There's lots of things I don't get too hung up over, but good table manners is something I think is important for DS to have from an early age. And to be fair, he's always been good and sat in his high chair for meals. Even if we're not all eating at the same time I always sit down with him and at least have a cup of tea so he recognises that eating is a sociable thing.
It's really important to me as I come from a family where we all like to have meals together and are quite sociable, and I want DS to fit in with that, and be able to go out for meals without it being a big deal.
However, all of a sudden, he won't eat proper meals (another issue in itself) and just wants to wander around the house snacking. Not only do I not really want to be scraping banana off the sofa and clearing crumbs up off the floor, I think it's important that he doesn't get into that habit. And at the moment, we can't really go out for a meal with anyone full stop, unless we coincide it with his sleep, or we just end up taking it in turns legging it around after him and it's more trouble than its worth.
I know it probably sounds a bit uptight but surely it's not too young for him to start learning?