Thanksgiving Table Manners

I hate eating with my kids. Really, I do. Our meal times usually push me to the edge of sanity. And with Thanksgiving just weeks away, I am reminded that I will be eating with my kids in a formal setting with other people.

Perhaps the turkey is less nervous than I am. Why? It isn’t for the reasons you may think.

I have long ago gotten past the worries about what food my kids will eat, or whether they can stay seated at the table, or their inability to be hungry at meal time, preferring to ‘graze’ all day. But, what I haven’t gotten over is their utter lack of table manners.

Yes, table manners.

I hear you – you think I shouldn’t worry about table manners that I perhaps have bigger fish to fry. But let me tell you, bad table manners is a pet peeve of mine that I just can’t let go. Somewhere in my mind I have attributed the presence of good table manners with a gold star on my ‘Mommy Chart’. I try to let it go, really, but the holidays bring it back in full force. Like my own personal race against time to get my kids to ‘brush up’ before anyone else is here to witness the horror.

My oldest son Gabriel is the worst. He actually has set the bar so low that it is hard for me to concentrate on how bad the table manners of my other two are. Gabriel knows our dinner rules; he can recite what the table manners are, in nauseating detail, answer a table manners quiz, and remind his brothers (and me) to mind our table manners should we falter, but, he cannot for the life of him follow them.

And it drives me to the point of madness.
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