D is for Decorum
If the dog has better table manners - you're doing it wrong.
There’s lots of ways to wake up in the middle of the night thinking you’ve failed as a parent and at just six-years-old there’s more and more sleepless nights ahead for me fore certain, but I have to tell you my greatest fear is taking her out to eat.
I’ve already written about the reluctance to use a fork so I won’t repeat myself, but tonight we were eating burgers - which ironically, is one of the foods that it’s okay to eat with your hands.
The trouble with tonight was the distractions. She’s up out of her chair a million times and I have to remind her that we are eating and when we eat, we do a few things and the most important is to keep seated. Also, close your mouth when you chew.
I told her she can’t be running around like a monkey in the wild at the kitchen table and that just ticked her funny bone to no end.
This led to a discussion on Decorum. I don’t have the wikipedia page in front of me, but I’m pretty sure that don’t act like a monkey at the table is one of them. Then the conversation turned to what if she and her friend all at at the table like monkeys?
I told her it sounded just like a day in the cafeteria and she loved that. She then got carried away and before you know it in her pretty little head was a complete storyline about how they all ate like monkeys and had a food fight.
Then, she described how adults eat and she pretended to hold her cup as a tea cup and with her pinky out and in the worst English accent you ever heard said:
“And this is how the grownups eat” as she held the pretend cup to her lips with her pinky held high.
It’s these moments that maybe, just maybe she will get the fact that dining with - or like a monkey is unacceptable.
Heck, even the Sea Monkeys have better table manners.
We’re working on it, this table stuff. It takes a lot and some days if I say the word “fork!!” I’m going to explode but that wouldn’t be very polite of me - especially at the dinner table.
But there’s hope. There’s more questions about decorum and less about monkeys so maybe, just maybe we can go out to dinner in public some day.
In the meantime, we’re staying in and hosting tea parties instead, with the tiny cups
It’s like decorum boot camp for six-year-olds - and we don’t have to leave the house until we get it right.
We’re trying here,
TH and Co.