Working on Manners....

Today we were working on PHONE MANNERS.  This is part of the experiences for The Manners Try it, but as with many Try Its, it turned into a sounding board and learning opportunity for both Big and Little K's.
The practice sessions involve talking about phone manners, and what to say / do in each of the following situations.

• An emergency call
• Someone calls from work and wants to leave a message.
• Grandma / Grandpa calls and wants to talk.

Now, my girls both did pretty well on the emergency one.  They knew our address.  They answered questions.   (Hooray!)

On the Work message, it turns out a) My children don't know my cell number (although they have the home phone memorized) and b) don't take messages quick enough to be of any use.
I told them to be polite, and ask the person if they can wait until Dad can get to the phone, or spell things for you. 

The one that really surprized me was the grandparent one.  Now my girls talk to their grandparents on the phone pretty regularly.  But they miss some subtleties... like asking questions back, and offering information more than "good", and offering a story.  We worked on this.  (Can't wait for the next real call to see if any of it stuck!)

We'll be putting some paper and a pen by the phone, and our cell numbers.  They are old enough now they should be able to take a simple message- the rest is just practice.  As with most try its, it was a great opportunity to bring up something we needed to talk about.


 Mary Kay wasn't born cheap... but she got there pretty quickly.