Mr. Manners

I never thought I would think twice about Cooper saying "please" so much. He's always been a big time talker but at almost two, he's really started to grasp the meaning of words and manipulate!

It all started with "thank you". His teachers at school were so impressed when at 19 months Cooper would tell them thank you all the time. Only Kyle and I knew that in Cooper speak, thank you meant "give me that" or "take this from me"!  He would yell it at us as he would shove a no longer wanted toy into our hands! But, he says it to everyone who hands him something too, so who are we to complain?

And now with the "please".  This is one word for which he knows the EXACT MEANING!  We taught him to say it and reinforced it by giving him pretty much whatever he asked for when he said the "magic word".  Now, we don't know how to cut it off! How do you teach a 2 year old that you have to say please to get what you want but you can't always get what you want when you say please?!

While "share" is also a seemingly nice word, he now yells it at anyone who has something he wants to have.  Our sweet little neighbor friend got a not so sweet "SHARE" when she apparently took too long on the slide today.

Manners are so complicated.