Do you practice good table manners with your kids?
Practicing proper table manners is always a good idea, especially during the holidays when you’re likely to have guests over for dinner.
By now you’ve hopefully mastered your own good etiquette, good enough to teach your own kids how to behave at the dinner table.
But don’t worry too much if your kids aren’t perfect when they’re eating.
Most likely, you weren’t bombarded with an entire list of how to behave at the dinner table, and you turned out fine!
Still, you may want to help your kids behave at the dinner table and maybe even use a behavior chart to help them to do it…
Drdaveanddee.com lists 13 basic table manners that kids should have.
As important as these are, keep in mind that it’s equally important to realize that not all of these rules are worth enforcing (especially with kids under 8 years old), because whether you like it or not, kids will be kids.
Take #8 for example…
Eat slowly and don’t gobble up the food. Someone took a long time to prepare the food, enjoy it slowly. Slowly means to wait about 5 seconds after swallowing before getting another forkful.
What if the child gobbles up the food in order to show appreciation for the cook? What if the food is just that good? Since when is there a rule to wait a certain amount of time before eating another bite?
Check out the list of table manners for kids at the link below and let us know what you think about them. Is this list too hard to enforce or is it just right? Is there anything you would take out or add?
If you’re going to use a behavior chart to enforce some of these table manners with your kids, remember to pick just one table manner at a time and to state it in the positive. “Chew with your mouth closed” would be written on the chart, not: “Don’t talk with your mouth open.” See the difference?
13 Basic Table Manners For Kids [DrDaveAndDee]
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