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- Kids learn more than just the social graces at etiquette classes.
METRO
Minding their table manners
Seven-year-olds, Serena Beggs and Alexandra Valladares are in total agreement that the proper way to wipe their mouths at the table is to gently dab their lips with their napkins.“You don’t want to wipe in big circles or you’ll get it all over your face,” Serena says.
The two are students in etiquette consultant Maggie O’Farrill’s six-hour manners class. In this final session at the Torrance Cultural Center they are learning table manners, including how to hold their water goblets and how to butter their bread.
O’Farrill demonstrates where the bread goes on the table and how it should be eaten to the group of seven, who range in age from 7 to 11. “The piece of bread you take is yours; don’t change your mind,” she says, while demonstrating how to butter a small area of bread at a time.
Alexandra follows O’Farrill’s lead. She cautiously hold her butter knife between her red fingernails and gently taps at her piece of bread before taking small, delicate bites.
O’Farrill who has been teaching children’s manners for seven years, says she encounters little resistance from students because she makes it fun by serving them cereal and waffles. She also gives them a rationale for what they’re learning..
“Every rule – I prefer to call them tips – has a reason behind it. By giving children an explanation, it makes them feel more comfortable. One reason to learn manners is so you don’t take someone else’s bread, and that makes sense to them,” she says.
When 7-year old Matthew Cook puts his place mat on his head, O’Farrill asks the class, “Why don’t we play at the table?”
Alejandro River-Guest, 9, answers, “Because it’s not a hat and you can have accidents.”
O’Farrill is one of a number of etiquette consultants around Los Angeles who teach appropriate dinner-table behavior, as well as the basics of social graces, to children 5 and older whose parents don’t have the time or knowledge to do it themselves. Many of the consultants offer public and private lessons in subjects such as phone etiquette, how to make introductions and conversational skills.
After completing O’Farrill’s class Serena is looking forward to putting her new skills to use at a formal graduation dinner at a restaurant.
She says she knows exactly what to do when she meets someone for the first time. “You shake hands and make eye contact. You connect the webs of the hands – if they don’t touch it’s not right and it doesn’t feel good,” she says.
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