Manners Monday: What is Etiquette?

Any­one with chil­dren can tell you that potty train­ing can be stress­ful, espe­cially when leav­ing the house.  You pack extra under­wear, make fre­quent stops at the bath­room, observe your child to see if they are doing the “pee pee dance” but, never ever would I think of tak­ing their port-a-potty with me.

Unfor­tu­nately, not every­one feels the same way.   Case in point.  As reported by Jen­nifer Stagg of KSL 5 News in Utah, “A young mother of twins took potty train­ing to the table — the din­ing table — in a pop­u­lar Utah deli Tues­day. And the pic­ture an onlooker snapped and posted on Face­book has a lot of peo­ple talking.

“If any­one under­stands how stress­ful potty-training can be, it’s mother of three, Kim­berly Decker. In fact, she just fin­ished potty train­ing her lit­tle boy and couldn’t leave her house for sev­eral days dur­ing the process. That’s why she was so shocked at what she wit­nessed Tues­day at the Thanks­giv­ing Point Deli.

“I noticed that this lady was hav­ing her two — she had two twins, two lit­tle girls about 2-and-a-half years old, sit­ting on what I thought were booster seats,” Decker said.

“But after doing a dou­ble take, she real­ized they weren’t booster seats, they were child port-a-potties.”

I thought I would take this time to go over ” What is Eti­quette?” Accord­ing to Emily Post’s Eti­quette Man­ners for a New World:

Eti­quette isn’t a set of “pre­scrip­tions for proper­ness,” but merely the guide­lines for doing things in ways that make peo­ple feel comfortable.

Have a great week everyone.