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I was just at the grocery store, and all of us who had lined up to do self-checkout watched in disbelief as a woman, after paying for her groceries, pulled out her cell phone and texted someone --  and waited for the response.  And texted back.  And waited for the response.  And texted back again.  

We got off to a good start for the New Year.  I wrestled, sat my daughters down, and had them write thank you notes for the gifts they'd received over the holidays.  It was an almost Norman Rockwell-ian moment: the winter sun shining into the breakfast nook, its sunbeams touching on their bowed heads, which were bent over little brightly colored squares of cardstock, the scratching of pens, the asking of how to spell something.  I sipped my coffee, imagining the look of pride on their grandparents' faces as they received the notes.  I felt all warm inside at how well-perceived we would be by friends, teachers, godparents -- me for my superb parenting skills and the girls for their thoughtfulness.

Many, many, many years ago, my great-grandmother gave my mom and my aunt a little framed picture.  If you squint, you can just read that she wrote "Happy Easter from Grandma" on the back.  The pencil is very faded.  As a Happy Easter gift, I'm willing to bet that my mom and aunt would have rather had chocolate, because the picture was an illustrated poem called "Five Little Words" that goes like this:

I had one of those "No, Duh" moments last week.  It was about -- of all things -- parenting.

A quick search on Google for manners programs (including children's manners, table etiquette, business manners, social media manners, ATM manners and more) brought up over 10,300,000 results.And a similar search on Amazon found over 30,000 results.