If little kids are taught anything about door etiquette, they’re taught to knock on a closed door before opening. You knock on the bathroom door, you knock on mommy and daddy’s bedroom door, etc. Doorbells are an alien object.
I don’t think I ever saw a doorbell until I was an adult. And I was a city kid. We always knocked on doors. But, I’m older than you and lived literally on the wrong side of the tracks.
Still live in a city. I’d guess that fewer than 10% of people year round use the great big obvious doorbell we have.
You can’t trust a doorbell to work, and you especially can’t trust it when candy is on the line!
I would like anyone in this thread to tell me if your parents ever gave you the “We’re door bell ringers in this family” speech.
Bc the idea parents would “teach” you to use the doorbell over knocking sounds completely bonkers to me.
me too, but he said it was probably more “teach by example.” Since then I’ve be trying to think of a single time I went to any residence with my parents that wasn’t a grandparent. I know it must have happened, but I can’t recall one such visit. So, I honestly have no idea if my a parents were “knockers” or “ringers.”
I was giving out candy to trick or treaters a few years ago. I left the front door unlocked, so I wouldn’t have to constantly unlock it before opening for the little monsters (and princesses). Then one 8 year old (or so) girl just opened the door and came in. I was quite surprised, and asked why she didn’t knock or ring the doorbell. She said she was tired of knocking on doors. So I don’t really care if kids knock or ring the bell, but I really don’t want them just walking in.
Data point: kids all rang my door bell.
And i assume that’s something kids learn by watching their parents.
My trick or treat days were in the early/mid 1970’s and the usual protocol was to 1) ring the doorbell, 2) failing a response (or if they had no doorbell) the next step was to knock; 3) once someone opened the door yell ‘trick or treat’ (in chorus).
Hang on hang on, I haven’t read the whole thread yet but… there’s a correct way to ‘notify people in the house you were there’, and that these things were taught to children? Because my parents taught me many things - how to cross the road, giving up my bus seat for old ladies - but knocking vs ringing door bells, not so much. Why would they? I don’t even have a doorbell.
Maybe I learned it from my parents, or maybe I figured it out on my own. And I certainly did explain this to my children:
Regardless of the occasion, use the doorbell first, because the residents are unlikely to hear knocking unless they are reasonably close to the door. If there’s no response to the bell AND you couldn’t hear it yourself, then it is reasonable to suspect that the bell isn’t working, so that’s when you switch to Plan B:, and knock loudly.
(PS: Yes, my dog reacted to the doorbell. Or course he did. He perceived his job as protecting us and to warn us of intruders, so he started barking at the door. He did NOT freak out as if there was a thunderstorm raging.)
My sister’s doorbell didn’t work for a decade. Her dog freaked out whenever anyone approached the house. In the unlikely event she didn’t hear me approach, she freaked out when i knocked.
I’m not avoiding doorbells because i can guess what will freak out other people’s dogs.
I’m not sure my dog reacts any differently whether people knock or ring.
I am not judging or prescribing - I just find it interesting what different people take for granted, and what they think appropriate subjects for parents to “teach” their kids.
Another aspect is when the trick or treaters - or anyone at the door - rings the bell or knocks repeatedly in far less time than I would think you ought to give a person to get to the door. Is there an explanation for THAT that I’m missing - other than impatience?
When my kids did their first trick or treating, they were infants/toddlers/preschoolersa and of course I was with them. These days, it seems parents accompany kids up to ge 8 or so. If I’m turning my kids lose to knock/ring at my neighbors’ doors, yer damned tooting I’m going to make some effort to get my kids to do it in a manner that I think is least likely to annoy folk.
I guess i wouldn’t expect either knocking or ringing, or even impatiently doing so twice, to annoy anyone who is planning to give out candy to kids on Halloween.
They are kids. They are impatient. That’s the nature of children. And they want to get to as many houses as they can before they need to go home. Time is candy.
But regarding “teaching kids to ring the bell”, I’m sure that most parents do that by example, and not by explicitly talking about it. Kids learn tons of stuff by watching their parents.
When we had a toddler and a baby we stopped at a rest area, and my husband left me with the (female) toddler, who needed a diaper change, and tucked the baby (male) under his arm, saying, "I need to use the restroom, i may as well teach [baby how to use a urinal. He wasn’t planning on explaining anything, just holding the kid while he used the urinal, so the boy would have seen a urinal used. I’m pretty sure we never did explicitly teach him to use a urinal. I’m also pretty sure he knows how to use a urinal.
Yeah, I get this. But I also get that kids ought to be taught that - even when they are excited, they shouldn’t be unnecessarily rude.
For example, some kids are so “impatient” that they want to take the shortest distance between doors - whether that means running across gardens instead of using the walkways. I guess I’m overly intolerant and bossy, but I think when kids are excited is a very good time to teach them to be polite, say thank you, don’t grab a handful if the person says “take one”, ring/knock once and wait patiently. No, they don’t need to act like they are in church, but it doesn’t have to be “anything goes” either.
Here is when I come across as a cranky old geezer, but it seems increasingly common for people to say rudeness and selfishness in kids should be excused because they are just kids, they are excited, they don’t know better, etc… Well, how will they ever know any better if someone doesn’t tell them?
I wouldn’t let them get away with grabbing a handful of candy. And I’d make them say, “thank you”. But getting upset that kids knock more than once seems cranky, not constructive. At least to me.
With my young kids, if it seems like someone is waiting by the door (can see the person in the house, or others trick or treated have just left) I have the kids knock, because it’s less jarring than a doorbell. If there isn’t any sign that people are around (but lights are on) I have them ring the bell. Not something I am “teaching” them, more just my own preference.
I’m curious, how do you distinguish between “having” your young kids do something, and “teaching” them the same thing?
Maybe they could figure out why I told them to do one or the other, but I certainly didn’t tell them why i thought they should knock at one house and ring at another.
I don’t get it - the only advantage to a doorbell is it can be heard further inside the house than knocking, if your doorbell is wired right. It’s not more right or wrong to use one over the other; one is not more polite or better mannered than the other. I have a big old ornate brass doorknocker and a doorbell, and most people enjoy using the doorknocker. Some people just rap on the outer screen door frame in order not to intrude upon the inner door. What’s the difference? They all serve the exact same purpose. There’s no etiquette that says one is better than the other.
I do notice that the littlest kids aren’t ever quite sure what to do when confronted with all these options. So they pick the one they’re most used to at home - knocking on the door (the brass knocker is too high up for most of them).
The OP’s question is premised on the opposite view, but I can’t for the life of me imagine a rationale that supports it.