Home
About
Class
Schedule
BBC News
LA Magazine
Daily
Breeze
Jewish Journal
LA
Times
London
Times
Beverly
Hills
LA
Weekly
Grunion
Gazette
Ranch News
Pictures
Student
Quotes
The London Times
CHILDREN WHO DO THE RIGHT THING
- CALIFORNIAN CHILDREN ARE ABANDONING THE BEACHES IN FAVOUR OF ETIQUETTE LESSONS.
By: Grace Bradberry It's a sultry day in Manhattan Beach, a chi-chi suburb just south of Los Angeles. It's the kind of place where even the children have full social diaries, and are ferried from one engagement to the next in gas-guzzling Sports Utility Vehicles.
When the diary is empty there is always skateboarding, surfing and splashing around in backyard swimming pools.
But down at the local community centre there is no talk of swimming or in-line skating. On a hot day at the end of the summer holidays, the ten children sitting in a classroom here are, of all things, learning the correct way to eat waffles.
"Now, let me see how you eat it - this finger and this finger covering the handle," instructs the tutor, Maggie O'Farrill, tilting her head and smiling at a small blonde girl. "Kelly, perfect! You are really trying." Kelly Kennedy beams at her friend, Ally Van Deuren. The lesson moves on. "Now we always leave something on our plates, like that," instructs O'Farrill. "Even if it's just a little piece. Do you remember why we do that?"
Eight year-old Moriah Ducoulombier raises her hand and the worlds tumble out. "Because then they think she wants more only we don't have any more!"
One child asks the teacher what she should have done the other night when attempting to eat marinated spare ribs with her hair hanging loose. The answer? Tie your hair back before you visit a restaurant, and don't order ribs or corn-on-the-cob.
It seems incongruous that in the land of the hamburger, children should be learning evolved dining manners. And it is surely no coincidence that the two people behind the course hail from more conservative countries.
O'Farrill grew up in Mexico City, where she frequently dined at the home of her uncle, the Irish Consul-General. At 13 she moved with her mother to America, and was shocked by the playground manners at her junior high school.
"The girls did not sit down properly. The boys were not very respectful. There was too much physical contact. And it was very noticeable how people held their spoons - in some cases in their fists."
O'Farrill's horror at what she discovered at 13 is mirrored by that of Idris J Al-Oboudi, recreation services manager for Manhattan Beach, and the man who dreamt up the course. Al-Oboudi grew up in the Middle East, son of a diplomat father and Irish-American mother, and attended a Russian school for dance.
"Part of our teaching was also to have certain graces. We were living in a society where it was important to hold yourself in a certain way." His own children, aged six and nine, have grown up in California, and while he has not dispatched them to the class yet, he says he is considering it: "They need to hear things from somebody else, and they need to be around other children in order to learn those things."
Out and about in Manhattan Beach, Al-Oboudi has been affronted by some appalling juvenile manners: "Sometimes I see children eating and wiping their hands on their clothes," he says. "Do they really truly see themselves? We're holding a mirror up to them."
It might sound a painful process, yet the children actually appear to enjoy the course, which consists of two three-hour sessions. Occasionally they feel faintly silly, but that is the only objection. Nine-year-old Erica Reiss confides to me, for example, that she feels like a rabbit when she is asked to eat with sponges tucked under her arms - a technique to dissuade the children from raising their elbows too high.
"At least you didn't look like a chicken," points out Noell Nelson, aged ten. She also tells me that she has a book on etiquette called The Good Idea Kids: Manners for the younger set which includes such tips as "Don't drink from the finger bowl". As far as Noell is concerned, the point of the course is to "make us feel comfortable at fancy dinners. Like Maggie was saying, now we can feel comfortable if we're invited to the White House."
The threat of some grand encounter at which they will be found wanting appears to haunt all the children, most of whom consider this stuff a bit de trop at home.
Liz Trivers, the mother of seven-year-old Julian Myers, says that she told her son: " 'If you were ever asked to lunch with the Queen of England, you'd use what you've been taught'. Now he's terrified he will have to meet the queen."
Other tips from the etiquette experts: never invite yourself to a party. "Don't bring extra friends. If you're very close you can ring and say, 'Is it OK to bring my cousin from out of town?' "
"Why is this a good rule?" O'Farrill asks. "They might only have ten buns," suggests Jaime Frey, ten, who has come with his younger sister Daniella, eight.
I doubt if any of the children in the room would ever horrify anyone with their manners, which begs the question of why their parents wanted to pay $75.00 for the course. Yet there seems to have been something of a stampede for the course among the mothers of Manhattan Beach, though some of them seem vaguely sheepish about this.
It is clear that the parents have all taught their children manners - they just think they might have missed something, or that their offspring might listen more attentively to a stranger.
"I think this stuff is good to have," says Kim Hammond, mother of Reilly. "You may not use it every day, but it's in the back of the mind for certain situations. And it helps build self-esteem and self-confidence."
Liz Trivers works as a singer-songwriter but she actually grew up in the South, and was sent to cotillion classes by her parents. "It's a Southern tradition. You were told to sit quietly and wait until a boy asked you to dance. I was taught to be a wallflower!" she says. Given her profession you might expect her to be more interested in encouraging her son's self-expression than his manners. But she feels this would be doing him a disservice. "This is a community where people are still concerned about manners," says Trivers. "There are really good public schools here, so we all send our children to them. But while the education is excellent, perhaps what's missing is - how can I put it - the fine tuning of a child."
In one sense, these children may find it harder to make their way socially than they would in other, more conservative parts of America. Casual dress can be misleading. In the entertainment industry, in particular, partying is as much about making contacts and winning jobs as anything else. Even a Sunday afternoon barbecue can be, in effect, a business meeting. In this environment, the tongue-tied are unlikely to get very far.
Maggie O'Farrill's social advice is designed to help children suppress their shyness from an early age. "We don't worry about what we're going to say. We just worry about getting to know the person," she says. She teaches the children to shake hands - "Girls do not get up. Boys do get up," then asks, "If no one introduces you, what do you do?"
"Introduce yourself!" choruses the class.
Come to think of it there are quite a few adults who could benefit from these classes, too.
