Kids, good manners and popularity

Due to my beloved hubby’s strange taste in on-demand cable weirdness, we frequently watch old high-school films. You know the ones about how to drive safe, stay off drugs, don’t run with the bad crowd, eat healthy, yada, yada, yada. Today we viewed a real gem called Shy Guy, starring a young Dick York as Phil, a new kid in school who is having trouble fitting in. His father recommends that he watch the popular kids around him to figure out how to fit in. Of course this is 1947, and an educational film, so all the popular kids for him to take as role models are just wonderful people. They are nice. They are good listeners. They do things for people. Blah blah blah and on and on about good manners and the type of behavior we want and expect from adults who understand things like long-term consequences and reciprocity.

What really drove me crazy about all this was that the lesson was that these behavior traits were supposed to make Phil more popular. This just doesn’t jibe with my memories of high school in the slightest. For one thing, only a few of the popular kids were nice. A lot of them were stuck-up, mean-as-snakes, bullies, braggarts and bastards. And for another thing, trying to make friends be being nice just got one labeled as a suck-up and a loser.

I don’t have any kids, so I thought I would pose it to you parent Dopers, as well as any ex-kids, or still-kids, who want to chime in, do you tell your kids that being good will make them more friends? Do you really believe it will? Does it?

In my adult life, I never thought having a lot of friends was a big deal. Being caring might not get you a lot of friends, but who wants to be friends with the people you’ll attract by bullying, taunting, or acting out? One or two good friends who’ll help you in a jam are worth 20 so-so friends who’ll distance themselves from you in tense situations.

Whether or not that works in high school (and I would argue that in the end it does), most of our life is not spent in high school. Good manners and friendliness do count in life, and the sooner they are instilled, the more natural they become.

Oh, I agree 100% with you and Octogon both. If I were trying to raise a kid, I’d be doing my darnedest to impress that on him/her. But I don’t think I’d try to convince the kid that it would help him/her become well-liked, except by maybe an kid of exceptionally good taste. :slight_smile: It just seems like it’s counter-productive to tell a kid that it would, since likely as not it won’t, unless they are lucky enough to have charisma and/or good looks.

I think there are a couple of levels to it. There are the jock and cheerleader type popular kids, and yeah, too many of those are also the jerks and stuck up types. But then there are the next level kids, second tier as it were, who are generally nice kids. Those are the ones you get to be friends with by being likeable and well mannered. And those are probably the ones worth being friends with anyway.

Good manners probably won’t help a whole lot when you’re trying to fit in with the popular kids in school. But they will have the teachers liking you better, friends’ parents liking you and deciding you’re a good influence on their kids, and things like that. Ultimately, I’d say that people with better manners definitely get further in life, and have a smoother ride of it. If you’re rude, people don’t like you as much. Pleases and thank yous and things like that really do shape people’s opinions of you.

Kids don’t necessarily look for that in friends, at highschool age. I think you’re right about some of the nicer kids being given the “suck-up” label because they say good morning to a teacher. Because, you know, being rude to authority figures is cool now! But it doesn’t last. Those who don’t ditch the crappy manners are going to have a harder time later.

Unpopular in school, maybe, but definitely more friends (and probably better ones) later.

But, no, XaMcQ, I wouldn’t say that “be polite” is necessarily good advice for a kid feeling unpopular at school, because it’s not likely to help him or her get in with the in-crowd. But, you know, nothing is good advice for that situation. You’re either cool or you’re not, in those kids’ minds, and not much can change it. The trick is learning that it doesn’t matter.

That’s what I think too, but I am so glad I don’t have to try to explain it to a miserable kid who feels ostracized.

I have to say that the most popular kids in my high school were, unconditionally, also the friendliest, politest, and most socially mature ones. Jocks and cheerleaders may have been notorious and much talked about, but precisely because of their exclusionary social behavior, they never gained real popularity status.

Actually, my clearest memory of high school is of running down a staircase late for class and straight into the captain of the football team (one of the top ten popular people in the school), whom I had been friendly with in fifth grade but not had the occasion to speak to since. He helped me pick up the things I’d dropped, gave me a smile that made me feel warm all over, remembered my name, and asked me how things were going for me. I’m tearing up just remembering it.

He is a kindergarten teacher, now.

In my experience the popular kids did have good manners. They also had the ability to be snakes. The best of them had an infallible instinct of when to use which ability to advance their status. Going on in life, I think most of us can do a pretty good job of being snakes and don’t need to be taught. Some people, though, do lack manners. Manners are a useful thing to add to your toolkit, which ideally will also include a moral compass.

Interesting article, on a tangent: “Why Nerds Are Unpopular”.

In my high school too the most popular kids were the nicest. There were a few exceptions, and those exceptions were mostly football players, and then there were a couple of girls who were very popular WITH BOYS but not with other girls, at all–but they were exceptions.

The best-liked people were smart, entertaining, and generous. Shy people are not generous. They are withholding themselves.

Knowing good manners can give a kid confidence, and a kid with confidence is less likely to be shy. Of course it’s also true that you don’t need a million friends.

Who says being nice helps you as an adult?

Thanks for the link. It is a pretty interesting article. :slight_smile:

My son just graduated high school this past year and I got to know many of his friends so I feel somewhat qualified to give an opinion. Being nice and friendly are great traits for popularity. Being polite…not so much. The kids who got attention (like my son, sorry to say) were outgoing wise-asses who’s popularity stemmed from making the kids laugh often at the expense of the teacher. That being said, it was the authority figures that caught the slack, not the other kids. They were all a “team” and didn’t pick on each other and those who did were instantly ostracized. This was a private school so I do not know how this relates to all high schools across the board. However, I think this popularity had more to do with being brave and attention seeking than being polite and good mannered.

I am certainly this old movie was more to manipulate the kids to behave how adults want them to rather than how they could behave to gain the popularity they crave at that age.