The magic words
If you ask a child what the magic words are, they will eagerly say: please and thank you. They don’t see the point in using them and good manners are not very interesting to them either. They just do it to avoid being grounded or to cheekily get something they want. However, we adults consider them such an important tool that we insist our children use them from a very young age, even if it is an automatism.
When we, adults, say “thank you” to the waiter bringing our plate, we show respect and appreciation for their work. Or “please, could you pass me the salt?”, we acknowledge your effort when doing this. Yet, we can eliminate those magical words from the sentence and it wouldn’t make any difference to the meaning or the result to us - apart from being rude, obviously! We don’t use these magic words for ourselves but for the others. They help us live in a respectful society where everyone feels acknowledged and appreciated.
However, unfortunately, we do not always live in such a positive and empathetic world. Sometimes, we face other types of individuals, people who don’t often use these magic words, and that’s putting it mildly. These include a narcissistic boyfriend, a bullying girlfriend, a tyrant manager, an abusive parent, and other toxic people who deliberately hurt others, no muss no fuss. At one moment in our life, it’s highly likely that we may find ourselves facing one of these mortals. How are we supposed to interact with them? Definitely with good manners, honour your parents, please. Dealing with them takes a lot of courage, can be energy draining and eventually, dangerous for ourselves. That’s why it is so important to have some other ingrained tools at hand to protect us. Not everyone is a good person, and although everyone always deserves a please and thank you, some people may deserve, in a greater way, the use of other words.
A lot has changed in how we raise and educate our children. Emotions expression, autonomy, critical thinking and body integrity, for example, are ideas included in nearly all educational programmes nowadays. But we may need to start teaching our children the art of saying: no. Apart from saying please and thank you to please others, we need to learn to protect our integrity and mental health. Fortunately, our society is starting to widely admit the necessity of consent in sexual relationships but still finds it difficult when we say no to other abusive behaviours. Often when someone sets a boundary, they are swiftly accused of being a softy, rude, too serious, too difficult and inflexible, no fun or even boring. But don’t be fooled, that’s not true. Be polite but stand up for yourself. Evildoers don’t like it when we fight back.
To finish up, and in case you weren’t taught this when you were little, please, take a look at this five-second video:
Maybe not the most appropriate,
Definitely not the sweetest,
But for sure the one you will remember the most.
© Extract from the "Late Show with David Letterman" in New York. For the full list of the Top 10 Eminem’s Piece of Advice for the kids, you can click here.
