In the lobby of my building the other day – my stately, prewar lobby – my two boys fought over the possession of an overly inflated beach ball. They had been fighting over the ball for the past 10 minutes, and I was happy to finally be home. I stepped into the elevator, expecting them to be right behind me, and instead, heard an incredibly loud smacking sound.

I turned around and discovered that in an attempt to grab the ball away from his younger brother, my oldest child had kicked the ball directly into the face of a 30-something woman who was exiting the building. My son was horrified, the woman disgusted, and I, well, mortified. It reminded me of the memorably embarrassing moment my close friend had this summer, while lunching at a snooty country club, when her 3-year-old pulled down his pants and took a lengthy pee on the lush main lawn, steps away from and in full view of the blue-hairs who were enjoying their Cobb salads.

Pure and utter humiliation.

Now it certainly didn’t help that when my son and I began to repeatedly utter apologies, the woman didn’t budge. After eight mea culpas, and my shouting at the boys to get into the elevator “RIGHT NOW!” she turned on her heel, and in a huff, stormed out of the building, shouting, “I certainly wasn’t allowed to do that when I was growing up!”

Did she think I was? All I could be grateful for was the fact that the woman was in her 30s, not her 70s, and according to my doorman, not a resident in the building.

But the incident did make me wonder about manners, and if parents today – myself included – have forgotten the lost value of fine etiquette and proper comportment.

According to a recent study conducted by an online parenting site, 82% of Americans think that children’s manners are worse today than when they were children. Recruiters for Fortune 500 companies are hard-pressed to find candidates who can offer a decent handshake, chew with their mouths shut on lunch interviews, write legible handwritten thank-you notes, and dress appropriately for a first meeting.

These findings certainly don’t surprise me. Almost all of my friends’ children pick up the telephone and say a barely audible, “‘Ello.” In South Africa, where my family spends a couple of months each year, the standard children’s telephone greeting sounds something more like, “Hello, this is Jacob Berman speaking.” (The accent also bestows a certain je ne sais quoi.)

And what about the way kids seem to constantly interrupt their parents? On countless occasions I have explained to my children that if I am on the telephone, or talking to another adult, there is no point in trying to talk to me until I am off the telephone or finished with my conversation. It feels like there is no getting through.

And what about sitting up at the dinner table, putting napkins on laps, chewing with mouths shut, and no burping! The spoon is an intermediary between your bowl and your mouth – no slurping! Look people in the eye when you say hello, stick out your hand, have a firm shake. I feel like a drill sergeant barking out orders.

I can’t help thinking of Wendy Mogel’s wonderful parenting book, “The Blessing of the Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children” (Scribner, $25), in which she advises that parents should take some cues from dog trainers. She writes:

These experts know how important it is to establish dominance over a dog when it first enters a family’s home…. If the dog could talk, the trainers certainly wouldn’t let them talk back. They have found that when dogs are allowed to be dominant over their owners, they become both timid and bossy. It’s the same with kids. A democratic system doesn’t work very well for dogs or children; it just makes them feel insecure.

The truth is that most parents I know do value manners, but probably not as much as their parents did, and certainly not as much as their grandparents. Long gone is the art of rising when an adult enters the room, and removing a hat when going indoors.

From my experience, the most powerful way to teach our children good manners is to model them ourselves. It might sound obvious, but ill-mannered adults most often raise ill-mannered children. And well-mannered parents most likely raise well-mannered children. But the catch, of course, is that like every aspect of parenting, the results are hardly uniform. There are those moments, and even worse, those long, drawn-out phases, when you barely recognize your own child.

When I recently took my children to visit my 88-year-old grandmother, in Scranton, Pa., I worried I might be in for a lecture on how my children need more discipline. But remarkably, they sat down and ate my grandmother’s silver dollar pancakes. They asked to be excused, and brought their plates to the sink. They said, “Hello, Mrs. Feibus,” and “Hello, Aunt Shug,” and said sincere “thank you’s” for the goodies they were given. They played Trouble and Zingo and War with very few tears, and only once did my grandmother call my son a crybaby.

It’s a shame the woman in the lobby didn’t see that side of my kids. But after being smacked in the head with the ball, I doubt she could see very much at all.

Readers can address their parenting questions to Ms. Berman at sberman@nysun.com.