It begins when our children are babies. Teaching a child to do without a pacifier or to use a potty and then a toilet and imparting table skills should be as natural as breathing to responsible parents; yet it is not in so many, tragic cases.

Modern parents often have the attitude that such things are 'picked up' along the way in a child´s development. Of course this is complete nonsense. Indeed such niceties may be picked up from other children but usually only when the child has already experienced feelings of rejection for displaying appalling manners in front of others.

For those who have absolutely no idea when to start their children on the learning curve of life, here are some guidelines.

1. Your child is not, as so many people think, unable to toilet train. At a remarkably early age, the young of the human species are able to comprehend it is much nicer to use a potty or toilet than to soil a diaper or even clothing. The process of teaching can be time consuming and inconvenient and many parents feel they cannot spare the time. Rubbish. When your child reaches one year old it is time to gently begin introducing a potty into the bathroom, then a training seat, and so on. Perseverance is guaranteed to win the day in this case. After all you do not wish to see your son or daughter heading off to the office in training pants, do you?

2. A pacifier is a comfort to children but it is not essential to their further development after the age of one to two years. Children aged three and above with a dummy or pacifier stuck in their mouths are the victims of bad parenting. Get rid of it. Make up stories if necessary, send dum-dum overseas if you must, but get rid of it.

3. Use of tableware is mandatory once your child passes the 'fingerfood' stage. If your child is still in the finger food stage at ten, then something is going badly wrong and you need to attend a parenting course. Once your child reaches around two the habit of throwing food and sticking food in hair etc is seriously unfunny. Give your child a blunt knife, fork and spoon at as early as two, along with a napkin. Keep handing your child the tools of the table and showing him or her how to use them and eventually something will click. Do not abandon these vital life lessons, they are imperative to your child´s healthy social development.

4. There is a time, hopefully known to the individual parent, when a child´s screaming and shouting in public becomes unacceptable. Once this time is past, no longer accept it, unless you want some serious difficulties on your hands in terms of behavioural problems.

5. Teach your children road sense, even if you have no intention of allowing them onto the roads unsupervised. Teaching road skills after the age of ten is enormously difficult, so start at five or six. There is no reason why an intelligent kid cannot understand basic road sense even though you will be in attendance for some years to come.

Jan Gamm writes reflections on life with an emphasis on world travel. She has lived in many countries and traveled extensively in the Far East, the Middle East, America, South America and throughout the South Pacific. She writes for fun and for money whenever she can manage it.