Manners for all seasons

Having good manners is one of those antiquated concepts that many parents wish had never been lost. Problem is, as parents it's our responsibility to teach good manners by example and, to be honest, most of us don't have the time. We feel happy enough to get the food on the table and the children fed without worrying about matters of etiquette.

And many of us also have terrible memories of meals endured while being nagged. "Mabel, Mabel strong and able, keep your elbows off the table," my own mother used to say so often, that in a formal dining situation, all she had to do was whisper "Mabel" for the elbows to retreat. "Eat with your mouth closed", "don't slurp", "don't use your fingers", "say `please pass the peas' ". . . the instructions were endless.

I can still remember dining in restaurants and seeing the look of despair on my mother's face, which was directed at me more than at my brothers because I was the eldest and a girl. I was to sit with my legs crossed primly at the ankles (never the knees) with no gap between my thighs which might attract the leers of - who knew? White slave traders perhaps?

The attention to etiquette extended beyond the table. My mother was a member of the Emily Post generation and so she made sure I knew how to handle a handshake and an introduction, even to the extent of curtsying primly upon being introduced to an adult of equal or superior status.

Then the 1960s and 1970s came along and I - like everybody else in the world - rebelled and went completely the other way. I hate nagging my kids about manners, but I do despair when mashed potatoes are eaten with fingers.

A substantial proportion of the chicken-nugget generation don't know how to eat with a knife and fork by the time they reach primary school, according to a British report, because they've been reared on finger food.

My own bugbear is children and adolescents who sullenly ignore you when introduced by their parents. Once upon a time, children and adolescents stood when an adult guest entered the room and were expected to provide a handshake (or a curtsy) and a word or two of civilised conversation.

Nowadays, children cannot be torn away from the TV or the GameBoy long enough even to acknowledge the presence of a visitor. And you can forget engaging them in any conversation. Adults are just as bad, throwing big parties where they sullenly refuse to introduce anybody to anybody else so you're left standing in the middle of the room feeling like an interloper.

No wonder, at First Holy Communions, children run to greet the guests and stare blankly until the money is handed over. Invite children into your home for a meal, and you're as likely as not to hear complaints such as "I never eat sausages" or "I hate pasta" (which is usually a surprise to their parents when they come to collect them). I've seen my own children do this in other people's houses (much to my horror).

Thinking about all this sent me dashing back to my roots: The Fundamentals of Good Behavior by Emily Post, first published in 1922, which, far from being a primer of dos and don'ts for the ignorant arriviste, offers a way of getting on comfortably with other people.

"Manners are made up of trivialities of deportment which can be easily learned if one does not happen to know them; manner is personality - the outward manifestation of one's innate character and attitude toward life," Post wrote.

"Children can scarcely be too young to be taught the rudiments of etiquette, nor can the teaching be too patiently or too conscientiously carried out.

"Training a child is exactly like training a puppy; a little heedless inattention and it is out of hand immediately; the great thing is not to let it acquire bad habits that must afterwards be broken. Any child can be taught to be beautifully behaved with no effort greater than quiet patience and perseverance, whereas to break bad habits once they are acquired is a Herculean task."

Having recently acquired a puppy, I really wish I had trained one before I had children, because Post is right: consistency is everything.

In Post's view, children with bad manners were nearly always so because their parents treated them like "stars" who were allowed to "show off". She declared "in nine cases out of 10, the old-fashioned method that assigned children to inconspicuous places in the background and decreed they might be seen but not heard produced men and women of far greater charm than the modern method of encouraging public expression from infancy upwards."

Call me a reactionary, but there's something in that. None of us want overly self-conscious, shame-based children with low self-esteem. On the other hand, the self-esteem thing has gone too far. Holding other people in esteem is just as important.

A friend of mine, who has exquisite and naturally good manners, explained recently: "I do it to make other people feel good." So I decided we could start by teaching table manners that don't disgust everyone else at the table.