The other day a friend kindly offered to pick Mr. President up for a birthday party so that Blue Jeans could stay asleep for his nap. I gratefully accepted the offer. When the friend was about 10 minutes late, Pres started whining about being late to the party. Luckily I had the foresight to remind him NOT to say anything rude to my friend about being late, as, knowing his character that would be very likely. He then said, “But can’t I just ask her to be on time next time?” Uh, no. Definitely not. No. And of course as is also true to form he then started to question why this was not something he could do. Luckily my friend showed up at that point thus rescuing me from having to explain Social Grace #257 Don’t complain to people who are giving you a ride about the fact that they are late. Ironically enough, 3 days later I picked up Go Go’s preschool friend on the way to preschool and…was a few minutes late. She was in the car not two seconds when she asked, “How come you were so late?”. I laughed out loud and then gave her some flimsy excuse as to why I was indeed late, grateful that it was not just my child that would do such things. And of course I was not offended by her question any more than my friend would have been by Mr. President’s. But it got me thinking. At what point do we teach our kids social graces and put the “out of the mouth of babes” phrases away?