Manners and Kids

Lately manners have been a thing that one particular child of mine has been lacking. Miss Mahli has always been a demanding little miss. Instead of asking for something she would always just start crying until you asked her what was wrong. If she wanted a cup of milk she would cry, if she wanted help with her pants she would cry. Well you get the picture, there were a lot of tears spilt around here which could have easily been avoided if she would have only just asked for help.

That seems easy for us adults to say, but as a kid it probably all seems perfecting normal to them.
But I am at a loss as to how to get her to improve. It is like one big continuing cycle, she starts with her demanding, I explain that that isn't they way we speak in this house and she re-phrases herself and then we do it all again 10 minutes later.

And now her little brother seems to be following in her footsteps.

Do you have any tips? Is it a phase that she will grown out off? Help! She (and the other two) are wearing me down at the moment!

Are school holidays over yet???

Playground politics

Caden started kindy (QLD version) back in February. I was a bit nervous about the whole kindy mum thing. I am shy by nature so wasn't sure how I would handle it, but always try to acknowledge everyone that crosses my path, be it with a smile or a quick hello. Things have been going good in the small amount of time I have spent at the kindy as drop of and pick up happens around Ethan's sleeps so we can't hang around for long. But what is with some Mums just looking right through you???
I held the gate open for a kindy mum the other day and no thank you or anything. She didn't even look at me! How are our kids supposed to learn manners if we can't even lead by example? Don't get me wrong the majority of Mums are fantastic and offer a friendly smile or hi. Some have a quick chat. But others just look the other way and only have there select few that they speak to. I mean even if shyness is the problem a smile is not hard. Our kids will be seeing each other 5 days a fortnight for the rest of the year, so wouldn't it make things more pleasant if everyone just acknowledged each other and were polite.

Have you experienced Mum's (or Dad's) in the playground just ignoring your existence? What do you do when this happens?