Well-behaved kids give back what they take in - respect

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

I met them the first time when they walked into my mother-in-law's house with their parents on New Year's Day four years ago.

"My brother's daughter, Jeannie, is coming with her family to visit all the way from New York. Won't you stop by and visit, too?" my mother-in-law phoned to ask.

I bet I groaned about having to visit someone I hardly knew. I bet I complained about all the things I had to do: take down the tree, vacuum up the pine needles, get my life in order, ready the slate for the new year.

I know I went to my mother-in-law's intending to stay just a little while. But that was before I met Jessica, Tabitha and Xena.

In a movie, bells would have rung or an organ would have struck a minor chord as they entered the living room. The viewer would have known that this was an important moment.

They were just 7, 6 and 3, back then, three little girls who looked as if they had stepped out of an episode of "Little House on the Prairie." They wore short leather boots, cotton dresses and ribbons in their hair.

They behaved like old-fashioned children, too. Though they'd been strapped in the back seat of a car for close to three hours; though they had ridden hundreds of miles to visit "Aunt Peggy," a lady whom they had never met, a lady with no children and no toys; though they had every reason to be antsy or whiny or even disappointed, they were none of these things.

They walked straight to Aunt Peggy and kissed her on the cheek and said, "I'm so happy to see you." They hugged my daughters, my husband and me. Then they took off their coats, handed them to their mother and father and sat down on the couch.

"Would you like something to drink? Some milk?" Aunt Peggy asked.

"Yes, please," they all chimed.

"Would you like some chocolate syrup in it?"

"No thank you," they each said.

My family and I were blown away by their manners. They sat and sipped their milk and listened to everyone talk and didn't elbow one another, or laugh among themselves or dive into the candy jar full of M&M's on the corner table next to them, though Xena did keep stealing looks at it.

I figured they'd last maybe 15 minutes. Then the facade would crack and they'd beg to watch TV or play outside or start yelling and screaming or kicking each other, or something.

But I was wrong. This wasn't a facade. They waited to be asked if they would like some candy. "Yes, please! Just a little, thank you." They waited until my daughter suggested they might like to watch TV. "That would be very nice," Xena said.

All afternoon it was like this, and night, too - before dinner, during dinner. Even later when it was late and they were tired, they were unfailingly polite.

This can't be, I thought. No children are this well-behaved.

But they are. We have seen them many times since. They've come to our house, and we've gone to theirs, and the pleases and thank yous and pardon me's and excuse me's, and the attention they pay when people are talking, aren't manners they put on to impress strangers. This is how they live their lives. These are words they say to their parents and to one another in their own home.

Now there are four of them. Shiloh is 2, and there's another on the way, and things aren't easy for this family. They live on a small farm. It's a hard life, and they don't have a whole lot of the comforts most of us take for granted.

But they have something far more valuable: genuine respect for one another. Jeannie and Sal are polite to their children and their children are polite back. Shiloh cries and Sal says, "Why are you crying? Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired?" He doesn't say, "Stop that crying." He looks for the cause.

Jeannie doesn't yell when the kids start arguing, "I want you to stop that now!" She says, "What's going on?" And listens to what they have to say. And addresses the problem.

The kids don't watch television, either; they play, read, color, feed the animals, do chores - so they haven't been exposed to constant rudeness, bawdiness, sarcasm and screaming.

They go to a school that respects childhood and allows them to remain children. They are the product of a kind environment, kind words, kind actions, living proof that children are sponges. They absorb all they've come in contact with, and give back exactly what they've taken in.