Our Expectations
One aspect of manners that we hurry to teach is responding to an adult's (disrespectful) inquiry about name and age: "Tell the woman how old you are, Johnny" is an instruction we give when we feel embarrassed for our child's lack of responsiveness. One of my three children never responded to the probing of adults until well after he was 7. In every such interaction I was on his side, defending his need. I would say to the inquirer: "He doesn't seem to want to talk to you" and smile, adding: "I can talk to you if you wish". In later years I found out by asking, that Lennon became interested in sharing information about himself, but wanted me to speak for him. I then started to handle those circumstances differently. I would turn to Lennon and ask: "Do you wish that I would tell Earl about you?" Sometimes he would want it, others times he wouldn't, and I simply followed his request. Lennon now feels comfortable and confident enough to respond to most people's questions, or - more rarely now - to say that he doesn't want to. His choices are clearly related to the person's authenticity. He is allergic to phony talk.
As a mother I have discovered that my child's manners are not about me impressing anyone. My child deserves my full respect to be at the stage of awareness, confidence, and of acquisition of manners that he is. It is not easy to feel comfortable when our child doesn't fit society's expectations - but knowing that these very expectations don't fit the child, helps me remember whose well-being I stand for. Maybe we are still dependent on the approval of others as we were in our childhood, when we were told to say "thank you" and did so just to please our parents. We need to build our own self-esteem, so we are less dependent on approval of our children's ways of being for enhancing our feelings of self-worth.
Making a good impression on friends, relatives, or strangers, becomes clearly unimportant next to the welfare of my child. Yet, I can still impress these friends and relatives. What I will impress them with, is not my compliance to their standards of behavior with children. Instead I will demonstrate to them my respect to my child, and my strength in following my own heart and my child's needs.