Table Manners of Young Boys

Table Manners and the 7 year old boy… “ When Charles was a baby he had better manners than he has at 7 years. He was clean and could eat like a grown person, but of late he spills, slops, and upsets everything on the table cloth and is always in haste…”

More “Tuning in With Our Children”

“HOW SOON can we expect children to have good table manners? When Charles was a baby he had better manners than he has at 7 years. He was clean and could eat like a grown person, but of late he spills, slops, and upsets everything on the table cloth and is always in haste. 

“We don't let him go anywhere after dinner so there is no need for his shoving his food down, forgetting to use his napkin, and messing up the table. What would you do?” Being a boy, I would make so much allowance for his wobbly movements, his rapidly developing muscles and take so much pride in his fine appetite, that I would do nothing about it.

Dull Edge of Appetite

However, it isn't a wise health precaution to allow a child to bolt
his food so I would offer him an apple or glass of milk about four o’clock in the afternoon so that the keen edge of his appetite might be somewhat appeased. When dinner hour arrives try to about the day's happenings or tomorrow’s plans.

In any event, one thing I wouldn’t engage him in conversation at table do, mother, and that is nag him about his habits until he was made nervous, uncomfortable and self-conscious.

Wink at Mistakes 

Compliment him when he has eaten leisurely, been thoughtful to pass food or remarks to you and father at table and wink at a lot of etiquette until his muscular development is more stable.

Of course you can’t wink at big weekly laundry problems, but there are excellent substitutes for table cloths that can be wiped off after each meal.

You might try that type of cover with the suggestion that everyone will clean around his own plate. And since he will not like the idea of cleaning up he may become more careful.

Change Will Come

Don't worry, mother, when Charles grows up and goes a-courting, he will develop a table technique soon enough. Just now his mind and body are centered on 2 million more interesting things than table manners.

You could encourage him by suggesting taking him out to dine in public places as soon as he has learned to eat carefully. Suggest that to do so would be embarrassing to you until he improves.– By James Samuel Lacy, 1932

 🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Leisure Time Pursuits and Manners

Children possessed of good manners have more poise and self-respect. We try in our school to find frequent occasions when our boys and girls can practice these gracious social arts.

“Every year we have to fight to retain in our schools the experiences most valuable for our children,” a mother writes. “If the school helps my boy and my girl fill their leisure time full of worthwhile recreational activity, then I know they're not going to turn to crime or debauchery for adventure or excitement.”

 Thank you, mother. I think you’re absolutely right. Our children must know how to play if they are to express their best selves. But there are many people who feel that an education consists of a quart or so of facts about arithmetic, history, language and the other conventional school subjects.

But I believe that teaching children social etiquette is more valuable than the multiplication tables. To reduce feelings of inferiority and build self-assurance through the knowledge that one knows and practices good manners is more important than knowing when Columbus arrived in America or where Madagascar is located.

Children possessed of good manners have more poise and self-respect. We try in our school to find frequent occasions when our boys and girls can practice these gracious social arts.

And we feel that training in personal care, hygiene, cleanliness, neatness and proper dress should be emphasized just as much as rules of grammar.

Tells Vital Lessons

I think I’m talking today about vital lessons. We must have a chance in our schools to guide our youngsters into appreciation of the best in literature, art, music, drama, rhythm and human relationships.

We must help them to have eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts to understand the beauty, color, harmonies, truth and goodness that surround us.

Art and morality go hand in hand; they emancipate our children from the bondage of sensuality and enable them to take hold upon things unseen and eternal.

Emotions Ennobled

Music, art, literature bring uplift, joy and beauty into many dreary, drab days. They ennoble and spiritualize our emotions. They lift us out of the commonplace into the mysterious, spiritual, eternal world that surrounds us. – James Samuel Lacy, 1937

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Cheerful Homes Make Happy Children

It requires gay courage to hide the vicissitudes of the day beneath a smile, but your child will get his example of courage or weakness from you. You are the source of his supply. If you let immediate disappointment befog your vision of success you’re vacillating, negative attitude is the pattern your child sees and adopts.

Tuning in With Our Children

“I am so happy I don't know what to do,” said a child to me this morning. “Father has had wonderful luck in his business and mother doesn't have the headache now, and our home is the happiest place in the world.” How susceptible children are to environment! They are bouyant or depressed according to the mood parents reflect. If we are neurotic or worry-ridden they are neurotic or worry-ridden and they are filled with fear complexes for children are more keenly imaginative than we adults.

For that reason if parents discuss the successes and failures of a business day at home they should do so with confidence and optimism or exercise extreme caution about what is said in the presence of their impressionable young folk.

In a home where father expresses pessimism and mother expresses worry the child easily becomes an apostle of failure, for the people in whom he has most confidence have undermined his belief in success.

It requires gay courage to hide the vicissitudes of the day beneath a smile, but your child will get his example of courage or weakness from you. You are the source of his supply. If you let immediate disappointment befog your vision of success you’re vacillating, negative attitude is the pattern your child sees and adopts.

The lives of great men reveal that crowning success is usually the culmination of a series of seeming defeats. It is defeat analyzed and adjusted to overcome the handicaps. The father referred to in this instance didn’t succeed on luck. His effort in adjusting his business to undermined his belief in success.

His effort in adjusting his business to make it pay dividends had succeeded after many serious reverses. He didn't quit trying and so he found the right combination. And it is a happy combination, indeed, that has affected his entire family. It has cured mother’s nervous headaches, and set a morose child to singing the praises of a happy home.

Every home should be the happiest place in the world to its child members. It will be a happier place for grownups as well as when we learn to emphasize our capacities for success and to minimize our defeats as transitory obstacles which courage and effort can dispel. – James Samuel Lacy, 1929

 🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia