Teaching manners to children, 2: Basic principles

“Instruction without imitation is ineffective.”
~ Rev. Lee Gandiya
In his sermon Sunday, my pastor was preaching on the ascension of Christ, and he reminded us that Jesus did not just leave his disciples with commandments to obey, but with an example to follow. Imitation is going to be a crucial theme in this series, so don’t be surprised if I harp on it. ;-)

Last week I discussed definitions of some words I’ll be using.

Today I want to address Basic Principles.

1. Begin with the end in mind. You need to have a clear mental image of what good table manners look like so you know where to begin, and so you can tell if you’re making progress. With this in mind, do NOT encourage behavior in young children that you would have to correct in an older one.

I’m not talking about punishment here. I just mean don’t laugh and take pictures and act pleased when your ten-month-old smashes his peas and uses them as finger paint. Yes, I know it’s adorable and you want to encourage a spirit of creativity and exploration. But the dinner table isn’t the appropriate place for that, so for now just don’t call attention to the activity—he’s not doing it to please you anyway, but to satisfy his own curiosity. You’ll need to defer your excitement until a more appropriate opportunity to express it arises.

2. Knowing etiquette helps us know how to be courteous, so courtesy is the higher thing. On rare occasion you may have to set aside etiquette for the sake of courtesy, but you should never set aside courtesy for the sake of keeping rules.

3. You have to model good manners yourself. We are created in the image of God, so we are by nature imitators. Christ calls us to imitate him, and we parents need to do the same for our children.



Application

If your children are older and have developed bad habits, don’t worry about where they “should be.” Just start where they are and move forward.

You do need to take responsibility for the way you’ve raised them so far, so if you haven’t taught them well, or you’ve been a bad role model, don’t blame them for it. But don’t beat yourself up either. Just acknowledge to yourself and to God that you’ve fallen short in this area, then move on.

Here are some questions to ask yourself: What is my vision for my family? How do I define good manners? What things am I already doing well? What is one step I can take that will make mealtimes more pleasant?

I’d love to hear your answers, if you feel comfortable sharing in the comments.

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In my next few posts I’m going to describe what meals looked like at different points in our family life, beginning when my oldest children were quite young, before I started thinking about teaching table manners in a more deliberate fashion. This is not so that you can see the One True Method of training your own children, because that doesn’t exist. But since we learn by imitation, it’s good to have examples of how it worked for particular families. I’d encourage you to look for families you admire in your own community as well, so you have several different models to draw on.