Children And Table Manners: Are We Neglecting Them?

March 21, 2008

Children And Table Manners: Are We Neglecting Them?

Posted by: admin : Category: Women

Am I alone in wishing people were licensed to have children. In UK it used to be the law to hold a dog license before you could actually own a pooch. You could have as many kids as you liked though and some people procreate at an alarming rate and live on the state. However that is not my objection.

I cannot bear ill mannered children and it seems to me that nowadays manners are not taught by parents. Children are expected to learn good manners themselves, almost naturally, as if they somehow magically appear along with second teeth and pubic hair.

Some parents unreasonably expect schools to teach their children manners, expecting them to leave school at sixteen or seventeen with a GCSE in table manners and courtesy. It is all absolute rubbish of course, because everyone knows the only place you learn manners is at home.

My grandmother was the original Ghengus Khan when it came to table manners. If you made the slightest noise when chewing she would go off like a rocket and come down only when the offender had been removed from the table for the duration of the meal. Harsh I suppose, but we grew up knowing exactly how to hold a knife and fork in our house and thank God for it.

Boarding school was a bit of an eye opener for me. I had spent my early childhood secure in the knowledge that my table manners were perfect but found when I arrived at a stuffy English boarding school that I was a bit of a peasant when it came to the niceties of the table.

In such establishments young ladies are taught to break a piece of bread into three, even if it is the size of a ping pong ball to begin with. It is unacceptable to cut the bread and you must never butter an entire slice but only each section in turn. Yawn.

Table napkins must only ever reside upon the lap and never appear above the table line except to dab daintily at each corner of the mouth in a genteel fashion, never wipe the mouth from side to side like a builder’s apprentice, because you would be considered coarse in the extreme.

Always tilt a soup bowl away from you, we were told. Never drain the soup bowl, always leave a small residue (Uh? Why?). Never begin to eat until your hostess has begun to eat, and never be the first to finish a course. This particular one always struck me as daft, as someone always has to finish first. Luckily I have never attended a dinner party where all the guests attended my school or we would all still be trapped at the table.

My headmistress had a particular aversion to sniffing and as I had sinusitis she was constantly hauling me into her office to lecture me on the perils of nasal exhalation, silly woman.

We were taught how to sit, how to stand, how to get in and out of cars, how to do just about everything quietly and discreetly. Nowadays things have gone to the other extreme and kids are left to devise for themselves a way to hold a knife and fork, and I find it curious that most of them choose the shovel method in one hand and the writing utensil method in the other.

Kids barge through doorways in front of elderly people everywhere now, and you never see a child offer a seat to an older person in a bus or train, and if they did they would be laughed at by their friends; which is very sad, I think.

I agree with my grandmother in that there are no naughty children, only naughty parents who have neglected their children’s development by not teaching them how to conduct themselves socially.

Perhaps it would not be such a good idea to license parents, because if we did human beings would quickly become extinct!

Jan Gamm writes reflections on life with an emphasis on world travel. She has lived in many countries and traveled extensively in the Far East, the Middle East, America, South America and throughout the South Pacific. She writes for fun and for money whenever she can manage it.

Tags: Children. manners, neglect, parents, schools, table manners, teach