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Elbows off the Table, Napkin in the Lap, No Video Games During Dinner
The Modern Guide to Teaching Children Good Manners
By Carol McD. Wallace St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 1996 Carol McD. Wallace
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-8478-6
CHAPTER 1
Basic Training
Ages 3–5
Nobody expects a three-year-old to be polite. Actually, a three-year-old with good manners would be kind of alarming; you'd wonder what the parents had done to get this very small child to behave so uniformly well.
So why bother? Why even attempt something that looks impossible? Why start worrying about having your child sit at the table through dinner when you are mostly concerned about getting some nutrients into her? Why fret about her habit of shrieking in the car when you can barely get the seat belt around her without resorting to violence? Can't this all wait until things are calmer?
Yes, of course it can. But there are three pressing reasons for starting to teach manners when your children are preschoolers. One is that manners have to be taught sometime, and they'll be a lot easier if you start early and gradually build skills. The second is that children of this age are so eager to please that it's a great time to teach them anything. They want to get it right to make you happy. But the best reason for starting to teach manners to preschoolers is simply this: It's very pleasant to live with children who treat you with even rudimentary courtesy.
A child at eighteen months is a force of nature, and you can't do much to tame her. She should be this way; investigating the environment is her life work at the moment. But by the time a child is three, she's learning the boundaries. She's discovering what's acceptable and what isn't. She's beginning to get civilized. Or socialized, if you'd rather think of it that way. You want her to share with her friends and to use words instead of hitting and to help clean up her toys after a play date. It's only a step beyond that to add basic politeness, like table manners and saying "Please" and "Thank you."
And believe me, teaching manners to small children is completely worthwhile. Let's look at the sitting-still-at-the-table issue. If your child is accustomed to sitting and eating for ten, fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, this gives you time to sit and have some (possibly disjointed) conversation with the whole family. I wouldn't suggest that meals are truly social yet, but you can see them heading in that direction. And you don't have to keep wondering where Ned has taken that hot dog and whether you'll find it before it starts to smell. You don't have to keep coaxing Meghan back to the table to eat just one more bite of corn. When she gets up for good, you know that she's really done. By the time your child is four, family dinner can really be quite pleasant. Amazing!
Of course, you don't want to squelch your child's free development of skills and healthy habits. A friend of mine whose young sons are very polite says she's careful not to nag her three-year-old about chewing with his mouth shut because, she says, "I'm more concerned that he chew at all, and enjoy his food." You certainly don't want to make a child timid or self-conscious by issuing too many directives.
What's more, there are certain niceties of behavior that preschoolers can't be taught. Most of them don't have the manual dexterity or strength to cut their own meat, for instance. Many youngsters are very shy with new grown-ups. Certainly you can't expect the average preschooler to handle the phone with aplomb.
So I don't address these concerns in this section of the book. There is, however, a lot of information about table manners. As I mentioned in the introduction, table manners are some of our most arbitrary customs. In fact, based as they are on medieval European courtesy, the very point of many of them is precisely their difficulty to master. It's hard to convey a fork loaded with food from a plate to the mouth. It would be much easier (and, to the average four-year-old, more sensible) to get a firm grasp on that hunk of potato with the fingers. But in the Middle Ages, it was precisely those hard-to-master skills that distinguished the upper crust from the peasants. So we're stuck with them. These skills are a lot for a small child to learn, but remember, you're not attacking them all at once. Nor do you expect perfection — ever.
In fact, looking over the subjects intended for this section, I realize that in many areas I don't really expect my preschooler to have mastered the behavior suggested. What I do want is for him to recognize and respond to my reminders. For instance, it is undeniably polite to accompany your guests to the door when they leave your house. This is true whether they are four or forty. Sometimes Timothy gets caught up in the leave-taking process and stands waving at the door as if his friends were about to cross Kansas in a covered wagon. Sometimes he can't be bothered to lift his head from the Legos to say goodbye. But since I have coached him on this and let him know that a cordial farewell is expected, he will usually (if grudgingly) comply.
And that's good enough for me.
Meeting Adults
The Basic Rules:
Say "Hello" • Look people in the eye • Shake hands
One of the most important things we can teach our children is how to meet new people with comfort and ease. It's a part of life that makes everyone nervous. As adults we have to do it and pretend we don't mind, but I know I always feel awkward. And that's after forty years of experience.
