How I Try to Teach My Son Manners and Responsibility

I’m always amazed at kids who have good manners. Manners like, say hi if they saw you, or shake your hands when you go to their houses, or offering to help you carry your extra bags. Or tolong dekat dapur. Or buat kuih raya.

I want my kids to be like those kids. Sons or daughters, they must be equally sopan santun and adept at doing housework. My ideal picture of the kids is they would all exhibit sopan-ness, depan orang or tak depan orang, and will help me with the dishes at home, willingly or not, that’s another story. Tapi preferably willingly la.

Ach and I try our best to be a good example in front of my one year old son. We say please when we request for something, we say thank you after that, and we (read=I) try our very best not to say bad things (i.e. any four letter words) in front of him. We make sure he salam the elderly bila pergi rumah sapa-sapa and say bye bye bila nak balik. Teehehe.

Ach demonstrates gender equality by helping with the dishes and cooking (this is true even before our maid balik). When I say gender equality, the message I want to get across is housework is the responsibility of both man and woman, bukannya perempuan saje. Dia selalu tolong by cooking Kimi’s bubur and soups if I were too tired to cook (I’m lucky, I know). Usually he’ll put Kimi on a kerusi and let him watch his Ata cooking. =)

I get kimi to help whenever I’m doing the housework. Bila balik pasar, I gave Kimi a bag of sayur and ask him to pass it to his Nenek. So dia pun seret la bag yang half his size tu pegi dapur. When I’m putting his toys away, I’d ask him to do it with me. Before mandi, I’d tell him to put his dirty pajama in his frog laundry basket, like this, “Kimi, put this in your katak, please.”

Now I don’t know if all the above will work, but I hope they do. Sejuk perut aku bila nanti they turn out to be ringan tulang and berbudi bahasa. Don’t we all want that? =)

that's my son!