FUN HOUSE
Vegetable provides lesson in manners

By Lisa Miyoshi, Waipahu

We all try to teach our children to have good manners, especially when it comes to saying the word "please." To help teach my 3-year-old son Lucas to say "please" whenever he wants something, I always ask him the question, "What's the magic word?" If he doesn't answer, I always prompt him by saying "please" to help him out. It has been a slow process to teach him good manners, and I often wonder if my efforts are in vain.

But one day at the grocery store, I saw some canned goods on sale. As I was busy loading the cart, Lucas picked up one of the cans and asked me what I was buying. I replied, "peas."

He then said, "Please, Mommy, what is this?"

I again replied, "peas," and then went back to loading the grocery cart.

Again, he said to me, "Please, Mommy, what is this?"

After answering him yet again, I finally realized that he was not trying to irritate me with this question, but that he he had misheard me. He thought I was giving him the cue to use the word "please"!

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