Dr. Ferrara has worked with children and adult survivors of abuse for over twenty years in CT, NY and FL. She is currently in private practice in Tampa, FL and affiliated with the University of South Florida as adjunct associate professor.
DR. F. FELICIA FERRARA, PHD: Hello! I'm Dr. Felicia and I am a parent coach. And I would like to speak to you today about how to teach teens good manners. Well, guess what? By the time someone's a teenager, you would hope that you already have taught them good manners. Very often, kids model whatever behavior they see in the home, so your first, most effective way is modeling. You act with the good manners at home, teach them the etiquette, and it will carry over up until their teen years. Now, a second motivator is, let's say the manners at home were pretty slack and they didn't really bother with table manners and you kind of let it ride, maybe today, a lot of families don't have dinner together, and so the child may be just stuffing something in his mouth. But all of a sudden, he gets invited to his girlfriend's house for dinner. That's a whole another material now. Now, they're a little bit more self-conscious, and that's a perfect time for you to grab ahold of them and teach them the table manners that you are hoping to teach them. I would hope that from early on, you would teach them to apologize and be respectful to elders, and things like that, but if perhaps you weren't, that is a perfect time for you to set aside a family night and each one of you as a member of the family can give an example of what they saw in somebody else that was really bad manners, and then you use that example to show how they could improve their behavior. So you see, you make it a team effort. It's a family effort. So, those are some scenarios that might help you to teach your teens some good manners. Okay, so again, start early, reinforce by modeling, use your own modeling, have a family meeting so that everyone discusses what their perception of a bad manners is, and of course, the last resource is, if they get invited to their girlfriend's house, they all of a sudden become more conscious and want to learn, more motivated. So, with that in mind, I wish you luck in teaching them the good manners that you want them to have as they go into adult world, and then if it fails, just remind them, it's time to go back to the family conference. So, good luck with that. And may you all have manners that astound the rest of the world. See you soon.
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