Common Courtesy Wake-up Call by Stephen Bly & Podcast

Common Courtesy shown to elderly womanTeaching Manners & Common Courtesy

A common courtesy minor event caught me by surprise. My 9-year-old son, Aaron, rushed through the door of our local Community Center ahead of me. One of our good friends called out as she exited carrying an arm-full of packages, “Please hold the door open.”

To my chagrin, he yelled out, “I can’t!” and kept running to the playground. It hurts a little to see how selfish and rude our own children can be at times.

Proverbs 27:10 says, “Never abandon a friend–either yours or your father’s. Then you won’t need to go to a distant relative for help in your time of need.”

Parenting Wake-Up Call

At that moment, it hit me. I had not done a good job of teaching Aaron respect for my friend. Kids have to learn how to treat adults. They will either learn from us or those at school whom they deem worth copying.

As I walked from the Community Center, I developed a strategy to help Aaron catch-up on some social manners I neglected to teach him very well.

Common Courtesy Helps

First, I determined to not let any future mistake go unchallenged. Every time he did the wrong thing, I’d find a private time to to carefully explain his mistake.

Second, I’d teach manners and common courtesy by repetition and reason. I began to look for teaching examples, followed by explaining why we should treat others this better way.

Third, I’d give a more drastic example of the traits I wanted to see in him. I looked for extra opportunities myself to give aid to others when around Aaron.

Did it help?

Well, it might take years to determine the final verdict. But there was progress. At a crowded shopping center, I waited for Aaron five minutes. He held the door open for every woman going into a department store. Watching him having fun being courteous, I wasn’t about to stop him.

Stephen Bly

Copyright©1989

Man Helping Elderly Woman Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

Generations Image by Please Don’t sell My Artwork AS IS from Pixabay

Blog article comments welcome! 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Courtesy Wake-Up Call” audio podcast by award-winning western author Stephen Bly. Sponsored by BlyBooks.com Legacy Series. Please SUBSCRIBE, RATE, REVIEW this Podcast. FULL PODCAST MAIL CHIMP INFO …  https://bit.ly/3xCxckS

Sign Up on BlyBooks.com blog page to receive RSS feed by email for podcast blog notices. Related blog article with podcast embed will arrive every Tuesday and Thursday. Look to the right of the LINK PAGE for “Subscribe to the Blog via Email” and “Enter your email address”.
Would greatly appreciate if you a) SUBSCRIBE to the podcast, b) RATE it, c) REVIEW it on your podcast directory app.
Music by WinkingFoxMusic from Pixabay

, , , , ,

No comments yet.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Site by Author Media.