Teaching Table Manners

Ok, so when your child was learning to eat and manage a spoon or fork – you would tend to allow the sticky fingers and food all over the face and table etc. But now that your child is older, table manners need to be taught or habits will become harder to break.

Teaching and learning proper table manners, especially when young isn’t about snobbery but rather about:

• helping to build self-confidence and character.
• setting personal boundaries of behaviour.
• an opportunity to learn good social skills.
• awareness, respect and consideration for others.
• listening and conversational skills.
• helps improve family harmony.

First, you need to lead by example, don’t nag but be assertive and occasionally praise them for displaying good manners.
Allow your child to help with serving, setting or clearing the table, because sometimes being involved will enable them to understand everyone’s joint effort.

Be consistent, set expectations and use gentle reminders to enforce them.

1. Encourage your child to come to the table with washed hands.
2. They should put a napkin on their lap so that their food doesn’t drop onto their clothes.
3. Use the word ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ when passing dishes to each other.
4. Don’t chew with their mouth open or nosily.
5. Don’t talk with their mouth full.
6. Don’t gobble their food or slurp their drink.
7. Take small bite size mouthfuls. Chewing properly will help food to digest.
8. Burping is not considered polite behaviour.
9. Keep elbows off the table.
10. Don’t bang utensils.
11. Encourage social behaviour around the table, like positive conversations as supposed to individuals reading or watching television.
12. Wait until everyone has finished eating before getting up from the table.
13. If they do need to go, excuse yourself politely before leaving.

Just as soon as your child can sit in a highchair you can start teaching some concepts. They can learn that there are acceptable and unacceptable ways to act around the table. Instilling manners are built over a time and are a constant learning experience – so you will need a big serving of patience.

You may want to add some rules of your own, but try and not get too hung-up on formalities. Good manners are really about being considerate of others. If your child keeps that in mind, he’ll do just fine – at home and when eating out.