I was taken as a child. It wasn’t a traumatic experience and I really cared for the kind man who gave me kisses outside the library and lured me across the street with the promise of a sausage. I remember the tug of war in the middle of a four-lane city street; my mum pulling one arm and the kind man, the other. I remember feeling terribly embarrassed about my mother’s behaviour and I remember trying to reassure her that this man was perfectly ok and meant only to give me a treat. I couldn’t understand how my mother could be so rude when she had taught me such good manners.
We teach our children manners, and that’s just fine. But what happens when these so called manners actually start interfering with their boundaries and they begin to bring these walls down, only to be confronted with the dangers that they are not equipped to deal with waiting on the other side. We, as adults, can gauge … usually … who to greet and who to give a wide berth to; we can say hi and walk on by and we can put up walls as quickly as we can break them down. Our children aren’t equipped to do this. They are encouraged to greet and hug perfect strangers just because they happen to be our friends and they are meant to be nice to the man or the woman at the supermarket or the friendly person who finds them cute on the Promenade … all because mummy and daddy want a child who is friendly and polite.
But what about damage control? Do we tell them that they must be polite as long as we are with them but they mustn’t talk to strangers when we aren’t? And isn’t this just confusing them? Shouldn’t we be teaching them to trust their instincts rather and never force them to acknowledge anyone they are not comfortable greeting. Once they know a person as well as we do, surely that is the only time we can expect a little boundary dropping. Manners can prematurely break down the boundaries that really do need to be there. Perhaps practising manners at home ought to be good enough for now.