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Welcome Educators! This blog is for you, the Educators. Please ask questions, share ideas and post testimonials about your program, what you're doing in your town and what is working for you. The more we share, the more successful we all will be. Happy Educating!

Monica Irvine
President, The Etiquette Factory

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

TACT

Let’s discuss making mistakes. We all have plenty of examples of when we’ve made mistakes. We all “goof up”, even grown-ups, not intentional of course. Proper etiquette when someone makes a mistake is to be considerate and kind and help the person not to feel embarrassed or uncomfortable. The #1 rule of good manners is to be courteous to others. If you are thoughtful of how others feel, you won’t ever have any problems with your manners. It is important to realize that our behavior can have an effect on other people. Let’s say that Mom comes to the dinner table with a new casserole that she has made. We take a bite and “yuck!” It’s really bad. How do we handle it? Well, there’s a little word we need to teach our children called, “tact.” Tact is not lying. It is simply finding something positive to say in an awkward or uncomfortable situation, keeping other’s feelings in mind before you speak. For instance, we could say to Mom, “Mom, thank you so much for always trying to find new things that we might like.” See, no lie, found the positive. Using tact, spared Mom’s feelings and diffused (made it less intense), what might have been an uncomfortable situation. A great way to introduce tact to your children is to have all of them draw a picture of their favorite activity (or animal, or anything). Then, one by one, hold up the pictures and encourage your children who didn’t draw the picture, to find positive things to say about it; like, “Wow, you really used color well in this picture” or “I like what you did with your hair. It looks really cool”. Simple ways to teach your children that tact means looking for the positive and sparing other’s feelings in sometimes “sticky” situations. Have fun and enjoy the time with you kids.

Have a wonderful day,
Monica Irvine
CEO/The Etiquette Factory

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