your husband lets your kid fling food during meals and you don’t, your child won’t know what’s expected of him.
Basic Table Manners
What to expect: By age 3, your child will be able to eat with a spoon and fork, stay seated at the table for 15 to 20 minutes, and wipe his mouth with a napkin.
What to do: During toddlerhood, offer your child his food on a small, no-break plate; encourage him to use his utensils; discourage him from throwing food by telling him, “We don’t throw food on the floor. If you don’t want any more, please say ‘no thank you.'”
Please and Thank You
What to expect: An 18-month-old may be able to say the words but not necessarily grasp their true meaning. By 2 1/2, kids can link the word to the concept.
What to do: If your child hasn’t gotten into the habit, gently prompt him by saying, “What do we say after we get a gift?” or “What do we say when someone gives us a treat?”
Sharing
What to expect: At around 2, a child begins to understand the concept of sharing and turn-taking — though he won’t necessarily relish doing either!
What to do: Encourage your toddler to share with his friends on play dates by giving him two similar toys and helping him offer one to his friend.
Apologizing
What to expect: Though a toddler of about 18 months has a basic understanding of empathy, he can’t really understand why he’s expected to apologize. By 2 1/2 to 3, he’ll understand the concept but may be too caught up in his own affairs to do it on his own.
What to do: When your child snatches a toy from a playmate, discourage the behavior and play on his empathy: “We don’t hit; hitting hurts.” Then, prompt him to apologize: “When we hurt someone, we say, ‘I’m sorry.'”
Play-Date Protocol
Play dates are a great opportunity to practice manners. Here’s how to ensure your child is on his best behavior.
Set your child up for success. Young children behave well when they’re rested and comfortable. Plan play dates around naps and meals.
Gently remind him of your expectations. Before you go, tell your child that he has to share and say “please” and “thank you.”
Prompt him when he forgets to be mannerly. If your child takes a snack from your host without comment, for example, say, “Please thank Mrs. Jones for the cookie.”
Step in when things get hairy. During the play date, someone will inevitably hit, bite, or toy-snatch. If your child is the instigator, say, “That made your friend feel bad. Let’s make him feel better by saying that we’re sorry.”
Help him thank his host. When you leave, remind your child he had fun and prompt him to say “thank you.”
May 2015 Newsletter
A Message From the Principal:
Dear Chesterbrook Parents,
Here are a few friendly reminders.
May Weekly Themes:
Important Dates:
Looking Ahead:
If at anytime you have a question or concern, please feel free to stop in the office to speak with me…the door is always open.
Stacy and Maggie
School Spotlight
Congratulations to Teacher of the Month for May 2015:
Alex Centrone
Miss Alex Centrone has been a part of the Chesterbrook Academy for over three years now. She originally started as an afternoon assistant but it was quickly realized how much of an awesome teacher she was and she has been our PreK assistant teacher ever since.
It’s obvious to everyone that knows Miss Alex that she has the biggest heart around. And her silly personality, positive attitude, and infectious laugh spread happiness to everyone she comes in contact with! Miss Alex truly loves teaching and enjoys every minute that she spends with the children. We are lucky to have her. Congratulations Miss Alex!!
Classroom Bullets
Infants
Happy May, Infants! Welcome Julianna this month and a very happy first birthday to Roman and Ayla!! This month we will be taking advantage of the warm weather by going on plenty of walks in our Bye Bye Buggy. Please be sure to send in a sun hat and sunscreen for your baby. We would also like to thank you all for your cooperation with our new infant room visitor policy. Hoping our Infant Room moms can join us for our Mother’s Day Read & Tea on Fri May 8th.
Toddler A
Happy May! With the nice weather coming this month, we will be engaging in activities that will help develop, strengthen, and grow our muscles. Our color of the month will be Pink and our shape of the month will be a Diamond. Looking forward to our Mother’s Day Tea & Read & other special events. Let’s get outside & work those muscles!
Toddler B
Spring is here & we are enjoying the beautiful weather! Please remember to switch out your child’s clothing. The children are doing a great job putting on their own jackets. Please continue to encourage them! Please join us for our Mother’s Day Tea & Read on Fri 5/8. Blue is our color of the month. Some of our skills for the month will be counting 1-10, recognizing ourselves in photos, & jumping in place with 2 feet!
Beginner A
We are welcoming May in Beginner A! We hope that you will be joining us for our Mother’s Day Tea & Read on Fri 5/8. Our focus this month will be to review previously learned skills. We will also learn three new Spanish terms: maracas, elefante, & violeta. As the weather is getting warmer, we encourage parents to check their child’s cubby for weather appropriate clothing. We also ask to bring in sunscreen and bugspray to be applied for outside play. We look forward to another great month in Beginner A!
Beginner B
Welcome to May in Beginner B! This month we will celebrate Mother’s Day! Our Mother’s Day Tea & Read will be on 5/8, so we hope to see you there. Since our school year is coming to an end, we will be reviewing everything we have learned. The children will review their language & literacy skills by tracing their names and working on holding a writing utensil correctly. Like previous months, our self-help skills, such as bathroom procedures, will be worked on. The children will also explore their sense of touch by exploring textures of various objects. Looking forward to a great month!
