I wish I had never raised the subject.
We’re taking the family away for the summer to France and Italy, which have heavily ritualized food-based cultures. Husband was born and raised in Northern Italy and I have been a regular visitor to western Europe over the years, so we’re not unfamiliar with the cultural expectations of the dinner table.
I think the first time the subject of manners and cultural expectations was raised at dinner I had lost patience with Second Son, who regularly perches on his chair like a bird and holds his spoon like a caveman. His behaviour is equal parts annoying habit and unique, charming eccentricity which has slid into family lore.
I bluntly stated to the children: “People in Europe will not want to associate with you if you cannot behave like civilized human beings at the table.” It was a rude and punishing statement, designed to be vaguely threatening, to shock the kids into self-awareness if not self-correction. And I can see now, it was perfectly useless.
Taking my lead, Husband brandished similar themes at subsequent dinners and I felt increasingly sick to my stomach. I do believe good table manners are an important skill set to master, but I sensed our nagging was more about control and keeping up appearances than coaching for real skill development. It was also about the public and private faces we all wear.
The kids tend to act up at meals when we’re home alone. But when we have guests and more formal dinner parties, they don’t. They pass food, use their napkins, remain at the table, sit properly in their chairs, listen attentively and participate in conversation, cooperate with their siblings and generally behave as civilized human beings. They thoroughly enjoy themselves, as we do, and want to do it again.
So what’s the problem?
I think there are a few. I think we lack care and ritual around the preparation and delivery of daily meals. When guests come over our dining room is tidy and the table is appropriately cleaned and prepared, laid with fresh linens, cloth napkins, matching dishes, the appropriate glasses and a jug of “chicken water.” There is excitement and expectation and the children have had clear roles to play.
While Husband and I cook dinner on a daily basis and we sit down as a family to eat, we prefer to enjoy the quiet time in the kitchen cooking alone or keeping each other company with a glass of wine. The kids buzz around like flies, wanting to be with us and take part in the action. The reality is they are shooed away 99 times out of 100.
The accumulated flotsam and jetsam of the dining table is pushed aside, not entirely cleared away. There is basic space for plates and cups but it is not uncommon for a child to come to the table and ask “So where do I sit?” Food is often plated directly from the stove and is open to less choice and individual control. We do not use cloth linens during the week.
As the mother, I feel “put upon,” as if the burden of ritual is yet another domestic chore added to my unpalatable plate of dreary domestic undertakings. But I also know that it’s equally true that if we attend to rituals, and discipline (in the positive sense of the word) in accordance with these, the kids will take greater personal responsibility. One feeds the other. Husband and I both know this for a fact, yet we often fail to get up off our asses and correct or enforce, with predictably unhappy, long-term results.
We don’t eat with others as often as we could. Cooking for eight or ten does not require any more effort than cooking for six. Maybe we should consider inviting friends or the neighbours over for weekday dinners on a more regular basis. Maybe that could morph into communal cooking so we are all cooking less frequently, socializing more, and taking advantage of variety.
The bottom line is that we skirt the important rituals then wonder why our pleasure is diminished and our cultural expectations aren’t met.
To paraphrase writer Adam Gopnik: We make our pleasures puritanical. What matters most is what goes on around the table. What matters is the continuity of life.
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Here are several manners/etiquette-based videos and old films made with children and adolescents in mind. While there are valuable nuggets in each, I find them all slightly odd, if not spectacularly queer, in their own ways. They are as much a commentary on how we view and value children in our society as they are about the rituals of eating.
Bon appétit!
http://youtu.be/DT0XqICEIOY