How to Teach Etiquette to Teens

Video Transcript

DR. F. FELICIA FERRARA: Hello, I'm Dr. Ferrara and the parent coach. I've been working with families and children and teens for over 25 years now. I'd like to talk to you today about how to teach etiquette to your teens. And etiquette? That's a word they don't even have in their vocabulary, most likely. The thing to remember is that etiquette is something that starts very early in the family. You probably have a certain tradition that goes on in your family, most families do. You probably have elderly folks that you'd like to visit and you pay homage to and you make sure that you are concerned about those that are sick in the family and have some empathy. Hopefully, you teach that to your child early on. When it comes to etiquette, we're talking about the pros and cons of behavior whether you're planning a social event or whether you're going to a social event. Certainly, there are books at self-help stores where you can get books on etiquette for teens for all kinds of social situations that arise. The other area of etiquette to worry about is certainly table manners, which is something you're always going to have a bit of problem if they're going out to eat with their friends in restaurants and eventually be dating and having to carry themselves with class. You would hope that you can teach them this etiquette, but you don't want to start too late. The real key to all of this is to model the behavior at home because they know what they see. Children learn by seeing 90% of the time. So if they're watching this within their home and they're seeing mom and dad use etiquette or at least be concerned for etiquette, you may not cover every situation but at least the child knows that when a particular event comes up they need to refer to some manual or to some other criteria for behaving, so the etiquette is very important. Make it a part of your daily routine too. Make your household reenact all the etiquette that you hope to impart on your child. And remember that by the age of 12, most children know how they're going to act. Most children either are refined or quiet or etiquette or amenable or empathetic, so you can see these different personality traits in your children. And you might have three or four children, each one of them will have a different personality trait that you might need to address. So when you're teaching etiquette, as I said, model for your children, individualize it for each individual child and also refer to the special self-help books that might be available in different stores. All right? If there's any other question, by all means ask Dr. Felicia. Goodbye for now.