Boomer and Halley

                                  The ONE Gift Dads Want Most for Father’s Day – Civility!

Media Personality, Entertainment, & Communications Expert

                                            Fights Rudeness With Children’s Book Series

                                                                                Topic Summary

 It may be Father’s Day, but it’s no secret that people are just becoming ruder – including kids. Polls say dads are raising kids during a rudeness epidemic.

A Rasmussen poll finds 87 percent of a survey group of 1,000 believe that Americans are “becoming more rude and less civilized.” Just 10 percent say Americans are becoming kinder and gentler. In addition 81 percent of Americans say they have to confront someone because of his or her rude behavior in public. Rudeness is catchy. Parents are passing rudeness down to their kids.

“The culprits are clear,” says Mary Jane McKittrick, a professional storyteller with experience hosting TV entertainment shows; anchoring, reporting, and producing TV news; and a stint in corporate communications, who wants to shift the trend.

Enter decency. Her Mom’s Choice Award-winning children’s book series, Boomer and Halley© from Tuxedo Cat Productions (www.boomerandhalley.com), teaches kids 4-8 common decency lessons on being polite, having manners, integrity, and ethics, through humorous stories. “We need to start kids early on learning lessons of personal civility and core values so we can stem the tide of the rudeness and lack of personal consideration that is becoming more the rule than the exception,” says McKittrick.

           McKittrick can discuss:

 The biggest reason kids aren’t learning about the value of good behavior these days and what Dad’s can do about it.

• 3 ways kids learn that being rude is cool. (Hint: it’s in your living room)
• How the Internet is raising latchkey kids and training them to bully, boast and berate.
• How the bad economy affects a Dads’ ability to address civility issues and ways to shift that.
• The one thing that all of us can do to stem the tide of the rudeness epidemic and return our nation to civility.

                                                About Mary Jane McKittrick

A native of Los Angeles, Mary Jane McKittrick grew up in the San Fernando Valley with horses, cats and dogs. Her lifelong love of animals informs her stories, and features her childhood dog, Boomerang, an Australian Shepherd, (Boomer), along with a silver streak of a cat, Halley’s Comet, (Halley), and their adoptive “parents,” Harold and Edna Sanders living in the small Southern town of Shady Pines. Mary Jane enjoyed a successful career as a professional storyteller with experience in entertainment television, broadcast TV, and corporate communications. She is comfortable in front of cameras and microphones.