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thanksgiving dialogue
A new reader named Susan made a comment on the “manners don’t matter? excuse me” post. She gave an example of how she taught her kids manners with a little toy pig at the table. Go ahead and read her comment.
Then, since it’s been way too long, and since Thanksgiving is around the corner, I think we should start up a little dialogue about manners. So, here’s the question:
How do you teach your kids manners for the dinner table?
and, another question for good measure:
What are your favorite family traditions for Thanksgiving?
posted on November 19, 2008
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I think teaching by example is one of the best ways for kids to learn table manners – - or any other manners for that matter. The are such little mimics – what they see is what they do. Our favorite family tradition for Thanksgiving is that during the entire month of November instead of just reporting our “highs and lows” each night at dinner, we each say something we are thankful for that day. I think it is a good exercise as we head into the season filled with so much commercial consumption!
My family Thanksgiving tradition involves my brother-in-law hanging around the kitchen trying to steal food before it’s ready, and, on one memorable occasion, being stabbed with a meat fork. Now, he sends his son in and stays hidden around the corner, working on the premise that I won’t stab a child. Since the child in question turned 17 today, he is no longer exempt from my wrath.
Actually, in the past several years, our Thanksgiving dinner has been on a weekend. On Thanksgiving day, we go to our church and serve dinner there. When I was a kid, we never had fewer than 5 guests for Thanksgiving, sometimes as many as 40…young sailors in my dad’s command who didn’t have anywhere else to go.
After dinner and after the kitchen is cleaned up, we all sit around playing Trivial Pursuit together (it was Jeopardy before Trivial Pursuit came out). Every few turns, somebody make a kitchen run to get pie or cookies or tea or hot cocoa or pepto.
In case anybody is worried, my brother-in-law recovered quite well from his stabbing. He didn’t even bleed on the turkey.
To be fair, I had made cute little rolls in the shape of snowmen, and he snuck in and ate all the heads. You would have stabbed him, too.
I’d like to know, since when do manners not matter?! My kids, like myself and my brothers, were taught from the time we were able to understand words, that please and thank you are required. My grandson (15 months) is learning this now – his first word (after momma and dadda) was “peas” (please)! If only other parents stressed this to their children, maybe our world would be a little bit nicer place to live.
I love the pig idea that your reader left in the comments. Since it’s a bit of a game it would keep kids attention and they would be competing hard not to be the last one with the pig. As for me, in my early growing up years, I went to boarding school. Even though we only sat four to a table, manners were highly emphasized in a fun way. Our dorm parents would hold a skit night and act out all kinds of wacky table behaviour for us and then show us the proper way to do things. I know I highly enjoyed learning to be polite and mannerly at the table! I’m not sure that I always remember to keep my elbows off the table now but I’m not sure I consider that the most important of the rules either.
My 4 year old, by nature, is a fairly quiet and compliant kid. We haven’t had much trouble teaching him table manners – we just started it early on. He knows that he must tell me he is finished and ask to be excused from the table. I’m sure when he is older some of this charming behavior may die down a bit!
Our Thanksgiving traditions used to be a big family dinner times two, one with my husband’s family, one with my family and all of my cousins. However, since we moved from Canada to the U.S. a few years ago, it’s changed a bit. The first year, we celebrated both Canadian and American Thanksgiving – one in October (which happens to be around my son’s birthday and means we have Canadian family with us usually), the other in November of course.
Now we just celebrate one turkey day, in November. Last year we had 15 people over for dinner – most of them were Chinese doctoral and post-doc students at the university in our city, and most of them did not like turkey! They brought some food to share as well, and my son discovered that he loves Chinese desserts
This year we are going over for dinner with some other Thanksgiving orphans – another family from the church my husband pastors who are also going to be alone on Thanksgiving. We decided we’d do it up in style, and i’m really looking forward to it!
Next year… who knows… but it will be fun as well!
For several years, my parents had a big “Kids Only Thanksgiving Day Breakfast” for the grandkids. Some sort of craft always followed. My children always looked forward to it and enjoyed it. Now that they are older and unable to do that anymore, we just have them over to our house for a traditional dinner with my married daughter and her husband. I miss the old days when we would get together with my aunts, uncles, and cousins. One of our favorite dishes, one I got from Martha Stewart’s show years ago, is a brussel sprouts dish with bacon, granny smith apples, and fresh thyme. Everyone loves it. We also had several years when I was trying to learn to bake pies when my mom would come to my house and teach me how to make the crust, then she would bring out all sorts of little pie plates and cutters and fillings and let my girls go to town making their own little pies. Even after I knew how to make the pies, we just enjoyed doing it together and getting the girls in on it.
Manners at the table with my 4 kiddos is always interesting. You teach them from when they are little, and then it is fun to see them correct each other now (sometimes in not the nicest way possible
but at least they know what they should do.
We have a dinner with friends that we consider family. They have 4 kiddos too, so we have lots of kids running round. We always play football after all the dishes are done, and then have a Thanksgiving story/lesson and then watch a movie on the “big sheet” Our friends bring a projector and hang a big white sheet on the wall and we enjoy a movie with people running to the kitchen to snack on pie, cheeseball and crackers, and relish tray all night. Fun stuff! My kids love it and so look forward to it. Then we have the tradition of decorating the house the Friday after Thanksgiving for Christmas. That is always fun.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Well, Jay (my eight-year-old)’s manners are different at home than they are in public. I’m sorry to say when it’s just us at home I don’t stress good manners, which usually results in frequent reminders at restaurants and dinner at other’s houses! Not to say that he’s a hellion, he’s pretty gentle natured. More than anything he has a bad habit of standing at the table.
Thanksgiving is one of my very favorite holidays because it centers simply around being thankful, good food and being with people you love. My family is a bunch of big goof balls. You often hear various accents, dialects and random movie quotes being thrown around all day long. The day is always about making each other laugh. Our tradition is playing board games. My parents have a closet full of them and we switch up several times and play well into the night/early morning!