With family and friends attending holiday dinners, manners are on the minds of many parents. There is more to manners than just polite social behavior. Manners can help encourage children to respect and treat others like themselves. Here are a few tips on the best way to nurture good manners in your children during this holiday season:

Talk to your children about your expectations before the holiday event. Tell your children that they might be disappointed by a gift they may receive, but encourage them to be gracious even if they are disappointed. Let your children know how the evening is planned so they will have clear expectations before your family arrives.

Set Reasonable Expectations. An older child probably already knows how to say, “Thank you,” but a younger children may need gentle reminders when given a gift from a family member. Instead of shouting across the room, kneel down at the child’s level and gently whisper a reminder into their ear.

Model Respect at Home. If your children are experiencing anxiety about their behavior during the holiday event, create a mock holiday dinner at home a couple of days before.

Reinforce Positive Behavior. Let your children know that you are noticing their good behavior during the event. Recognize even the small things by saying, “I appreciate the way you remembered to tell your Aunt thank you without having to be reminded.”

It takes a consistent effort to reinforce respectful behavior. Your children will be quickly on their way to meaningful manners with these few small steps.

How are you preparing your children for the holidays? Any tips?

Plus, more from The Bump:

5 Tips for Staying Mommy Chic During the Holidays

Give Your Loved Ones What They Really Want for Christmas

A Survival Guide for Traveling With Kids

“What about their real mother?”

This is a question that many adoptive mothers hear on a regular basis when the subject of their child’s adoption is brought up. It’s normally never said in the context of hate or maliciousness, but as an adoptive mother I tend to cringe every time I hear it. Why? Because I am my children’s real mother.

Yes, I did not give birth to my children but that doesn’t make me their “real” Mother. I ponder on this often about what defines a “real” mother? Is it just someone who gives birth to child? Is it blood that bonds us to our children? Or is it love, care and support?

My two older children are both adopted, and my youngest is biological. I often wondered before the birth of my youngest son if I would feel any different if I were to bear my own child. After the birth of Tyler I learned that blood did not connect me to my children, but our love did.

Are you an adopted parent? What comments from other people have offended you?

I have three kids, all twenty-two months apart. For the past ten years, I’ve begged my husband almost every night for a little break so I could enjoy just a few wee seconds of silence. There were stacks of diapers, mounds of dirty clothes and a sea of dirty dishes that seemed like it would never end. Until now.

Last month, my youngest son Tyler, started Kindergarten. I was so excited in anticipation of him getting to meet new friends at school, and get a chance for him to have another role model in his life. Until I found myself all alone. I sat in our once crazy house, and there was silence. Not just silence for a few minutes, but hours of silence. I could hear the clock ticking, the refrigerator running and even my heart beating.

In that moment, I wanted it all back. I wanted to go back in time and appreciate the time more when I had all my kids at home with me. Cherish the moments more, instead of getting caught-up in the difficulties of raising babies.

I went to the school and watched him giggle with his friends on the school playground. I knew in that moment that I had done a marvellous job on the first part of raising my babies. They are all going into elementary school happy, healthy, well-rounded children.

Now at 3:15, instead of dealing with timeouts and temper tantrums, there are sometimes tears over homework. The chaos is still there at times, just in a different form. Now when my house gets a little wild, I embrace it because it will not be long before the children are out of our house forever.

So what now? Is it time to have another baby?

If your kids are older, do you miss the “baby phase”? What are the best and worst things about sending your children to school?

Everywhere I go it seems like there is always a toddler playing on their parent’s iPhone — in the grocery store, doctor’s office and even at the school drop-off. Everywhere. The iPhone has quickly become “entertainment on-the-go” for toddlers. Over the years, I’ve tried to keep my toddler away from my iPhone (that has always been a challenge!). But when I found my older son in the emergency room, the iPhone came in handy for keeping my toddler occupied.

What I did not realize was that it would end up costing me — big money!

A couple days after the emergency room visit, I started getting email confirmations from iTunes. It started with just an app purchase of 99 cents followed by some totaling as much as $99.99. When I added up all the email receipts I had gotten, it topped over $430!

Thinking that someone had broken into my iTunes account, I immediately contacted Apple. That was when I first learned about in-app purchases. Maybe I’d been living under a rock (or just busy taking care of my three children) but I missed the scoop on in-app purchases.

What I learned was that while my toddler was throwing Angry Birds at towers of blocks, he was getting screen pops asking him if he wanted “magical birds”. Not even knowing what the screen pops were saying (because he can’t read) he pushed all the buttons so the game would continue.

I ended up getting lucky with the representative agreeing to reverse the charges, but I since learned that other parents haven’t been so lucky. The most valuable lesson I learned was that I had to block in-app purchases on all my devices before allowing any children to touch them again.

Wondering how to block in-app purchases? So did I, so I made a quick tutorial to help.

First click on “settings”.

Next click on “General”.

Next click on “Restrictions”.

You will be prompted to enter a password.

Next click on “In-App Purchases” turning it to “off”.

Your iPhone will then be blocked from in-app purchases.

Do you let your kids play with your cell phone? How do you prevent problems like this? Or, how do you manage to keep your phone off-limits?

To me, a parent’s best tool for creating healthy meals for their family is a grill. Almost anything can be made on a grill including pizza, fruits and even pound cake (yes really!). With only a short time left before the cold weather comes, this is an excellent time to take advantage of your grill and make a delicious family meal on it.

I enjoy growing a lot of our own fruits and vegetables right in our backyard. This summer we have gotten an overwhelming amount of tomatoes, and just about anything caprese — caprese salad, caprese pizza — has become a big hit with my kids. I just recently surprised them with this delicious caprese chicken. I love that I was able to make a deliciously healthy dinner in just a few minutes with tomatoes we grew in our garden. And the kids helped too!

Ingredients:

1 pound of fresh chicken tenders
1 container of whole milk mozzarella
2 large tomatoes
1/4 cup of basil
Salt
Pepper
Optional balsamic vinegar

Directions:

1. Sprinkle salt and pepper on chicken tenders.
2. Grill one side of the chicken tenders for about 5 minutes, or until 1/2 way cooked.
3. Then flip the chicken using a metal spatula.
4. After flipping the chicken, top the chicken with tomatoes, basil and cheese.
5. Grill on low heat for approximately 5-10 minutes.
6. Serve with a fresh green salad.

What are your favorite healthy meals to serve to your kids?