How to Raise a Well-Bred Child by Helen Gregg Green, June 21, 1923

Home Education—Is Your Child Well-Bred

By Helen Gregg Green

I remarked to a friend the other day, “Do you think it well-bred for Jimsy to sit in the house with his hat on?”

“Oh, my dear, you are perfectly absurd! Jimsy’s only five and a half.”

Which was the prologue to a rather lengthy, and a bit hectic discussion of when, where, and how a child should acquire good breeding.

My friend contended that a parent need not bother with “such little things” until the child is old enough to become interested himself.

“When he is interested enough, he’ll pick it up,” she declared.

Good breeding is not picked up. It is either learned in childhood, or not at all. Of course a certain superficial type of good breeding may be acquired, but not the way-down-deep, always-have-had-it kind that is really charming and worth while.

A young banker in our town, a champ about 21, has passed me repeatedly on the street, and spoken without so much as touching his hat. It seems unbelievable. It should be as natural for a small boy to lift his hat at the proper time, to stand when a woman enters the room, and to do the hundred and one other little things that are so charming, as it is for him to eat three meals a day and go to Dreamland at night. If these habits are inculcated in youngsters at an early age, they will never be forgotten.

Then there are the many little things that children should be taught not to do, except in privacy.

I was calling at a friend’s home the other day, when the son and heir of the household joined us on the porch. He was a handsome youngster, just ready for high school. He had no sooner sat down, than it was apparent he had tarried only long enough for a first class manicure. I could see his mother was very much embarrassed. Personally, I think she deserved to be.

She asked, “John, isn’t your bedroom he place for that?”

John was unimpressed. His mother had spoken eight years too late. The manicure was completed with flying colors.

You can tell a well-bred child, one taught the many little niceties of life when quite young, by his lack of self-consciousness. This is the beauty of it all. This and his thoughtfulness.

And after all, courtesy, charming manners and good breeding are synonymous of forgetfulness of self.

From page 2 of The Star of Zion, Charlotte, N.C., June 21, 1923