Penny Palmano - Yes, Please. Thanks!: Teaching Children of All Ages Manners, Respect and Social Skills for Life

For my mother
who has always been a wonderful example

Many thanks to Hazel Robinson for her editorial services and advice, and to David Spear and Roger on the editorial team. Thank you to Katherine, my daughter, for the cartoons, and to Vicki Scarborough from Acorn Nursery and Sue Furby from the Hazelwood Infant School for their input. Thank you, too, to Jacqui McCarthy for her PR skills, to Nicky Pensotti for proofreading, to Brian Lennon for his diagrams and, finally, to Keith Young, Headmaster of Westbrook Hay School, for his Foreword and wise words.

When we self-published Yes, please. Thanks! in June 2004 it caused such a media frenzy that we were taken completely by surprise. Unfortunately, we were also totally unprepared; so unprepared that the book was still at the printers! I had always hoped that we would get some coverage in newspapers and magazines but I never imagined it would make national news.

It all started back in February when my friend and neighbour Jacqui McCarthy, of dImage Ltd, organized an interview for me with the social-affairs editor of The Times (a neighbour with a PR company and a villa in the South of France they dont come any better than that!).

The social-affairs editor had kindly asked me roughly when I would like the article (which I had not seen) to run. I had a cunning plan that if it was published two weeks before the book was first in the shops, my distributors could use the article to sell it to a great deal more outlets. Then, when the book finally hit the shops I would contact the likes of Jeremy Vine, This Morning and Richard and Judy, show them the article and beg and plead with them to let me come and discuss it on their shows. Best laid plans

The phone rings. My son Sam answers it and tells me its a reporter from the Daily Mail. I naturally assume its a friend winding me up but, as it turns out, it is a reporter who says he is reading about Yes, please. Thanks! in the first edition of The Times and would like to ask me some questions. I ask him what size the article is and whether it is pro the book. He tells me there is a double-page spread about the book with supporting articles and it is very pro the subject. I am speechless, but only momentarily as I have to go and wake up the rest of the family to tell them. We are all so excited it takes me ages to get to sleep.

I am woken by Radio Five Live asking if I could get to the nearest BBC radio station, which is in Reading, within the hour for a live interview and phone in. I immediately agree. Fortunately, its half-term and for the first time in years the children get up early on a non-school day to come and support me. After the show I am immediately informed that the Jeremy Vine Show has been on the phone, and could I do a live interview at lunchtime? Oh yes, please. On leaving the studio I rang home to be told, The world has gone mad! Who do you want first, Sky News, Richard and Judy, This Morning, BBC Breakfast, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Womans Hour? We simply couldnt believe it.

But horror of horrors, live TV!? Im not prepared, I havent got anything to wear, Im having a bad-hair day and there is no time to do anything about it. Even worse, if you can imagine anything worse, the book was not yet in the shops.

From then on it was a marketing dream and a publishers nightmare. Incredible national coverage, but no books and our publishing name, Panic Publishing, was not listed anywhere. Our printers, Unwin Bros, were wonderful and worked overtime to get it to our distributors, Gazelle Book Services, in record time, who immediately sent it out to shops and wholesalers. Finally, we were home and dry, or so I thought. Oh, how little I knew. Two weeks later I was still receiving press and doing regional radio interviews, but the book was only just filtering in to the mainstream shops. I had never considered or calculated the time it would take to get from the distributor, sometimes via wholesalers and warehouses, to bookshelves.

Although the media coverage was more than I could ever have hoped for, the reaction to the book from parents was my personal reward. One mother, who tried and tested the book, wrote about her success in the Femail section of the Daily Mail which was a far better recommendation for the book than anything I could ever have written. This was the purpose of writing it, to help guide parents to having better-behaved and well-mannered children.

The final chapter of my publishing adventure came with a call from Carole Tonkinson at HarperCollins asking if they could take over the publishing of the book and re-launch it in April 2005. It was received with open arms. And just as I am going to let their experience help me, I hope you will let my experience help you.

When Penny told me of her intention to write a book on childrens manners and respect, I immediately thought of her sons progress through my school. If anyone better typified what can be done with good manners and respect then I havent had the pleasure of seeing them yet. So, a little like a top chef giving advice on recipes, there is the instinctive confidence in the fact that Penny knows what she is talking about (and she is also a great cook!). The premise of this book is the desire to show parents what can be achieved, if they are willing to invest a little time and a great deal of consistency in the upbringing of their children. Parenting skills have noticeably declined over the years, as is evident in some of the behaviour witnessed in school, where seemingly the only guidance children have comes from the environment that surrounds them for their time at school. While the much more relaxed relationships between adults and children is to be commended and welcomed, the lack in many young children of the basic tenets of good manners and respect is highly regrettable. They are surrounded by poor examples in the society in which they live. Much of the television they watch or the music they listen to and even their heroes and idols offer them scant guidance as to how best to behave, and the void that has opened between what used to be taken for granted and what is now accepted is a worrying trend.

The beauty of this book is there is something for everyone and there should be no fixed point at which people reading it need to start. Much will come down to personal preference and the kind of children that you want to raise. However, if good manners and respect still mean something to you, the sagacity of the following chapters will provide you with an invaluable resource as you embark on the most difficult and rewarding journey that any adult can take namely the fostering of a partnership with your offspring that is abiding and enriching and equips them with life skills that will shape and mark them as worthy individuals.

Keith Young

HEADMASTER

WESTBROOK HAY SCHOOL,

HEMEL HEMPSTEAD, HERTS.

Firstly, I must point out that I am not a child expert; I am simply a mother who decided that if I was going to have children, they were going to be well-behaved, polite children that I could be proud of.

My experience with other children came from working as a nanny, teaching children to ski and then looking after children while their parents skied at a chalet business I ran with my first husband for six years. The one thing I learnt from all the different children I looked after, including my own, is that all children respond to love and laughter, and to kind, calm and firm guidance.