Intermediates
The Intermediates class is cruising through this year! We are flying through our letters and number recognition. This month, we will be discussing our wonderful mothers. We will be discussing zoo animals and where they live and what they eat. We will be discussing automobiles and how we get around all different ways. We will continue with letters, numbers, our names, and our social-emotional skills! Keep up the great work, Intermediates!
Pre-K
PreK is getting ready for all of our fun end of the year activities! We’ll be reviewing all of our skills we have learned this year in the upcoming weeks. Hope to see you all for our Mother’s Day Tea & Read on Friday May 8th from 9:30-11:00, then we ill be heading to our field trip to see a play from 11:30-2 (Please wear a blue shirt!). Please be sure to arrive by 9:15 daily because we will be practicing for graduation!
Kindergarten
Everyone did a great job during testing week! Results should be in by the last report card. Moms- please join us on Friday May 8th for our Mother’s Day Tea & Read. The event will take place between 9:30-11. After the Tea & Read, we will be heading to our Field Trip to the TD Arts Centre. Please pack a lunch for your child that day, and send them in wearing a blue shirt. Our trip will be from 11:30-2. Looking ahead…Kindergarten graduation will be on Friday June 19th at 1:00 pm at the Wedgewood Country Club. Looking forward to another great month!
Your Child’s Health
Managing Allergies at School:
Help Keep Your Child’s Allergies on the Ball
By Gina Shaw
Does your child miss school due to allergies? If so, you’re not alone.
Seasonal allergies are believed to affect as many as 40% of U.S. children. On any given day, about 10,000 of those children miss school because of their allergies. That’s a total of more than 2 million lost school days every year.
Even if your child doesn’t miss school, allergies can get in the way of a productive school day, so managing allergies at school is an important part of caring for your child’s health.
Managing Allergy Symptoms at School
Symptoms like fatigue, headache, sneezing, runny noses, watery eyes, and itchiness can get in the way of attention and concentration, and the medications taken to manage these symptoms can also interfere with school performance. What’s a parent to do?
At home, you can do a lot more to control your child’s environment and limit exposure to allergens than you can at school. But it’s worthwhile to ask your child’s teacher or principal how they handle allergies at school, and if they will consider measures such as:
High-efficiency air filters
Keeping windows closed on high-pollen days
Asking the lawn crew to mow the lawns when children are not present.
Treating Allergies at School With Prescription Nasal Sprays
If your child has moderate to severe allergies, simple environmental control measures and over-the-counter medications probably will not control their symptoms well enough.
For these children, the best method of controlling many allergy symptoms is prescription nasal steroids, says childhood allergy specialist Charles E. Lowe III, MD, a pediatric allergy and asthma specialist in Pikeville, Ky.
“You only need to use a prescription nasal spray once a day, and they work best at controlling [nasal] allergy symptoms. They’re the preferred first-line treatment,” Lowe says. “But kids don’t like spraying liquid up their nose, and there’s a misconception that you can get hooked on them.”
In fact, prescription nasal steroids do not cause dependency problems. (Over-the-counter sprays can cause dependency and rebound symptoms.)
Lowe recommends that a child begin using a prescription nasal spray at the beginning of local allergy season, and use it throughout the duration of seasonal symptoms.
To avoid that unpleasant taste in the back of the throat, the child should be taught to take a big sniff right up the nostril.
Turning to Antihistamines for Allergies at School
If you can’t get your child to use a nasal spray, or if the sprays aren’t completely controlling your child’s allergy symptoms at school, then antihistamines are your next step. Antihistamines help reduce the symptoms of itching, sneezing, and runny nose.
Many parents worry that prescription antihistamines will leave their children groggy and unable to concentrate. Although antihistamines can have a slight sedating effect, Lowe says untreated allergies will make your child even drowsier and distracted.
“A lot of studies have looked at this. While kids who don’t have allergies at all certainly do better in school in terms of alertness and staying on tasks, the kids with allergies who are treated do better than those who are not treated. You can’t get them to be perfect, but you can get them a lot better,” says Lowe.
Talk to your child’s doctor to get a prescription for one of the antihistamines approved for young school-age children. There are quite a few available, including Allegra, Claritin, Xyzal, and Zyrtec.
Other Treatments for Allergies at School
Parents may be concerned about whether or not to treat their child’s allergies with Singulair, a different class of anti-allergy drug, after the FDA began investigating whether or not the drug played any role in the suicide of a 17-year-old boy who was taking it.
The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology recommends that children taking Singulair should be monitored closely. “If they show no signs of depression or anxiety, they can stay on the drug,” says Lowe. “But if they have any problems, they should be taken off.”
Experts have also recently revisited the question of allergy shots for children. Previously, immunotherapy was not recommended for children under age 5. Now, as new evidence has accumulated that immunotherapy may be able to prevent the onset of asthma, new guidelines leave the question of whether or not to start allergy shots before age 5 up to the child’s doctor.
