Are Manners A Thing Of The Past?

I have been pondering this one for a while. I was bought up to say please and thank you, it is just the polite thing to do, but I am finding more and more that it seems less common to meet a person who is equally polite which makes me wonder if perhaps manners are a thing of the past???

I automatically say please and thank you and ask someone how they are. It was drilled into me as a child that manners are just a common courtesy. But how common are they now? I meet people who don't even put try to be polite, they just take, grab and walk away. How hard is it to say "Can I please?" or "Thank you for that". I mean, do people honestly think that by walking up to someone saying "Give me that", that they are going to get what they want? It sure seems like it.

I've noticed that people younger then I am, or even people about the same age were not all bought up with manners as a part of everyday life. I think this may be because my parent are significantly older then my friends parents. I was a later in life child, my father was 40 when I was born and my mum about 35 which makes my father 64 now and my mum 25. (Isn't it amazing how she is the almost the same age as her youngest daughter?)

I think that with them being older made their ways of rearing a child more traditional then others whose parents may be a good 10-15 years younger then my parents when they had kids. That gap is massive when it comes to something like manners. It seems that over this period of time, the whole way in which a child was bought up changed drastically. Manners were not of key importance to some parents (although that is definitely not to say all). However, I must say that when my sister and I went to anyone's house, we were sure to impress the parents, we still do actually. Maybe it was as a result of our upbringing that we are a little different to our peers. We were bought up with homemade go carts (rusty nails, skinned heels and all) and tree houses, just like my parents were, while other kids had their Segas and Nintendos, and at the time, boy was I jealous of those kids. I was running around the backyard, climbing trees, drawing roads in chalk on the concrete while the other kids were inside playing Alex Kid and Sonic the Hedgehog. We were taught that no video game could ever rival the imagination and we escaped into the world of books.

We were bought up in an unspoiled environment that nurtured our imaginations more then our hand - eye co-ordination and I think this may have a lot to do with the fact that we automatically use our manners. When other children were being asked "What do you say?" when they were given something, my sister and I had already said thank you with out being asked, and grown ups love that. The parents are happy as they have succeeded in bringing up polite kids, the guests are impressed and us kids? Well, the world was our oyster. Everyone loves a kid with manners, so why aren't there more? It doesn’t take any more effort to add and extra word into a sentence, and the appreciation that that word may get is worth so much.

That's it from me today.

Be awesome to each other.