Say Please...

Along with teaching Autumn where her ears are, what a doggy says, what color apples are, where the sky is and the millions of other things she needs to know to be a functioning adult, we are trying to teach her manners. She seems to pick up on everything so quickly that I had no doubt this would be a piece of cake. I would have a one year old saying "Please" and "Thank you" in no time.

We started by doing what we have done with most of the other words she has learned, repeated it over and over to her. Everytime she asks for something we say, "Autumn say please" and after handing it to her, "Autumn say thank you." After doing this for awhile she seemed to start to get the idea of please and while she would not say it eveytime, or even every other time, we did hear it occasionally. It is the small victories!

Just as I thought we were really making progress with her saying "Please", it happened.

Steve was sitting on the couch with a snack when Autumn walked up and put her hand out requesting a bite. Steve said, "Autumn say please", and instead of saying the requested word, or even just being silent like usual, Autumn leaned forward and gave Steve a kiss. Needless to say, Autumn got a bite of Steve's snack.

Since then Autumn's standard response to our requests for her to say please have been kisses. While I adore getting kisses from my daughter, and my heart does melt everytime, this is obviously not the gesture I want her using to say "Please"!

And so the repetition continues, this is one problem I want fixed before she hits the sandbox!