Manners - are they changing?

Mrs_Arcanum

Blimey, my children 16 & 13 do not even leave the table without asking nicely. Though I do look sideways at DH because he holds his knife like a scalpel. :rotfl:

cutestkids

I have to agree on the children eating with cutlery thing.
It drives me mad to see them picking things up with their hands or using a spoon to shovel it in when they are more than old enough to use cutlery.

Last year my son had a school friend round for tea they were both 10 at the time.
I checked with his Mum what he would or wouldn't eat and settled on lasanga and salad.

On putting it down in front of this child he proceeded to spear the entire portion of lasanga with his fork, lift it to his mouth with his other hand under it and kind of inhale it.

The salad was picked up and eaten by hand.

It turned out on speaking to a mutual friend that the Mum still cut up the childs food into little pieces that he could just shove in his mouth and then wipe his hands on his trousers.

We haven't had this child back for tea.

daska

Dippypud wrote: »

A lot of schools are finding that children cannot eat with cutlery ...

only with their fingers.

Childrens cutlery is not expensive,(£land), and can be such a treat for kids to start to be 'grown up'.

To be fair I have to point out that even children who can use cutlery seem not to admit to this skill at school. DS2 (5) is arguably better at using cutlery and neater (probably due to ASD) than his siblings who are 10 and 12 years older than him. Yet I've just had a letter from the LA re his SEN tribunal and one of the reports they are submitting states that he is eating with his hands and needs help learning to use cutlery! What must the school think given that I told them in no uncertain terms that he could and did know how to behave at table and had lovely manners :eek: And how could the little tyke let me down like that :rotfl:

pigpen

I'm a stickler for manners too.. My 2 y/o has just had to say yes please beforev she got some wotsits.. ok is not a suitable substitute!

I tell mine they are not a washing machine if they eat with their mouth open. They are constantly being shown/told to use a knife correctly.. 3 can be excused as they have physical disabilities and 2 are little. I felt awful one day last week I was picking up the girls from school and had just shoved a sweet in my mouth and one of the other parents decided to speak to me (it is a very rare event!)

I hate sloppy speech as will.. dropping of T's and H's is simply not permitted and if anyone drops the H off my name I do not respond.. that is not my name! I pick DD3 up on it constantly.. and make her recite ' I think thirty three things thirty three times on a Thursday' She is amused by it and it is filtering through. My older children and myself are frequently asked where we are from because we do not speak like a dregs here. I actually identified a man who lives in our locality just from his voice when OH was using a chat facility online, it took be about 5 seconds.. he said turn and yellow.. (t-air-n and yeller are not the correct way to say these words! ggrrr)

We have the magic words of please and Thank you and if you can't be bothered to use them I can't be bothered to do what you are asking. I take things off them and say 'let's try that again' until they say thank you..

I will not have underwear on show..

I am often reminding OH to say excuse me and not 'move' when he wants to be past someone.

eating in the street is permissable with my 2 toddlers and my son who has diabetes and sometimes has to eat for medicinal reasons and finding somewhere and ordering and waiting is not an option. OH & I do occasionally have a sandwich in the car.

Spitting... I cannot abide.. there is never ever an occasion it is acceptable it is disgusting and actually illegal as it passes diseases such as TB.. nice! Snotting comes under the same bracket.

Nose picking at the table is a no-no.. go to the loo and do it there.. OH does this too.. he has the gall to complain about the children chatting at the table them picks his snout, shovels (I ask if he would like to open his mouth and I'll just scrape the plate in) and occasionally eats with his mouth open.. so much for his nice middle class upbringing.. though I get the impression his mother is one of those 'ignore the child' parents..

I am a dragon apparently but the older ones are thankful for being given the socially acceptable rules.

My mother and siblings were not even allowed to sit at the dinner table until they contributed to what was on it! They had to stand!

GreyQueen

:T Good for you, pigpen, and your children will be a credit to you.

I was revolted in a charity shop recently when a woman about my age sneezed snottily into her bare fingers and then, a second later and with no attempt to wipe them on a tissue or a hankie, reached for a book on the shelf. Yeuch.

And when you are in a cafe at a table and your waitress comes to take the order in lowrider trews and a midriff-baring top with a muffin-top of fat and the strap of her thong on show.......let's just say it puts a body off eating.

I once had a very interesting ear-wigging session hearing some blokes talking about this visible-underwear thing with thongs and bra straps on show and the verdict was unanimous; it's a total turn-off.

calicocat

I am 46 and am often astounded at the lack of manners of people my own age or older presumably being brought up in the same era with the same values etc.......obviously not.

