A Mouthful of Peas

Teaching the Bad Manners Game

By Lisa Cohn

With four kids in a family, it's likely the youngest will acquire some bad habits simply by listening to and watching her siblings, especially if she's six to 10 years younger than her brothers and sister, as is true in our family.

As soon as our daughter, Allison, now 5, was old enough to talk, she began repeating some of the words that escaped from the mouth of my son, Travis, now 14. I won't name them here. She also began mimicking the way he behaved at the dinner table: He often slouched and slurped his food. Or with a French fry dangling from one hand, he launched into song and dance, much to the dismay of Bill, who is Allison's father and Travis's stepfather.

I have to admit that my table manner requirements have always been somewhat looser than Bill's. I always welcome song and dance, especially Travis's tap routines at meal time. But Bill has wanted Allison to display the table manners handed down for generations by his family, the blue-blooded Merkels from Cincinnati.

In other words, he didn't want his daughter to behave like my silly, prone-to-song-and-dance son from Portland, Ore.

In an effort to ensure Allison understood when and how to display proper manners, we decided to teach her the Bad Manners Game.

The rules of the Bad Manners Game are simple: Adults and children gather at the dinner table, dish out their food, then brazenly break all the rules of civilized dining. Here's where Travis comes in especially handy. He can think up more ways of violating the principles of proper etiquette than a gang of 9-year-old boys at a pizza party.

Want to see more?

• United We Stand? When Two Parenting Styles Merge
• Gramma's Game
• Parents Say the Darndest Things: Funny Phrases Moms and Dads Say to Their Preschoolers
• Mind Your Turkey Day P's and Q's: Encouraging Manners in Your Preschooler
• Talk about it!