One way to help children with this hurdle is to make sure they know exactly what they're supposed to do when they meet people. Smile? Wave? Speak? Ignore the whole thing? Social unease often looks like sulkiness from the outside, and those cast-down eyes, inaudible voice, and shuffling feet that drive you nuts may be a response to plain old ignorance of what's expected. Your kids will be much more comfortable if you teach them a routine for introductions.
You have to wait until they're ready, of course. A child's awkwardness may be based on more than just lack of information. It could be what our parents called "a stage" ("a developmental issue" in the lingo of the nineties). Many preschoolers are not comfortable enough with strangers to shake hands and say hello with aplomb. And that's fine: Most people are understanding of a four-year-old child who burrows his head into your leg and refuses to utter a word. Prompting and coaxing, or making an excuse like "Toby's feeling shy today" only draws attention to poor old Toby, who wishes people would stop looking at him. If your preschooler is shy with new people, talk right over him (maybe with a reassuring hand on his shoulders). Often, once a child senses that nobody's paying any attention to him, he'll emerge from his shelter behind Mom to check out a new person and possibly even offer a greeting.
Children acquire social ease at different ages, depending on their temperaments. Sometimes an outgoing second child can mimic an elder sibling's behavior, working a room like an old politician at an age when the elder was still mute. Good-natured people tend to be tolerant of shyness, but by the time your child finishes kindergarten, she should be able to greet an adult this way:
Say "Hello."
Or "Hi." The point is that your child should acknowledge people's presence vocally. And even if your kid's incredibly shy, if she fails to say "Hello," it looks as if he's ignoring this person. It's all the more crucial if the grown-up has already said "Hello, Matthew." Your kid just has to answer.
It's especially nice if he can answer using this person's name. "Hi, Mr. Frankel." Or "Hi, Nicole." Your job here is to make sure the child knows what the name is. The etiquette books I grew up with are full of formulas dealing with who should be introduced to whom: Whose name gets said first indicates who is more important socially. I don't think most of us notice that anymore, at least not with kids around. All you need to say is, "Irene, this is my daughter Matilda. Matilda, this is Ms. Maxwell." And then Matilda's line is, "Hello, Ms. Maxwell." If you keep repeating the formula, your child will eventually get it right. If you want to go one step further, you can add a little information to identify this strange grown-up, like "Mrs. Taylor is a friend of your Aunt Sophie's" or "Stephen teaches at Elmwood School."
Corny as it seems, this is a situation that you can practice ahead of time. A preschooler fortunately doesn't know what corny is, and would be perfectly happy to act out meeting people over and over again, especially if you were willing to put on a funny hat or use weird names to liven things up.
Look people in the eye.
A great trick that I learned from etiquette expert Marjabelle Young Stewart is to instruct your child to notice someone's eye color when they meet. This gives them something mundane to think about at an awkward moment, and the result is the desired open, frank gaze. Children who like statistics can keep tallies of brown versus blue eyes, eyeglasses, bushy eyebrows, and so on.
Shake hands.
It's never too early to start. Even though your preschooler can't tell left from right, there's something extremely appealing about a small pink paw stuck out as a courteous gesture. It used to be that little girls were taught to curtsy instead of shaking hands, but those days are long gone. There are still, in very formal circles, rules about who is supposed to offer his hand first (the social superior, if you can figure out who that is) but that's much too complicated a concept for parents to bother with.
* * *
These three rules aren't much to learn, and it's often possible to prompt your child in a whisper before she actually has to face up to a strange adult. And believe me, there are few things your child can do that will make a better initial impression than shaking hands, looking someone in the eye, and saying "Hello."
Table Manners
The Basic Rules:
Stay seated • Sitting means sitting • Don't eat before everyone else does • Chew with your mouth closed • Don't talk with food in your mouth • Don't eat with your fingers • Use the correct utensil • Don't wave utensils around • No playing with food • No shoveling food • Eat only off your own plate • Don't say the food is yucky. • Use your napkin, not your shirt • Elbows off the table. • Keep your free hand in your lap • No singing at the table • Ask to be excused • Clear your place
My husband and I used to refer to family dinner as "Dining Hell." When our younger son first graduated from the high chair, he sat directly across from me at the table and I simply couldn't bear the combination of excessive demands and mess, so I switched places to get away from him. I'm happy to say that the situation has improved a great deal since then, but dinner with the boys is still a sight that would appall anyone with a taste for decorum. And the floor under the table needs cleaning after every single meal or snack, which doesn't mean it gets it.
