This weekend we were up by the sound in Gig Harbor visiting Beautiful’s parents as they visit their first grand-daughter courtesy of their eldest daughter and her husband. After five boys, girls finally got on the board in the McGrail clan and she is a cutie. Their two boys and our two boys love being together but the sheer force of the four boys together keeps us on our toes. I find myself trying to mediate silly skirmishes over which of our boys sits next to their cousin, or who had the giant green ball first. The other big issue I run into is the vanishing of manners when my boys get together with other playmates.
“PLEASE!” I shout at Segundo when he cries for the same juice his cousin got, or when he demands the toy his brother is playing with. “What do you say?” is another big one as Primo gets more grapes at lunch and ignores his aunt. Teaching the kids to have manners is important to us so the repetition is just part of the process but I realized something this weekend as we were all together: I don’t have very good manners in communicating with them.
Maybe it’s the stress I feel having all the boys together, or maybe it’s a response to their powerful presence but either way I find myself barking commands at the boys instead of communicating with manners. I know that modeling behavior is much more effective than shouting orders but for some reason I forget that in their situations. It reminds of me of that great 80’s PSA about the dad who finds his teenage sons weed and yells “Where did you learn to do this?” “I learned it from watching you dad!” For some reason this PSA always makes me laugh but it’s true. They do what I do and conversely I can’t expect them to do what I’m not doing.
I know that the boys are inherently selfish and won’t just mimic manners because I use them but that doesn’t mean that I am not part of the equation. Modeling along with communicating our expectation with the boys still requires near constant reinforcement for the boys to learn good manners. Lately I feel like I am skipping the first step and I need to fix that before trying to hold my boys to higher standard then I hold myself.
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