Spontaneous politeness

I can't quite explain it, but it's happening. My son says "Thank you." Okay, that's an easy one; I've worked hard on that one by saying "Thank you" myself all day every day. I say it when he gives me something and I say it when I give him something. I say it after he says it, instead of "You're welcome." As a result, he doesn't know "You're welcome" but he says "Thank you" unprompted at least twenty times a day.

But where did "Please" come from?

He hears the word "please" often enough, and the speech therapist uses it a lot too. But language-wise, it's just noise. He's not ready for noise yet. He's still at the stage of blurting out a single word (or the occasional two-word phrase, as long as the two words go together, like "Brown Bear" when he's asking for his kiddie CD). But now, when he wants something, he'll name the item, pause, and add, "Peeeeze!" Or he'll just say "Peeeeze!" and hopes I guess what he wants.

He also says "Excuse me" (or "Hoo hee") but he only says it to cats.

Now I'm wondering if I can teach him to spontaneously say "Sorry." Can you imagine? That would be incredible. Then I can become one of those obnoxious moms who says, "Parents these days don't bother to teach their children common etiquette. That's what's wrong with the world today. Look at my AwesomeCloud here; he says 'Please' and 'Thank you' and 'I'm sorry' without even any prompting."

Old ladies would love me! Everyone else, not so much.

In other news, we have a dealer table at Templecon starting this evening. Here's a picture of our dealer table at a recent con, PiCon:
At Templecon, we're all going in Victorian... well... more like Edwardian garb. Even Cloud. It should be fun.