Do people still teach children basic table manners at home?

[Lolabear38]

I grew up in a house where table manners were explicitly taught from very young age. Nothing drastic, the main ones were nobody starts eating until everybody’s sitting at the table, nobody leaves the table until everybody’s finished, you put your knife and fork neatly on your plate when you’re done, no singing at the table etc. My partner on the other hand grew up in a house where none of these were enforced and as such he doesn’t do any of these. He’ll start eating the second he sits down, leaves the table and walks away the second he’s done (taking his plate with him), licks his knife and a couple of other things. Now that we have children I think it’s important that they learn good table manners and I’ve spoken to my partner about this and he just doesn’t see it’s important. He claims that nobody he knows focuses on table manners anymore?! Is he right?! What do you do in your homes?

In my opinion, table manners are important to know. It’s fine to be lacks at home and not at the table but important to know, you should wait for others, wait for all to finish eating before plates cleared, don’t chew with mouth open or speak with mouth full (hand in front of mouth, fine), no stretching across others, blowing nose / coughing over the food, knife and fork together once finished. I think these are pretty basic but I’m horrified at how many of my friends eat badly, I have to ensure I’m
not sitting opposite them.

like with so many things, modelling is the best way and challenging when partners don’t have the same view. It was on the list of ‘must haves’ for a partner but some things just needed to give 😂

I absolutely am strict with table manners but honestly, mine are now teenagers and pre-teen and they still need to be reminded! It’s just constant: knife and fork, eat nicely, sit and wait for everyone to finish etc etc.

My eldest now inhales his food as if he hadn’t eaten for a week.

I just hope as adults in a formal setting, they will remember!

I think table manners are really important to know. And these days not just a knife and fork but the polite way to use chopsticks and eat curry with your hands.

You have no idea where your children are going to end up in life. I was once at a ball and the table I sat at one person took it upon themselves to collect up everyone's plate and stack them.

Fine in the pub but not at a formal dinner.

I've been too ill to do this for a couple of years but I used to make 5 course dinners for friends. So if you came to mine in those days you might find fish forks / knives, cake forks, napkins

I have a problem with ‘manners’ being taught as a set of roles without any mention of empathy and consideration for others. I’ve met plenty of well mannered people but who were actually horrible human beings.

I think the important etiquette of sitting and eating with others is not a set of arbitrary ‘rules’, but a consideration of others. Don’t let children handle or touch bread rolls that others will eat, don’t pick your nose, be good company etc But ‘waiting until everyone is sat down to eat’ pisses me off as I hate food going cold - that’s not considerate. Making people sit there until everyone has finished, again, imposing restrictions. What if people were taking ages? what if you needed to stretch your legs?

Agree with pp, this is a stupid class thing. When it should be a ‘be considerate to your dining companions’ thing.

As a mother, grandmother and aunty, and a grandmother that has DGCs friends and cousins over, who has all meals at the table, I have seen it all.

Feet on the chair, singing at the table, obvious requests for devices at the table, disgruntled because they have to sit at the table, kneeling on the chair, feet on the table (I am not lying), eating with fingers, food visible because eating with mouth open, slurping up whole strings of spaghetti and tagliatelle, inability to sit on chair because of fidgeting, on, off, on, off, I could go on.

When I have children over, i always put on a spread of food that they can help themselves to, a variety of breads, butter, cold foods and chicken, salads and vegetables, napkins, no UPFs.

It’s an occasion. We have music playing in the background and we have conversations. They have all now learned that grandma teaches table manners and we have fun. They ask to
leave the table when they have finished and one or another offers to clear the table and pack the dishwasher when the meal has finished. Breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Obviously they are not always over for all meals, but if they are it’s grandma’s house, grandma’s rules.

Holding cutlery in their fists, talking while eating, added to all the things you mentioned, are all a huge ick for me.

You've lost me on the toast one tbh, but the rest of that is a pretty shocking list for y6!

Loads of parents don't even teach their kids to use cutlery, as they're "too busy", and they definitely don't teach them basic table manners.

We taught them to the DC - they're adults now and know how to eat properly according to the setting they're in.

I think you are doing your kids an enormous disservice.

I guess we're a mix. Our kids know etiquette, but we don't have a table at home (had to sacrifice space to get an extra bedroom) so we all tend to eat in our own rooms on our devices. But they know the etiquette for a more formal get-together, or a meal out.
However, I think the "wait until everyone is served" has gone out of the window - MIL is quite formal, always observes all other dining etiquette, but even she gives the order to just start eating rather than let it go cold while several people are dishing up.

I notice people’s table manners, or sometimes their lack of them. When my children were little, we always sat at the table and they were taught how to hold a knife, fork and spoon etc. It’s just basic manners surely?
Having said that, I worked in an infant school for well over ten years and bloody hell, what an eye opener that was! Kids tucking into a roast dinner with their hands and not a Scooby Doo how to even hold a spoon, let alone use a knife and fork. That’s lazy parenting to me.
My children are adults now and we tend to eat our dinner on our laps in front of the television watching something that we can all discuss or participate in but they still use their basic ‘table’ manners.
I know that baby led weaning is the thing to do now but it bloody makes me cringe seeing toddlers grabbing at their spaghetti bolognaise and shoving it all over the show. Give them a bloody spoon!

I disagree. Food is about enjoyment and nutrition, I don't agree with it being a social performance with coded rules and I got no benefit of being taught this myself. Like has been seen on this thread, many people don't follow the old table manners etiquette anymore, even if the people here are unhappy about it, many people don't mind. I can't see how it could possibly be an issue for my children. We eat like the list of things a pp gave for the PGL trip and I can't see anything wrong with it, and clearly neither do half the groups families so the norms are clearly changing.

