Teaching Honor Through Common Courtesy

"foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him." Proverbs 22: 15

As a young mother of two, I always wonder what the proper guidelines to teach my kids are. My mother is an OFW at the age of 12 I learned to live and survive on my own.

Without a parent, especially a mother to teach and train me - discipline and the ways of life, I struggled on my own identity. I don't blame her, I know in her heart she wanted to uplift our lifestyle and give us greener pastures to tread upon and indeed she has.

In my teen years, I observed other people’s traits and behaviors in hope to build my own. Despite of all these, it is by God's grace that, although not 100% perfect, I survived.

The next phase in my life has now commenced. I am now a mother myself. My kids' infant stage, taking care of them- feeding, changing diapers, putting them to sleep, t'was a breeze. Now that they are 4 and 6 years of age I am troubled as to how and what are the proper and right ethics, behaviors and guidelines I should teach them.

True that my mother have taught me most of them in my younger years and most of them are instilled in my subconscious but with no proper training and discipline at all, I had difficulty in applying and observing it myself.

In my desire to teach them correctly, I searched and looked. As the Bible saying goes, "Seek and ye shall find..." indeed I have and listed some of them, but first let me quote:
"Honor thy father and thy mother which is the first commandment with promise." Ephesians 6:2 KJV

Teaching your kids honor and respect through common courtesy which some of them are:

1. Say the magic words - please & thank you.
2. Say, “Excuse me.”
3. Say sorry if mistaken
4. Say yes or no mom/dad after being questioned.
5. Say proper greetings such as - good morning, good afternoon, good evening
6. To answer only and when spoken to.
7. To look at the person's eyes when talking
8. To knock at the door before entering and close it after entering.
9. Not to yell at you from the other room.
10. Not to enter a room talking.
11. Not to interrupt adult conversations.
12. Not to play tease.
13. To watch where he/she is going.
14. To respect others things and belongings.
15. To respect the elderly and smaller children.
16. To be kind to animals.
17. To never challenge parent's authority through arguments. This would leave the child to undermine your authority over his/her.

I am not perfect neither have I perfected the list above nor neither does my children. But it would be much easier to know them to guide us in our daily living.

To end let me leave you with this bible proverb:

"Train up a child in the way he should go and, when he is old, he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6