We’ve been trying. We really have.
Fold your hands in your lap until everyone has been served and we’re done praying. Eat slowly and chew every bite. Don’t inhale food or you’ll choke. No, you can’t have fourths when someone else is still on firsts and they might want more. No, you may not stick your hand in the pot of mashed potatoes and serve yourself with your dirt-crusted fingers. Use your napkin.
Use your napkin!
USE YOUR NAPKIN!
Teaching kids table manners, especially when they’re hungry kids, is my biggest challenge this summer (well, besides bedtime. But I didn’t volunteer for that one.). Mostly because kids don’t really care about table manners.
They don’t care what they get all over their face. They don’t care that this shirt that has bean juice dripped all down the front, needs to be passed down to five additional brothers. They don’t care that they just used their pants as a napkin and now have fashionable oil-marks on their thighs. They don’t care that they’ve got a big glob of spaghetti in their hair (don’t ask.).
They just care about shoving that food in their mouths as fast as they can so they can beat their brothers to seconds.
Our boys actually aren’t that bad until pizza night.
This is the night when they help their daddy make homemade pizza and lay out the pepperoni and sprinkle the cheese. This is the night they run around the table until dinner is served because they’re just so excited. Just so excited.
They’re not excited about the pizza, per se. It’s the ranch. My boys have a weakness for ranch dressing.
Everyone, on pizza night, gets his own tiny cup of ranch.
This night, the oldest poured his own ranch, all the way up to the brim, and when it threatened to pour over the sides, he sucked it right up so it didn’t.
Problem solved.
“Son,” I said, between gags. “Please stop.”
“What?” he said. “I like ranch.”
Obviously.
The boys asked for more ranch before they’d even finished their first piece of pizza. They had it all over their faces, all over their clothes, all over their hands. It was like they’d taken a bath in ranch dressing.
All our progress, gone in one dinner. They were back to eating like animals.
Oh, well. They’ve been asking for a dog. I’ll just tell them we already have six.