Isn't it a matter of consideration to others? Who wants to see the inside of your kids' mouth when they're eating? Who wants to hear chewing and lip smacking? Who wants to end up wearing bits of the food your kids are chewing as they speak to you with their mouths full? Who wants to get their elbow in their face as they reach across you to get something on the table?

Don't you think you owe it to them to teach them that these kind of things will make people not want to spend social or professional time with them?

My children are in their 20s.

Dh and I grew up with broadly similar table manners with some differences

Dh said grace prior to a meal. Dh is not religious so we have not added this to our family meals

I grew up in Denmark not saying "tak for mad" (Thank you for the food) is incredibly rude. Due to this my children (and now inlaws) all says "Tak for mad" after eating.

In my childhood you did not start eating until mum/stepdad indicated it was ok to start
We do not enforce this. However when the children were home we did expect them all to be at the table prior to beginning.

Annoyingly as dh has got older he has got this obsession with "quickly doing the washing up of the pans " prior to eating. It infuriates me as my food is getting cold while he priorities work that can be done later. So now I do say "dh I am starting" and he is slowly undoing this and coming to the table.

Broadly we have similar expectations for table manners and I still think they are of importance in life.

I haven't needed to teach my kids to be considerate of others, they just generally are. They are typical fairly introverted quiet teens who enjoy a bowl of noodles with chopsticks in their rooms rather than a sit down dinner round the table and I fully agree. If we happen to find ourself round a table with company, which is very rare, they don't spit food over people, reach and grab over people, or anything like that just naturally I haven't had to teach that. Just like I don't teach them not to spit, or push or grab generally, they don't behave like that so it doesn't come up. What I don't agree with is that cutlery should be used, held in a special way, rules on how to sit, how to lean, when to start and finish eating, when you can leave the table, whether you talk, sing, read a phone or book, whether you cut your toast in half or bite the sausage off your fork. I don't care about these sorts of rules and I don't teach them. I just want them to enjoy their food.

I think the important etiquette of sitting and eating with others is not a set of arbitrary ‘rules’, but a consideration of others.

But those 'arbitrary rules' are based on courtesy and consideration for your fellow diners, your host, or the staff if you're in a restaurant

I do think some PPs on here that say they do not teach table manners and their children eat in their rooms but do know table manners, may not be seeing that maybe their children aren’t as adept at food etiquette as they think.

There are the quite open shows of lack of table manners that many have stated but there is also a low level that is not so obvious. Such as just jumping in and helping oneself before offering others, taking large portions or ‘best bits’, eating whilst walking to bedroom, even eating while standing up.

Things that may not be considered bad manners but I would find these things very irritating and I wouldn’t like to live with someone with this kind of lack of awareness.

I had a teenager stay with me recently who told me that her meals are put on the table and her mother takes her food into her bedroom and the child eats alone. Very sad!

But there are LOTS of things that mean some people can't stand to be around you, and many of them are contradictory. You can't raise someone to be the perfect, flawless human because such a thing does not exist.

I can't stand snobbery and performative, meaningless standards for example. I lived with a girl once who was incredibly uptight about cleaning, but then had her parents' dog visit, which scrambled its paws on the worktop without a word of complaint from her. She was quite a handful in lots of ways to me, and I'm sure that 8 drove her bonkers too.

But guess what? We don't live together any more. I don't mind people applying their own standards in their own private spheres. But it's rather silly to imagine that your own standards are that important as an arbiter in the grand scheme of things.

This has, quite definitely, kept me out of certain circles and aspirations - I buggered off out of my Oxford interviews because I couldn't stand the place. But I earn well, and I live a nice life. And I'm happy out of those circles.

@TheNinkyNonkyIsATardis, I have a dog and I am really fussy about cleaning and would consider it the height of bad dog manners if my dog jumped up at works tops.
And so he is trained.

I have a sister, who whenever she comes over for a meal, goes into the kitchen, opens the pots or oven, has a look, grabs a fork and ‘samples’ the food, she is not a head chef, she just has bad manners. I tell her off, but it is now just a bad habit of hers that her lack of self awareness will not address.

My adherence to table manners and my other quirks are carried out in my private domain, and taught to young people that share my hospitality in my domain, when and if necessary.

I, like you do have the autonomy to construct certain circles and do. Life is better that way!

You may not have ‘had’ to teach your children these rules - but someone has. They didn’t come out of the womb knowing these things, so perhaps it was school, or the childminder you mentioned earlier?

It’s entirely unsurprising to hear that your children are introverted and prefer to eat a bowl of noodles on their own in their bedrooms too, it sounds like it’s the model they’ve been taught by you?

This is interesting, and to be honest it reflects my earlier post. It's more of an 'absorption' that teaching what is acceptable and what is not rather than a course in table manners (or indeed what cutlery to use for what courses - soz couldn't resist). I know that my children can go anywhere with their table manners, and manners generally, and pass any test, not because I'm supermom, but just that these things were an every day event. (I can assure that I fucked up in many other ways though!)

Yes, consideration for others is precisely the rationale (and is why for example left handers used to be taught to eat as right handers so as not to inconvenience others at the table).

Most people absorb and implement rules
better if told why they exist. As a pp said, you do your children a disservice by failing to inculcate decent manners and respect in them.

I am quite honestly astounded at the posters who are saying they haven’t taught their children any table manners and even now let them eat as they please.
I have a feeling that this is just one tiny example of our society slowly but surely slipping downhill.
Whatever happened to manners and teaching your children to be decent, courteous people? It’s incredibly sad. And worrying.

Oh, and by the way, well paid jobs exist for polite women (mostly) to teach manners to senior management of major companies. The clever and ambitious managers have realised social skills are vital to their progression and like any other flaw they are taking steps to address it. Good for them.

But by all means let your children eat bowl food dinners on their own in their rooms.