“If your child has very bad allergies and a significant family history of asthma, and perhaps they’re starting to wheeze when they have a cold, you might want to go ahead and start immunotherapy before age 5,” says Lowe.
“If they’re not responding to antihistamines or nasal steroids, immunotherapy is a good option. It’s not one of those last resorts anymore, because it lets us actually modify the disease and prevent the onset of asthma.”
Your Child’s Education
Teaching Kids to Mind Their Manners
By Isadora Foxx
P’s & Q’s for Parents Etiquette guru Emily Post once said, “Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.”
The operative word here is awareness. Around the 18-month mark, a child begins to understand that other people have feelings just like his, so this is the time to start teaching kids that their behavior affects others. Easier said than done, of course. What parent hasn’t looked the other way when she hears the greasy thud of a chicken nugget hitting the kitchen wall? Here’s what you need to know and how to get started.
Fact #1: Good manners are a good habit. “Behaving politely is a way of life, not just something you pull out when you’re at a wedding or fancy restaurant,” says Robin Thompson, founder of etiquette-network.com and the Robin Thompson Charm School in Pekin, Illinois. “It’s important to start as early as you can so manners become something a child does automatically, whether she is at home or away.”
Fact #2: Polite behavior will help your child’s social development. Kids who aren’t taught social graces from an early age are at a distinct disadvantage, say experts. An ill-mannered child is a turn-off to adults and kids alike; while children aren’t likely to be offended by a playmate who neglects to say “excuse me,” they don’t relish the company of a child who doesn’t know how to share or take turns. “You wouldn’t send a child off to preschool without a healthy snack,” says Sheryl Eberly, mother of three and author of 365 Manners Kids Should Know (Three Rivers Press, 2001). “Sending her into the world without knowing social graces is equally problematic.”
Fact #3: Learning manners is a lifelong education. “It won’t happen overnight, and you need to take it slowly,” says Eberly. Introducing one new social skill a month — teaching your 2-year-old to say “hello” when another person addresses him, for example, and rewarding him with praise when he does so — makes the process manageable for everyone.
Equally important is keeping your expectations in check. “There’s only so much a small child can do,” reminds Eberly. That same 2-year-old is not going to curtsy when ancient Aunt Mabel comes over for Sunday dinner. But she can greet her at the door and sit happily at the table for a limited period of time.
Fact #4: Your behavior counts. “That means that when you ask your partner to pass the salt, you do it with a ‘please’ and a ‘thank you,'” says Eberly. But it goes beyond that. Think about it this way: How would you feel if your child gave a fellow tricycler the finger when he cut her off on the sidewalk? If the thought doesn’t thrill you, keep your hands and fingers on the wheel while driving. Inappropriate expressions of anger are rude, too.
Fact #5: Consistency is important. Acquiring good manners takes lots of practice and reinforcement, so make sure that you, your partner, and your caregiver are encouraging (and discouraging) the same behaviors. If your husband lets your kid fling food during meals and you don’t, your child won’t know what’s expected of him.
Basic Table Manners
What to expect: By age 3, your child will be able to eat with a spoon and fork, stay seated at the table for 15 to 20 minutes, and wipe his mouth with a napkin.
What to do: During toddlerhood, offer your child his food on a small, no-break plate; encourage him to use his utensils; discourage him from throwing food by telling him, “We don’t throw food on the floor. If you don’t want any more, please say ‘no thank you.'”
Please and Thank You
What to expect: An 18-month-old may be able to say the words but not necessarily grasp their true meaning. By 2 1/2, kids can link the word to the concept.
What to do: If your child hasn’t gotten into the habit, gently prompt him by saying, “What do we say after we get a gift?” or “What do we say when someone gives us a treat?”
Sharing
What to expect: At around 2, a child begins to understand the concept of sharing and turn-taking — though he won’t necessarily relish doing either!
What to do: Encourage your toddler to share with his friends on play dates by giving him two similar toys and helping him offer one to his friend.
Apologizing
What to expect: Though a toddler of about 18 months has a basic understanding of empathy, he can’t really understand why he’s expected to apologize. By 2 1/2 to 3, he’ll understand the concept but may be too caught up in his own affairs to do it on his own.
What to do: When your child snatches a toy from a playmate, discourage the behavior and play on his empathy: “We don’t hit; hitting hurts.” Then, prompt him to apologize: “When we hurt someone, we say, ‘I’m sorry.'”
Play-Date Protocol
Play dates are a great opportunity to practice manners. Here’s how to ensure your child is on his best behavior.
Set your child up for success. Young children behave well when they’re rested and comfortable. Plan play dates around naps and meals.
Gently remind him of your expectations. Before you go, tell your child that he has to share and say “please” and “thank you.”
Prompt him when he forgets to be mannerly. If your child takes a snack from your host without comment, for example, say, “Please thank Mrs. Jones for the cookie.”
Step in when things get hairy. During the play date, someone will inevitably hit, bite, or toy-snatch. If your child is the instigator, say, “That made your friend feel bad. Let’s make him feel better by saying that we’re sorry.”
Help him thank his host. When you leave, remind your child he had fun and prompt him to say “thank you.”