A friend of mine hoovers his food up (with a fork only).....u can actually hear the process , drives me mad.
An ex hadn't got a clue how to use his knife or fork properly or order when out.??? Same age as me.
Friends children seem to turn into ferral rats when in a restaurant.

Years ago when out a man at the next table was shouting into his phone and it was constsntly ringing. Clearly business stuff but this was around 9pm not during the afternoon . I got up and asked him politely to stop as I could hear the person I was with due to his shouting and talking. He ignored this and carried on. .........I got more and more annoyed , and in the end crept up behind him ,grabbed his phone from his ear,and dropped it into his pint of lager.

. .

dibuzz

The first time I was invited to my ex in laws' for Sunday dinner I was shocked to be given a spoon to eat it with, no knife and fork at all.
They did cook eberything to a mush and cover it with a huge amount of gravy so it wasn't as difficult as it sounded but still, a spoon for Sunday dinner?
I had endless disagreements with them because they encouraged my eldest to eat with his fingers even though he was using a knife and fork perfectly well from 18 months.
I find it hard walking through town watching nearly everyone eating as they walk, even toddlers in buggies seem to always have a sausage roll to keep them quiet. Eating in the street just wasn't done when I was young.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

I don't chew with my mouth open, don't slurp from a drink at the same time as having food on the go and go deaf if I don't hear 'please' from adults and children alike. Anything that involves nasal mucus/spitting is simply puke inducing _pale_


I'm not keen on eating in the street, certainly not walking when eating, but if you need to eat to avoid dizziness/low blood sugar, then it's a lot less messy than collopsing all over the place.


I've seen people with their knife and fork chop their way through their food into chunks, mush it up together into something resembling pavement pizza, adorn with pepper, butter and grated cheese and then eat in a so called good mannered way. Sorry, mate, it still looks like a plate of puke, even if you say it's called 'mincing your food'.

And there should be a law that, if your dental plate slips, take it out before coming to the table or glue it to your gums, don't sit there making smacking noises or choose halfway through the meal to pull the damn thing out and chuck it on the table.

Whilst we're there, pint glasses should be banned at the table, whether it's water or lager, and anyone who opens their mouth halfway through a mouthful to knock back the fluid to wash it all down needs to be taken out and shot. Once it goes in the mouth, I do not wish to see nor hear from the food again.




But I only use an upturned fork in my right hand to eat if I use cutlery.

The RA makes it impossible for me to hold a fork in my left hand and a knife in my right firmly enough to cut things up, never mind actually get it to my mouth. If I were to try, you would see half the food pushed over the table or dropped down my front - and some of the posters here would be quick enough to criticise that.

Strangely, I can manage a set of chopsticks (different joint movements I suppose) - so when cooking, I always cut food up into smallish pieces so that I can eat with either just a fork or chopsticks without being worried about dealing with great lumps of food chucked on a plate.


Using chopsticks has its own etiquette, and not every culture dumps every part of a meal on one plate, unless they are in the process of scraping the slops into a bin.

I am very aware that what passes for table manners here isn't necessarily the case for the rest of the world, other people will use just a spoon and knife, others just the hand.



It's quite worrying to think that people would still look down on me if I were to be seen eating near them because I can't quite manage the English form of table manners.

calicocat

Very true , I used to look after an old chap who could only use a pint glass at the table as his hand couldn't get round and hold a smaller one , and have a nigerian friend who eats her food with her fingers which I have always assumed is just her custom, however I have noticed she doesn't do this if out at a restaurant,only when eating her own rice and meat.
I think there is also a way the chinese hold their rice bowl and the direction of the hand that they always do as manners,can't remember which way it's meant to be now, so maybe they find a lot of us brits rude.

Prittstick

My twopenneth!!

Chewing gum!!! Nastiest thing known to mankind!! Banned from my house😪! I don't need to watch people inanely chew, I don't wish to hear people chew and I certainly don't wish to stand in their gum or sit on it or have to remove if from some innocuous place because someone can't be bothered to dispose of it properly!!

People who insist on eating while on the telephone to me!! Do they not realise I can hear them russeling, chewing and swallowing. The sound seems to be intensified as it is right down my ear.

People who insist on smoking in doorways! I appreciate that smoking in public buildings has been banned, but when I have to walk through the cloud of your second hand smoke to get into the building you are not allowed to smoke in, it is no better than if we were in the building!!

Oh I could go on, but I shant