The Ultimate Goal--Table Manners

It’s such a joy to get together with extended family for the holidays and the joy begins the moment that we pack all the kids into the car—for some people, but not for me. I’ve never understood why kids need more personal space than the President of the United States or why I have to act like the Secret Service anticipating and defusing conflicts between my children. My teenager thinks he deserves an entire bench seat of his very own so that his little siblings don’t mess his perfectly messed up hair or touch his super-white athletic shoes. This presents a problem since, even though we own a rather large vehicle, it doesn’t have enough separate rows to accommodate all the children so we have to put them on timers, rotating children like roasted potatoes. They never want to listen to the same music or watch the same movie and they all have hearing problems, meaning they can never hear the movie but they always hear their sister whisper, “you’re a nerd.” And we still haven’t been able to teach them not to hit a girl.


It’s always a relief when we actually reach our destination—even if my nerves are fried and I’ve vowed to never go on another family road trip as long as I live. This trip took us to see the in-laws and my ultra-fun sister-in-laws and their families. One sister’s family is young and mischievous and always good for a laugh—especially when we caught her twins sitting on the kitchen counter feeding each other handfuls of cheesecake. The other sister has well behaved teenagers. Yeah, you read right. They are seriously well behaved. She had us over for pizza one night and we’re all sitting around the table. There was a box of donuts in the middle for dessert and one of her daughters asked nicely for a donut, “Can you please pass me a donut?”

Her sister answered, “Sure. What would you like?”

“The maple glazed, please.”

“Oh, I wanted the maple donut, but that’s okay. I’ll take the chocolate one instead.” Then she handed her sister the donut.

I sat there completely stunned, my pizza halfway to my mouth. I shook my head, wondering if I had heard correctly. Maybe my shock came from the fact that I was replaying that conversation in my mind as if it was my children who were interacting. It went something like this:

My daughter: “No one got me a donut. Look! There’s no donut on my plate.” (Throws hands in the air) “Where’s my donut? I don’t see one here.”

Son number 1: “Jeez! Why can’t you just ask for a donut? You never ask! You want to know why there’s no donut on your plate? It’s because we can’t read your mind you nincompoop.”

Son number 2: “You’re supposed to say please and you didn’t so I’m going to eat the one with the red sprinkles.”

Daughter: “That’s the one I wanted!” Throws her pizza crust at her brother.

We’ll stop there. The rest of the imagined conversation is being left out due to the fact that it would have to be edited for content once I yelled at all of them.

I told my friend the same story and she laughed. Her kids are teenagers and I thought that it was only my kids that behaved badly but she assured me that’s not the case. “If it was my kid asking for a maple donut, his brother would have licked the donut and said, ‘Do you still want it now?’” Ah, the joy of parenting. It’s no wonder that a friend of mine confessed that her only goal in raising her children is to give them table manners. That’s an ambitious enough goal for all of us.