Minding Their Manners

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Are parents derelict if they aren't the ones doing the etiquette training? Not necessarily, says psychologist and University of Washington professor Tona McGuire, who is on the advisory board of the PoliteChild. For one thing, she says, "it's hard for some parents to teach such things to their children because they weren't taught themselves." More significantly, she notes, youngsters are inclined to regard teachers rather than parents as authority figures on subjects like proper behavior. Indeed, Michele Hatamiya says Honaker's class was the perfect complement to her at-home admonishments. "When he hears it from me, he doesn't want to do it. But when the teacher says it, he gets it," she says. "All of a sudden, Mom's not just crazy and nagging anymore. Mom's making more sense." Or at least it's polite to pretend that she is.

--With reporting by Dee Gill/St. Petersburg and Eli Sanders/Seattle