Etiquette lessons for kids go beyond ‘ please’ and ‘ thank you’
We’re letting technology take over our interpersonal communications, says etiquette expert Nancy Kosik, and that’s hurting teens especially. They are stereotyped as rude, she says, not because they are, but because they have not been taught how to ‘ meet
It’s not enough to tell kids to say please and thank you.
In their casual, wired world, the word etiquette sounds almost quaint and old- fashioned. But that doesn’t mean they don’t want to be polite. They are just more interested in good manners once they know what’s in it for them, says a certified Montreal etiquette expert.
Nancy Kosik is a modern- day Miss Manners. As the founder and director of the Nancy Kosik Academy of International Protocol & Etiquette, she coaches company presidents, socialites, academics and teachers around the world. But it’s her work with Montreal youth that she finds especially rewarding.
“This is a whole new generation living in an increasingly casual culture, using a brand new way of communicating. They are the ones who will set the tone for how people interact with each other in the future,” Kosik said.
Increasingly, she’s called on by individual parents as well as school boards worried about a slip in civility among children and teenagers. Eyes glued to their cellphone screens. Texting spats. Ruckuses on the bus. Kosik has given numerous etiquette workshops to elementary and high school students — at Elizabeth Ballantyne Elementary School in Montreal West, for example, and Laurier Macdonald High School in St- Léonard and the Riverside School Board on the South Shore.
In her private sessions and school workshops she focuses heavily on electronic communications, but also on how to behave in public places, how to be good guests, caring friends and confident job applicants.
Few of them are intentionally rude. Usually, they just haven’t given much thought to how their behaviour affects those around them.
She doesn’t carry a fat rule book or a strict list of dos and don’ts. Instead, she gets her charges to slow down, be present and self- aware. That, Kosik says, is the new way to teach good manners.
“No teenager wants to be told what to do. But young people like to hear that they possess the power to change the way people see them and think about them and treat them,” says Kosik, who has also recently authored the first instalment in a series of etiquette books for children. “Few of them are intentionally rude. Usually, they just haven’t given much thought to how their behaviour affects those around them.
Otis Delaney, the principal at Elizabeth Ballantyne School, says he has called in Kosik for the past few years to give workshops in “netiquette” not because he finds his students impolite, but because he thinks the rules of engagement in their online communications are not always clear.
“Kids are generally polite with each other. They are not often intentionally rude,” he says. “But they are not always aware of the effect their behaviour has on others.”
Virginia Shea, the U. S.- based author of the book Netiquette puts it this way: “It’s ironic, really. Computer networks bring people together who’d otherwise never meet. But the impersonality of the medium changes that meeting to something less, well, less personal.”
Kosik says youth and grown- ups alike are also allowing technology to take over their interpersonal communications in everyday life — texting in the car, the bus, on the sidewalk, in the schoolyard and at the dinner table, yammering into their cellphones at the checkout counter in the grocery store or hanging out with their friends, oblivious to the human in front of them.
In the past 15 years or so, all of our communications have been sped up. More of it happens digitally, less in- person. But Kosik says that it is in talking face- to- face that people learn to read body language, to be sensitive to tone and speech, to not interrupt, to give and take in conversation. These are the lessons that parents used to hand down to their children, she says. But now few families sit together at the dinner table to talk. Instead harried parents catch up with their children in the car on the way to school or soccer practice, not really looking at each other, or even finishing their sentences, she says.
“Everybody i s busy playing catch- up. And we tell ourselves “who’s got time for a bunch of oldfashioned rules?” Kosik says. “But in the meantime, we’ve stopped holding the door for each other and saying hello when we enter a shop or arrive at work in the morning. These aren’t just niceties, they are the ways in which we connect with each other and show each other respect.”
Kosik’s brand of etiquette is not so much about which fork you use at the dinner table as it is about slowing down and being present to those around you — whether it’s your friend or the waiter at the fastfood counter, or your best friend’s mom. Teenagers, especially, stand to benefit from etiquette training. They are often stereotyped as rude or imposing or self- absorbed — not because they are, but because they haven’t learned the basic rules of civil discourse. A smile and “how are you today?” goes a long way, she says. But most young people today haven’t been taught how to “meet and greet.”
“Etiquette helps young people build self- confidence and character, ” she says. “It helps them develop a heightened self- awareness and greater empathy for others. It helps them break the ice in awkward situations.
“And in so doing it improves their relationships with their friends and relatives and teachers and prospective employers.”
To learn more about Nancy Kosik’s etiquette workshops go to nkaipe.com.
Etiquette helps young people build self- confidence and character. It helps them develop a heightened selfawareness and greater empathy for others. It helps them break the ice in awkward situations. And in so doing it improves their relationships with their friends and relatives.