ADOPTION: YOU CAN DO IT! Blog Post #14, Chapter 9 – Manners and the Simple Things in Life
This week’s chapter excerpt from my book due out in December — ADOPTION: YOU CAN DO IT! A Husband-Wife Date-Study for Successfully Raising Adopted Children in the Christian Home — shares practical wisdom which I hope will bless adoptive families.
Table manners are just one of the many things adopted children usually need to be taught, and it requires lots of daily practice, just like music. Perhaps these social skills are lower down on the priority list than loving God and telling the truth, but they must be addressed pretty much immediately. It would be easy to go overboard the first family meal and say ‘don’t’ or ‘watch out’ or ‘quit that’ between every bite, but it wouldn’t be very effective. Adopted children need to have good manners modeled and encouraged in a positive way, instead of constant criticism. Using loving and supportive voice tones, as in “Here, try it this way,” or “Please, pass the potatoes” over and over again will begin to make headway after just a few days. I like to say, “At our table we do it this way.” More often than not, newly placed children will be scared to death or completely overwhelmed by a family-style sit down meal. If you dine as a family in this manner, for three meals a day, you will have nearly 1,000 times to practice and impart civilization to them in just the first year!
After a month or so of good practice, your new son—under your watchful and patient supervision—should be ready to eat in public! I highly suggest you have him practice at a church potluck before unloading on a fine-dining fancy restaurant, or Grandma and Grandpa’s white-carpeted dining room. The inevitable mess or embarrassment will happen, so prepare yourself to remain calm, and show love to your child despite the disaster.
Additionally, adopted children will need to be taught social niceties such as greeting people appropriately. Looking someone in the eye, extending a hand, saying, “Hello, I’m Johnny,” can be practiced before guests come over or your family goes out. Role-playing is a fun and hilarious way to practice appropriate conversations. We have our kids practice shaking hands, saying please and thank you, asking questions regarding the weather, and a host of other common courtesies before we have them spend time with others.
Then, you have to be courageous and leave your house at some point to practice in the real world! Like playing a fine instrument at your first recital, there will be lots of sour notes and embarrassing moments. However, your children will learn if you keep practicing. Eventually they will go out into the world without you, and perhaps do so well that others will compliment them to you. It is always such a treat to hear a friend, or even a stranger, remark that one of my formally ‘feral’ children was “so helpful,” or “said such a nice thing,” or “was so polite” when they were out and about in our community without me to oversee their behavior.
