The Boston Globe has an article about the growing popularity of etiquette classes for children as young as 4 years old. The classes are meant to reinforce dining etiquette and table manners that parents may struggle to instill due to “an increasingly fast-paced and informal society.”
For example, one expert who charges $45 to $80 for an hourlong manners session or $1000 for extended private tutoring says “So many of these children had never seen two forks.” Now I’m not a parent, so I hesistate to judge anyone’s parenting skills, but I just gotta wonder… how can any parent let their child reach 6 years old and be ignorant as to a two-fork place setting? Let’s face it, people. You’ve already failed.
Anyway, it would be unnecessary for me to share my dire predictions about a society where table manners need to be taught in a class because there’s “not enough time” for children to absorb them the old-fashioned way: By suffering through family dinners during which their every move and word is scruntinized and, if needed, corrected by fearless, attentive parents.
That is how my parents taught table manners. In fact, most of our family dinners were basically etiquette classes because my siblings and I were little heathens, fond of poking each other under the table, sucking up spaghetti strands individually, and failing to use a napkin. Me, I would catch hell for reading books at the dinner table, a practice which I now admit is beyond rude, but man oh man, those Sweet Valley High books were as addictive as crack.
The most heinous breach of etiquette at the Green family dinner table was placing your elbows on the table. Perhaps my recollection of this rule is amplified by the fun that my siblings and I had in ‘catching’ each others’ violations: “Brian has his elbows on the table! Laurie has her elbows on the table!” This made me very meticulous about resting my hands in my lap when I’m not eating. (And then I married a Frenchman, who comes from a country where removing your hands from the table is a serious dining faux pas. So currently, I’m rather schizo about where I’ll put my hands, but Mom, Dad, I swear: No elbows!)
When my siblings and I wanted to leave the dinner table, we were required to ask “May I please be excused?” Exactly like that. In fact, we could sit there all night asking “Can I please be excused?” or “May I be excused?” and my Dad would say “No” until we asked correctly: “May I please be excused?” I think that my parents would have considered sending us to “Manners for Minors” classes tantmount to putting us up for adoption.
