Teaching Children to be Aware of Others by Judy Lyden

One of my pet peeves, and I have a few like everyone else, is ungrateful usage. The term sounds a little confusing, but when I explain, you'll understand right away what I mean.

When someone runs a mile for me, spends a lot of hours on me, uses their time, talent and treasure to make ME happy, and I take whatever they give and walk away without saying a single thing about their efforts - not even "thank you," that's ungrateful usage, and I'm a sloth.

This is something the nicest, brightest, most respectable people are guilty of, and they haven't a clue they are at fault. Today we don't spend a lot of time giving kudos to one another except on TV where most of the time it's not deserved. At home and at work in the real world, we have come to take for granted everybody else's time and work even if their time and work is spent on us. I think it's become a game. The winner is the man or woman of fewest words of praise.

I think wives who work at home feel it most because we all know that anyone can keep a house, and that most of it gets done whenever, and as a whole, it's probably the least important work there is. So when the recipients of the clean laundry, meals, clean home, scrubbed shower, and endless supplies of all the little treats we can't really go comfortably without, just take and take and take and never even think about a kudo, it's ungrateful usage. No wonder people don't want to be home these days.

Mrs. St. Louis sends birthday cards to every child who was ever a student of the Garden School. Every year she goes to a lot of trouble to locate missing children, make cards, find little stowaways for the envelopes and keep track of when this should be mailed. Occasionally, and very occasionally, she will get a note from a teenager who says a great big thank you. I think it means a lot to her. The time and effort put into this and the little boxes she hand paints for every student at the Garden School says a lot about her devotion to the school and to the children we care for. But rarely does she receive the praise that she deserves.

I know I'm not supposed to notice this kind of thing, because when I mention it to friends and relatives, I get the insufferable look. But I can't help thinking how it stings every time I see it. Ungrateful usage is in my face. I just see it everywhere I go. I watch it at the grocery store, I see it at the swimming pool, in restaurants; I hear it on the telephone, and on the news, at Christmas time.

One of the things we've been doing at school is encouraging the children to say thank you. Thank you is the polite response to someone for doing something nice for us. It's the simplest form of gratitude. What I want from the children this year is to not only say thank you, but learn at the same time to recognize just what they are saying it for. "Thank you for ___________." This is a beginning awareness of the work of others that genuinely make our lives better.

But it doesn't start in the classroom. It starts at home. A woman looks across the dinner table from her husband and says about her new meal, "Do you like it?" and he responds, "I'm eating aren't I?"

How many meals do we sit down to at home and never really recognize? Do we sit at a nice table that someone went to the trouble of putting together? Does the meal taste good? That doesn't happen by accident. Did someone have to go out to purchase the food, take the time to plan it, cook it and then put it on the table? That's their time, and that time is important, so how do we dare sit down to a dinner we had nothing to do with, eat it, be nourished by it, be satisfied by it and say absolutely nothing about it? You would think that the provider of that meal was a person who mattered not at all.

Because like so many things in life, we take other people's work, their time, and their talent for granted. Why should we part with precious words of praise? There is a limit of how many praiseful words we are entitled to, so we don't dare waste them. Words of praise become precious when it's our job to provide them. Apparently a lot more precious than someone's time talent and treasure.

Our children come to us and show us a little drawing, a painting, a cut and paste, and we give them the same brushoff response, "That's nice, honey." Then, to clean up the clutter, we dump the child's drawing in the trash. No wonder that child finds it difficult to praise a friend, he has no example for praise, he doesn't even know he should praise. He couldn't muster praise to save his life.

And that's a shame because praising one another should be the best part of the day. It's the time when we can smile and make someone else smile. Imagine the next time a child shows you a drawing, you say to him: "Artours, you are the best little artist. I love your colors. I see so much in your wonderful work. I'm going to keep this for a long, long time."

How nice it would be to hand someone a special effort sandwich and have them say, "Oh, that was so delicious. Thank you," instead of "I'm full" slam the dirty plate down and walk away leaving the remains of the sandwich and the plate to wash. One wants to say in return, "I don't care that you are full." It does not increase communication, it forbids it.

One of the highlights of my kitchen work this summer has been Miss Leigh's response to our egg salad. I think if she could wear it she would. Her response to this little bit of our summer picnic has been so delightful for me because along with her enthusiasm comes her happiness, and she expresses that in a most charming and positive way, and that makes a world of difference from a slammed plate or no response at all.

Teaching children to be aware of other people takes adult people who are genuinely aware of one another, and happy to be so. "Look what Elizabeth is doing," says the teacher and half a dozen children will run over to see. It's at that point that praise should be spent on Elizabeth. It's her turn. It's healthy to praise Elizabeth because it's encouraging, it's human to human contact, it's genuine and as Shakespere says, "It blesses him who gives and him who takes."

So this week, it's probably a good to practice praise. Let it rip. Let it out in a big fat emotional bomb. Explode with a beautiful laughing, affectionate piece of praise. Make it a work of art and enjoy. It should be the best part of your day.