Manners

“Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others.  If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter which fork you use.” ~Emily Post

Good manners have always been at the top of our “Teach Your Children Well” list.

Mark and John are getting it down.  (with the pronounced exception of use with each other).  In public, they do pretty well most of the time.  At home, good manners often fly to the wind replaced with kicking, pinching, shrill screams, and too loud choruses of  “NOOOOO! ” or ”I’ll bonk your head off!”  These are not exerpts from Grover’s guide.

Ben is almost 3.  ”Peeees”,   ”Kanks!”, and “You’re Yelcome!” are a regular part of his vocabulary.  So are AAAAAAAAAAGH, NOOOOOO!!  and STOOOOOP IIIT!!  But then that’s part of being two.

Teaching Grayson manners is a whole nother ballgame.  Having autism makes it inherently difficult to understand social interactions and the unwritten rules and expectations that govern them.

We started with the basics:

Thank You:  Some parents might envy the fact that Grayson did not add “No” to her vocabulary for the first several years of her life.  Instead, she used “Thank you”.  When she came across or received an item she did not want or was finished with, she would approach the closest person to her and without a glance in their direction, hand it over with an emphatic “THANK YOU”.   Many a chewed up wad of something or other came to my hand as she brushed by with her perfunctory ‘thanks’.  Eager anticipation turned to confusion as birthday gifters heard “THANK YOU!”, but found the gifts they brought to Grayson back in their own hands almost the instant they were opened.  Her thank yous weren’t expressions of gratitude, but rather a means of dismissing something that she was not interested in.  Thanks for her meant and still means, “Here you go”.

Please: “Yes” was an even later addition to Grayson’s vocabulary than “No”.  She substituted Please for Yes for a very long time.  Later, she tagged Please on to almost every request.  One of her most common utterances was “Walking please!”, which evolved over time into “You want walking please”.  This is how she would let us know that she needed us to come for something… anything.  We went “walking please” all day long.  She still uses please often, and has even taken it to a new level.  When she wants something, her requests go something like this, “You want to go swimming?  Please! Yes!  Okay!”  Please, Yes, and Okay go together.  She has developed this stategy to ask and answer her own questions.   I may actually try this out myself… “You want a hot bubble bath and a frosty Patron Margarita?  Please!  Yes!  Okay!”.

You’re Welcome: You’re Welcome did not follow in the early appearance and use of Please and Thank You.  You’re Welcome was at a disadvantage because there is nothing to be gained by You’re Welcome.   Thanks gets rid of stuff, and Please gets you stuff.   “You’re Welcome?”  What’s the point?  We’re working on it.

Sorry: While Grayson is notorious for leaving a path of destruction in her wake, she is usually long gone without a Sorry.  We prompt her, and she’ll deliver, but she’s in a hurry to move on.  Partly I think she’s confused and feels bad for whatever atrocity she’s been reprimanded for, and partly because she’s already moved on to the next thing.  Over the last 4 or 5 months though, she sometimes stops when she realized there’s been a mistake made.  Usually these occasions involve something tangible, like a spill or something broken.  Social faupauxs are still too confusing and avoided.  Anyway, whenever she makes a tangible mistake, she has her own version of an apology: “Sorry Mr. Hinkle!”. Mr. Hinkle is Caillou’s elderly neighbor.  He must have been wronged in some episode of Caillou, and now he is a household name.

But  manners can be so much more complex than Please, Thank You, Sorry, and You’re Welcome.

There are many ambiguous rules…

• Everything is not fair game at the Please Touch Museum.   Uptight Japanese tourists’ skirts are not for drying wet hands.
• We must be selective about where we pop-a-squat.   Crowded playgrounds, pool decks, living room floors are out.
• The grocery store is not a buffet.
• Not everything suspended from a rope or chain is a swing.
• Some animals are okay to hold and pet.  Not fish.

Where do we begin to instruct what to most is plainly logical?  The majority of the time, these things are nearly impossible to predict!  (though many autism mamas can attest, we see trouble looming where skies are sunny and seas are calm to the untrained eye).

And so we go.

Sometimes, we are on our game… we lurch in time and prevent the mad dash behind the counter at the ice cream parlor…. we follow a gaze to the wad of gum stuck below a countertop before it gets a second chance at life… we thwart a quick attempt to snatch the Amish buggy driver’s sacred black cap off his head…

And sometimes we’re too late….  a stranger is baffled and annoyed when a small hand plunges into their ice tea at the footcourt…  a man in a waiting room has a hand full of boogies gently placed on his pantsuit… a naked child darts out the bathroom stall and into the church lobby…

What are you gonna do?

I think around here we’ll take Grover’s advice.

On the good days, when progress is made or disasters are averted we’ll offer up a heartfelt Thanks.   (***Grayson very intentionally THANKED me for dropping her off at school yesterday!!***)

And on the bad days, we’ll offer up our Sorries where they’re due and move along.