The researchers recorded and analyzed what the children said to the gift-giver, if anything, as well as what the parents said to their kids. At the end of the session, a researcher came into the room and gave the child a gift. (Yes, these studies are old, but they are the seminal studies on the topic.) They invited 22 children between the ages of two and five into their lab and videotaped them as they each played with their parents. We usually don’t sit them down and say, “Hey, sweetie, let me teach you about the word please.” We just prompt them to say it in various situations and hope, one day, they will learn to understand why and generalize our expectations.įurther evidence that young kids don’t really know what “please” and “thank you” mean comes from a small study conducted by Berko Gleason and her colleague Esther Blank Greif in 1980. In other words, when we encourage kids to say polite things, we often do not give them the context or meaning they need to grasp why they are being asked to say it. While the acquisition of referential speech may involve children's producing words only after they have gained some concept of their referents, the acquisition of politeness routines usually involves an intervening adult who insists the child produce a form even if the child does not yet recognize the requirements of the social situation and may not be able to analyze the formula linguistically. This is not the approach we typically take when we teach kids to say “please” and “thank you.” When we teach kids these phrases, we don’t usually help them understand what they mean with context, nor explain why we are asking them to say them - we just say things like “Say please,” “What do you say?” or “What’s the magic word?” As Berko Gleason and her colleagues explained in a 1984 paper : This is what’s called “referential language,” because it’s language that refers to something. We see a dog while we’re walking outside and point to it and say “Look at that dog! Isn’t he a cute dog? What a nice dog!” We use visual prompts, and we use the word we’re trying to teach in multiple ways in different kinds of sentences. Consider how parents (and adults in general) typically teach kids language: We usually give them clues to help them grasp a word’s meaning. And learning any new skill takes practice.īut politeness is especially tough - and there are a few reasons why. Sure, altruism might be hard-wired, but the details of what to say and do in specific social situations is not. (She is delightful watch this 4-minute interview with her on PBS.) Berko Gleason’s work sheds light on why it’s so hard for kids to learn to be polite - and what we should be doing to nudge our kids in the right direction.įirst, I think it’s important to remember that politeness rituals are 100% learned and 0% innate. That’s when I discovered the research of Boston University psycholinguist Jean Berko Gleason, who has studied these exact questions. Why was it that so few people thanked him? Including the adults? What does this say about the state of our country? Why is it so damned hard for kids (nay, all of us) to be polite?Īs I often do when I start pondering a topic, I hunted for some science. At first, sure, I felt a pang of pride - yay, my kids did good! (I know this anecdote could come across as a humble-brag - Look how awesome my kids are! - so I want to emphasize to you again that my kids have NOT said “please” and “thank you” in about 4 million other situations in which they should have.) Then, however, I felt sad. Thank you for raising them well.” He then handed me a few kids’ snack packs, the ones you usually pay for, and said he hoped that we enjoyed them. The flight attendant crouched down and quietly said to me, “I want you to know that your children are the first kids - and in fact, among the first people at all - to say thank you to me out of the 150 people I served before you. When he handed pretzels to my 8-year-old, she said “thank you!” I was thrilled, because let me tell you, it has taken YEARS to get her to say “please” and “thank you” without a prompt from my end. A flight attendant walked from the front to the back of the plane and gave out snacks. We were on the plane to JFK, sitting a few rows from the back of a Boeing 737. So please bear with me.Ī few weeks ago, my family traveled to San Diego to visit extended family, and one moment in particular has stuck with me. I’m writing today’s newsletter with both my kids home from camp with some kind of sniffly virus (hopefully just a cold and not THAT OTHER THING), and honestly, I’m not feeling so great myself.
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