In article , Ann Porter wrote:
....
We are having varying degrees of success. "Please" and "thank you" are
actually the hardest. He seems to think that saying "please" means he has
to "plead" with us, which is not what we're going for at all - we just want
him to ask a polite question, rather than issuing a demand. I prefer "May I
have some chocolate milk, please?" to "I want some chocolate milk."

"Please don't interrupt" is also rather difficult for him. I'm having a lot
of trouble having even a five minute conversation with my husband these
days!

On the upside, he got "knock before entering" very quickly, and "may I be
excused" after about two days.

Sounds like he is doing very well for almost four.
It helps if you model the "please" and "thank you" behavior yourself:

"It's bedtime---please go to bed now."
"Thank you for getting dressed so quickly this morning."
....




--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.