Family Dinners. Researchers tout them as the Magical Childrearing Solution. Simply eat dinner with your family (and without the TV!) at least five nights a week. Here’s what you’ll get in return. Family Dinners are reported to reduce teenage alcoholism and drug use, increase self-image and vocabulary, and maintain healthy weights. You may think I’m exaggerating but go ahead and Google it yourself. In families who eat dinner together, the children are stronger, smarter and happier. It doesn’t matter what you eat, as long as you eat it together.

We have family dinner five or six nights a week. (Sunday is the Sabbath and I simply feel that that “no work on the Sabbath” applies to slaving over the hot stove. Don’t you agree?). Dinnertime with our teens and preteens is a stew of conversations about their day, shared values (aka lectures), laughter, scolding, schedule coordination and sometimes a few tears (over spilled milk, etc). Very, very infrequently do we invite visitors into our ritual. You’ll soon read why.

When I was growing up, my father used dinnertime as an opportunity to school us on our manners. One of six children, I came later in life when my parents were getting tired of the constant repetition of “Please get your elbows off the table.” Instead, Dad just poked our elbows with his fork. Perhaps not very sanitary, but it was highly effective. In our home growing up, not a single child would dare to even pick up our fork until our mother, the hostess, began eating. We knew better.

I imagined that my own five beautiful children would absorb manners through osmosis, just by observing their very proper parents. After all, we use our napkins, wait to be served, pass right to left, and use our quiet inside voices. Osmosis? YEAH RIGHT! For many (many, many!) years dinnertime was simply crowd control. After having 5 kids in 6 ½ years, we were exhausted. We dished out the mac-n-cheese as fast as they could eat it with their chubby, grimy toddler hands. We knew we’d have to teach them manners one day, but we reacted like Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. “I’ll think about that tomorrow” was our mantra…for about 12 years.

Now is the time to pay the piper. Like my father before me, I think dinnertime is a great time to review the standards of common decency. Therefore, every night at about 6 pm, the years of my father’s mannerly tutelage come rushing back. I start to work on these pigs, er, Byrds, and their table manners.

Early lessons include:

Introduction to Table Settings. ("No, it’s not right to dump a pile of forks in the middle of the table and fight over them! And no sword fighting..period!")
Napkin Use 101. ("Please wipe your hands on your napkin instead of your pants! I’m the laundry lady and I’m begging you!")
Date Menu 201. (“Watching you eat spaghetti is making me sick…don’t EVER order that on a date!").

Although our five children are very smart, they are oddly resistant to this line of instruction. (I can see where my wise dad concluded that the fork pretty much said it all.) Don’t get me wrong. We have a fun time at the dinner table. There’s generally a lot of merriment . But these are teenagers and they haven’t been allowed out of the house very much. A wise mother once encouraged me by saying, “Don’t worry. When the boys see how their potential girlfriends react to their table manners, they’ll straighten right out.” I look forward to that day. But in the meanwhile, it can get pretty darn awkward when we invite company to dinner.

For instance, the other day one of our daughters invited a friend to stay for dinner. Mayhem ensued. The chairs were scraped lazily across the floor. Only three place settings included both a fork and a knife. One person had hiccups, one person threw a roll as an expedited way of passing it to the sibling across the table, and one of my little lovelies could not contain several very loud belches.

“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” I apologized sincerely to the friend who lives peacefully with only one well-manner sister at home.
“That’s alright, Mrs. Byrd,” she replied, “My dog has very bad manners, too.”
That about sums it up. The Byrds are akin to the dog who begs for table scraps, runs off with the Thanksgiving turkey, eats the contents of the bathroom wastebasket and is, for pity’s sake, an ANIMAL.

Feeding time at the zoo. Would you care to join us?

Martie and Dave Byrd are trying their darndest to raise 5 poised and mannerly children in Roanoke, VA. This column is written in memory of Martie’s Dad, Wheeler Smith, a man who had great manners, patience and a fantastic smile. Martie is a writer and motivational speaker and welcomes your suggestions (on table manners or what-have-you) at martiebyrd@yahoo.com