I'm finally blogging!

Hello,
My name is Lydia Allison. Please call me Ms. Lydia. I am very excited to be blogging and some of my good friends have encouraged me to blog about my life as an etiquette instructor and etiquette and manners in general. In 2001 I was substituting at my childrens' schools and I kept hearing several teachers talk about the need for someone in town to teach "these kids" some manners and etiquette.

I loved teaching and wanted to do more than be a substitute teacher for the rest of my life so I started brainstorming and coming up with creative and fun ways to teach kids manners and etiquette. I had the best time being creative and writing the curriculum- just trying to find fun ways to help kids understand the importance of being polite and courteous throughout their life and carrying those skills into their adulthood. After putting together my curriculum, I started asking parents if they were interested in having their children enroll in my classes. I started teaching girls ages 8-11 and right off, had enrolled 8 girls for my summer class. Shortly thereafter, parents of boys came to me and asked me to put together a curriculum for their boys! After this, my classes started to take off.

Word spread throughout my small community and pretty soon, I had parents calling and people from the nearby universities asking for help in training their students. Since I loved teaching the little ones, I created a curriculum for ages 4-7 called "Manners 4 Mini's". I love that name and this has been one of my most popular classes. I have found that parents really want to start their kids learning manners when they are young and I agree that the earlier, the better.

There are some things that I would like to blog about... in particular, I would like to continue to discuss manners and etiquette in our society today. I would also love to share the story of how me and my family were asked to be on a Reality TV show called "Wife Swap". Oh, I know you are probably saying,"What is a woman who goes to church and teaches manners and etiquette doing on a show called Wife Swap ?", and I intend on telling you the whole neat story plus a lot of inside information about being on the show. I am also going to be sharing about my family, parenting challenges and how it feels to almost be an empty nester. So, stay tuned. Thanks for reading and God bless you!

Kindest Regards,
Ms. Lydia