Quote Originally Posted by Veronica
Ahhh... but it is important to teach approriate behavior for various situations. I talk about that a lot with my students. What is appropriate with your friends and at home, is not always right for the classroom.

Asking kids to be polite is not asking them to be minature adults. It's expecting them to be considerate of others. If a child is having such a bad day that they are running and screaming up and down the aisles because they are emotional, maybe they should be home taking a nap. Otherwise it's just bad behavior and bad parenting to not correct the behavior.

We wonder what's happened to our society? We don't teach and require polite behavior, so we don't get it.

Sometimes your very happy children turn into little monsters halfway through a shopping trip and there's nothing that you can do but hurry up and get it done as quickly as possible. I agree that children should be taught to be polite, but at the same time...they are kids and no matter what you've taught them, sometimes they'll have have a bad day/hour/minute, most always in public, and always in front of judgemental strangers who don't have kids.