We do have our standards; however. It is possible and desirable to insist on certain behavior, which will lay the groundwork for more attractive dining experiences down the road. This is the longest section in Part I, and you obviously can't introduce all these concepts at once. The most basic ones — staying at the table and using utensils — are crucial to pleasant meals, and it's worth spending several months on these issues. You can add the refinements, like keeping elbows off the table, once the fundamentals are fairly consistently in place.
Stay seated.
Small children need to understand that meals are eaten sitting down at a table. This is easier to put across (and your vacuuming will be reduced) if you forbid eating anywhere else. That means no eating on the sofa while watching TV, and it also means that you can't eat crackers in bed when your children are watching.
The other half of this principle involves keeping children at the table. Once they sit down to eat, they stay there until they're done, and they can't come back. No wandering away to dump out the Tinker Toys and returning for a few more grapes. This is really important. If your family meals currently involve children milling around the table chewing, you won't believe how restful it is to have everybody sitting in one place for a few minutes. (It could be as few as ten. Preschoolers' appetites are inconsistent and there's no point in forcing them to sit still after they've finished eating.)
The way to make this rule stick is simple, though it may seem harsh. When a child leaves the table, warn him that he can't come back later for more. Be sure to mention dessert. Then, if he gets up anyway, remove the plate. And don't give it back. It's worth suffering through quite a few tantrums to make this lesson stick, and only the stubbornest child will test you that far. Most of them will catch on after one or two efforts. And if they complain about hunger later in the day or evening, point out the folly of leaving the table before you're really done with the meal. Both of my children have gone through phases of doing this, and it's not easy to look down on a little person in bed who's saying in a plaintive voice, "I'm hungry." But they did learn very quickly that this pitiful approach didn't work at all. The kitchen is closed after dinner. Period.
If this technique isn't your style, or if you don't think you're going to be able to stand firm, don't even try it. You don't want to give mixed messages by telling your child that he has to stay seated at the table to eat, and then giving him more food when he comes back weeping. An alternative method is simply to remove the chair of a child who keeps leaving the table. It's less effective, because the novelty of eating standing up is attractive at first. But at least the undesirable behavior of leaving the table does provoke a response. And eating standing up isn't fun for long.
Sitting means sitting.
Not kneeling or perching or slouching. I wouldn't insist on a really small child sitting properly, but once she's tall enough to do without a booster seat, she should sit on her bottom with her feet straight in front of her. No knees up, no legs crossed, no chins in plates. I sometimes remind the boys that they aren't basset hounds, eating off the floor. Also rocking the chair — currently irresistible to both of my sons — is a no-no.
Don't eat before everyone else does.
This is more of an ideal than a rule. If your schedule means that your very young children are ravenous when they get to the table, you can't ask them to wait until everyone is served. By the time a child is four or five, though, you can institute some kind of official beginning to the meal.
One way this might work is to have fruit or raw vegetables on the table as you're getting ready to serve, and they can be eaten before everyone's seated. (This gives them a bit of forbidden-fruit glamour, which vegetables can always use.) Then, when even the cook is sitting in front of her plate, someone gives the "all clear" signal. Some families say a blessing or a grace. My mother used to just say, "You may start." You could even teach your children to watch Mom, and when she lifts her fork, they can too. After all, this is how it's done in polite society. And the great thing about everyone starting dinner at once is that the children aren't finished and clamoring for dessert before you've swallowed your first bite of broccoli.
Chew with your mouth closed.
Some cultures interpret slurping and smacking as signs of gusto, and when you watch babies eat, this seems reasonable. But Western manners insist that food vanish silently into the mouth, to be seen and heard no more. Chewing noiselessly may not come naturally but it doesn't require any special coordination from your child: just lots of reminders from you.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Elbows off the Table, Napkin in the Lap, No Video Games During Dinner by Carol McD. Wallace. Copyright © 1996 Carol McD. Wallace. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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