Table Manners (or lack of!)

I am a lot more concerned about the quality of conversation at a meal than I am about where elbows are. I do notice how people hold their knives, and whether they line up knife and fork neatly when they have finished eating. I notice how they use a soup spoon.

I'm not too worried about where knives, forks, or elbows go, but I can't stand noisy, open-mouthed eating.

I was in a restaurant yesterday and passed a very young child sitting in a high chair, with a dummy stuck in his mouth and headphones clamped on his head. I was horrified but my companion told me that her grand daughter has these as she needs something soothing otherwise she would be running about all over the place.
My comment that 'she wouldn't if she was with me' didn't go down well, neither did another person's comment that if her parents put down their phones and talked to her she might behave.

Don't get me started on how young people overthink rearing children nowadays!

DGS, DD, DGC, DH, DC, SIL etc.
What are these?

Don't sit facing him! Sit beside him then you can't see his face and if he waves cutlery about, do a mock dive out of the way, and laugh about it somehow to make him realise how energetic he is!

pce612
They are short for
Darling grandson, daughter, husband or grandchild..
SIL can be sister in law or son in law, and so on.
There is a list somewhere, if you want to check, or you may just want to muddle through complicated family stories.

I am sure that a small %age of children may need ear defenders, cranial helmets, distractions etc. for very specific reasons. Majority of kids just need lovingly applied firm and clear boundaries!

Exactly Pecs

Yuk, eating with the mouth open is just dreadful, it would make me feel sick. I would have to say that I have already eaten or something like that. I couldn't stand to see or hear that, a deal breaker. Yuk.

I have read through much of this with amusement. Middle class snobbery comes to mind. Everyone is different...learn to accept people's differences and look to the inner person rather than how they eat...

Theodd I do begin to appreciate why some posters have " issues" with family & friends" when I read how fixed beliefs and attitudes are for the unimportant things!

So now it is middle class snobbery to teach your children how to hold their knife and fork properly and not to slurp when their drinking, how ridiculous is this.

Ngaiol.......I just hope he didn’t lick his knife as well?

Middle class snobbery comes to mind
How odd

I was brought up in a working class household - we sat at the kitchen table, were taught to use our cutlery properly, not to lick our plates (as I saw a friend of mine do once ), break open a dinner roll and not to cut it open, to sit for ten minutes to 'let our dinner go down' then had to ask politely if we could 'get down from the table, please'.

Love is definitely blind having the same issue with my stepson’s girlfriend but her bad manners extend beyond the table. She is also causing a rift between my stepson and his son and he can’t see it, so sad.
I can’t say anything to him but his sister has had a word but all to no avail.

Good table manners are becoming a thing of the past. Gone are the days when parents corrected their children’s manners. When I was at school lots of children don’t know how to use knives and forks correctly. The headmistress used to come into the dimming room and show the pupils how to eat correctly. I thought it was strange that that the children didn’t know how to use a knife and fork having been brought up with good table manners. But seeing many people from different cultures table manners differ in each country. A lot of people only use their fork which is typical in America. If he has good manners it maybe best to accept the way he is. The happiness of your daughter should be your priority. Best not to judge.

But who defines properly? Why is it considered by the English (don't know about Scotland, Wales and NI) to be proper to hold a fork upside down to eat food that is clearly better eaten if scooped, e.g. peas?

I think someone eating messily is unlikely to notice & copy what others are doing as they are so used to eating the way they do.

better eaten if scooped, e.g. peas?
Do as I do for peas! Use a spoon and push them on with my thumb! Never lost one to the carpet yet!

He'sever a lovely,polite ,helpful and hard working lad.And never fails to say thank you for a meal at ours,and always jumps up to help clear the table.Brings us a gift when he comes to stay ,and offers to treat us to meals out.I used to be itching to correct him,but now let it go.He makes DD very happy.

Washerwoman he sounds a lovely lad.

But you go on to describe him as the one with the worse table manners of the two lads, because he holds his cutlery differently from you.

Manners aren't about how you hold your knife, that's etiquette.

I don’t think one should ever make a person, particularly if it’s a guest in your house feel uneasy. If you like the person surely that’s what matters and not how they hold their knife and fork.

I eat my peas with honey
I've done so all my life
It makes the peas taste funny
But it keeps them on the knife.

I eat my peas with honey
BradfordLass; Thanks for that! Hilarious! As is my wont these days I Googled that and was led into a musical version plus heaps of vegie rhymes on YouTube. As someone said recently I'm stuck in a time-warp, but better that than in some of these deadly serious threads!
Thanks!

It is proper to scoop peas - with a fork!

BradfordLass
That sounds like a Winnie the Pooh recommendation!

I believe it is often attributed to Spike Milligan.