I Finally Found a Way to Teach My Kids Table Manners

Earlier this year, I realized that dinner time had gotten out of hand in my house. It seemed like all five members of my family spent half our meal together complaining about each other’s bad manners. My teenagers often didn’t like it when their younger siblings interrupted them during conversations or chewed with their mouths open. Everyone made their feelings known.

After spending an hour or more preparing a nice meal, the time together was just nice – and that wasn’t working for me.

We needed a reset at the table

Collectively, we knew something had to change. Not a single child at the table displayed what older people would call “good manners.”

I had the idea of ​​making a simple rules poster to hang in our kitchen. The plan was to start with two rules, adding one or two more rules each week depending on how things were going. We didn’t want to burden anyone and we were trying to be reasonable. The goal was to learn skills slowly and, hopefully, with practice, those skills would endure.

The poster wasn’t anything fancy, but it was something we could all see from our kitchen table, and it was something my husband and I could easily refer to if things started to get unruly when someone passed the butter.

Rules caused children to focus on specific problems

At first, the children changed their chatter from pointing out a random act of bad manners to calling each other out on the rules on the list. For example, our first two rules were to sit still and chew with your mouth closed. The kids picked on each other, meal after meal, even when one of us parents broke a rule.

When they started monitoring themselves better and we added more rules to our list. We were asked not to interrupt, to put napkins on laps and not to take giant bites.

Some rules were easier to follow than others. In order to not take giant bites, we had to practice a lot of cutting food into reasonable pieces.

It took kids a while to change, but a reward helped

Of course, we didn’t do this experiment without offering a reward. Our goal was to buy ice cream at our favorite parlor in town after achieving our goal of learning and practicing all the family table manners.

It took us about two months to get there, but we achieved our goal.

The gradual rollout of the rules allowed us to focus on more important lessons

Throughout this experience, we explained to our children why good manners are important. For example, we let them know that sitting in their chair is also an important thing to do outside the home. We also talked about how embarrassing or distracting it can be to put food in your mouth, talk with your mouth full of food, or even leave the table multiple times to return to the line to get just one more item.

We also talked about the importance of sharing gentle reminders with each other. Barking orders and constant chatter is not positive or effective communication, nor is it very motivating. It is important in life to be able to share and receive gentle criticism. This was perhaps the hardest part of our dinner time manners adventure. Ultimately, we’re all tired, but we’ve had to use the right words and tone to remind ourselves what we should and shouldn’t say to each other.

As a parent, I try to teach my children that working toward a positive goal, like ice cream, is much more effective than continuous lectures. Do we have perfect manners now? Not even close. However, we took the time to build a foundation that made sense – and, most importantly – a much more enjoyable meal together. And we can always put the list back when we need reminders.