(Bad) Manners learnt at school

[emy72]

My daughter started at reception this year and I am shocked at some of the bad manners that she has picked up from school and I am unsure whether this is normal and whether I should be concerned. At the dinner table she has started doing things like licking her bowl/plate, wiping with her hand or licking fingers, burping and other. Of course I tell her off and her retort every time is "but everyone does it at school". The catchment for her school is not great tbh and I wonder whether this is just the start of things to come or whether it's just a phase and it will pass. What should I do? I am a little disheartened as, like most parents, I have put so much effort in raising a child with manners and now they seem (temporarily I hope?) out of the window! Any advice/opinions would be greatly appreciated.
Emy

I've not had the licking the plate thing. But am getting a new cheekiness.
I think you lose them a bit when they start school

Have you tried telling her that 'everyone' does not live in your house and you have your rules at your home?

Both mine tested the boundaries when they started Nursery and I kept my rules the same and they seem to calm down after a term or so but beware it sometimes comes back after the summer hols.

Yes - she will stop doing it for a couple of days then she will do it again - it's a constant battle..........

I think you should keep telling her that she is not "everyone"! I keep reinforcing that and my daughter is quite aware that I do not expect her to act like the other kids. She is in Reception too.

Have you had a word with the teacher? I know that in my daughters' school the dinner ladies do try to make sure the children behave and use their manners.

I think all you can do is keep saying "Well, we don't do that in this house" and maybe institute whatever rewards/punishments you have found useful in the past if it continues.

This is just one of those things which children have to learn in life - and it is easier to handle it with small things like table manners first, so that it doesn't come as such a shock when she finds out that people at school swear or smoke or other similar stuff when she gets older. Hopefully by the time she encounters worse things, she will have learned that different people live by different standards and understand how to choose between them appropriately.

I know exactly what you mean. Both my boys had lovely manners before they started eating in the school dinner hall. Now its a constant battle to get them to sit properly, eat with their mouths closed (yuk!), picking things up with their fingers etc.

The one thing that works with ds2 when he starts with the 'everyone at school does it' business, is to ask him if his teacher or the headmaster does it. That seems to make him stop, think and realise that it isn't 'everyone' at all.

You have to start as you mean to go on, once they start school there will be lots of 'but everyone else does'. Often it isn't 'everyone' just one or two. My dc's have been told that different families do things in different ways.