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Teaching manners like “please,” “thank you,” and “excuse me” might seem like an obvious priority.
But what if teaching manners too early is actually slowing your child’s progress?
Many well-meaning parents and professionals focus on manners before a child is ready—leading to confusion, prompt dependence, and even increased problem behaviors.
In this guide, you’ll learn when to teach manners, the biggest mistakes to avoid, and how to build real communication first.
You’ll Learn
There are a lot of ingrained habits that many of us have for teaching children manners. When Lucas was little, we taught him to say “God bless you” when someone sneezed. Then we taught him to immediately say “thank you”, followed by “you’re welcome.” Inadvertently, we taught all of those phrases together in a single “God-bless-you-thank-you-you’re-welcome” phrase. Now let’s talk about how I can help you to prevent making this mistake.
Many parents are told early on to make sure their child says “please” and “thank you.” Maybe you even want to teach your autistic child to say sorry.
But if your child:
Then adding manners can actually make communication harder.
For example:
“I want cookie please” is much more complex than simply saying “cookie.”
When language is still developing, extra words can lead to:
This doesn’t mean that we can never teach our kids manners or how to be polite. I often get compliments on how polite Lucas is, we just have to teach them at the right time, and the right way!
Before focusing on manners, your child should be able to:
Think about it this way:
If you were traveling to another country tomorrow, you wouldn’t start by learning polite phrases.
You would learn the words you need to get your needs met:
Needs and basic communication come first. Manners come later.
If you aren’t sure how to teach these pre-requisite skills, don’t worry, I have a course and community of supportive parents for you.
There are three common mistakes that parents and professionals make when teaching manners, and chaining phrases together, as we did with my “God bless you” example. You may be surprised to hear that I don’t recommend teaching a child to say “I’m sorry” after problem behaviors.
Teaching “please” and “thank you” before your child has functional language can delay progress and increase frustration.
Instead, focus on clear and simple requests first.
A common mistake is teaching multiple manners at once, such as:
“God bless you,” “thank you,” and “you’re welcome.”
Children may repeat the entire chain without understanding any of it.
Another example is requiring a child to say “I’m sorry” after problem behavior.
This can lead to:
Instead of focusing on apologies, focus on preventing the behavior and teaching better communication skills.
Even when a child is ready, many adults rely on prompts like:
“Say thank you” or “What do you say?”
This often leads to prompt dependence instead of independent use.
Manners should be taught in natural, structured ways that make sense to the child.
Over time, reduce prompts so your child begins to say it independently.
This helps your child learn that using words gets their needs met.
Teaching manners is important, but timing matters.
When you:
You’ll see better progress and less frustration.
So remember to be careful what manners to teach a child with autism, and avoid phrases like “I’m sorry”. I hope you learned a lot from this episode, and if so, please tell me by leaving a review on your favorite podcast listening service.
No—teaching manners too early can actually slow down your child’s communication progress.
Before adding words like “please” and “thank you,” your child needs to be able to:
When you add extra words too soon, it increases the length and complexity of what your child has to say. This can lead to frustration, tantrums, or memorized phrases that don’t carry real meaning.
Instead, focus on building strong communication first. Once your child is consistently requesting and using short phrases, manners can be added more easily—and will actually stick.
If you’re not sure where your child is starting, take the free assessment today.
This will help you identify exactly what skills to focus on first.
If your child is repeating phrases like “thank you” or “sorry” without meaning, this is often due to how the language was taught.
Many children are taught using prompts like:
Over time, this creates prompt dependence, where the child only says the phrase when told—and may not understand when or why to use it.
It can also lead to rote or scripted language, where phrases are repeated automatically but not used functionally.
To fix this:
Inside my Online Course, I show you exactly how to build spontaneous, functional language without prompt dependence.
Yes—but only after communication skills are in place.
Manners are a social skill, and social skills come after:
If a child cannot communicate effectively, focusing on manners too early can:
If you want a clear roadmap of what to teach first (and what to wait on), join my free workshop:
No—this is one of the most common mistakes parents and professionals make.
Having a child say “I’m sorry” after problem behavior:
In some cases, children will even start saying “I’m sorry” while hitting or biting because the phrases become linked.
Instead, focus on:
Listen in on how I handle problem behaviors and apologies here.
Resources
Want to start making a difference for your child or clients?
