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Welcome back for another fabulous lesson from Housewife 101. Today we are discussing social graces with an amazing tutor, Mindy Lockard. Not only is she well informed on the subject of etiquette, she is also living proof that if you do what you love, success will come. Please stop by her site after the lesson and give her a big blissful hello (all the links are below).
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Mothers experience a multitude of embarrassing moments; one of the worst can be when our children declare their distaste for dinner in front of friends and family! To keep these moments from happening—or at least happening less—we can help our little ones turn their own food leaf and expand their culinary confidence and have a fantastic mealside manner!
Take yourself out of the equation How often do you decide when your child will like or dislike a certain food? Give your child’s palate the benefit of the doubt. If a child is used to bland or commercially prepared food, tasting fresh ingredients is going to shake things up. Just because your child doesn’t care for a food experience now doesn’t mean he won’t develop a taste for it later. If you don’t succeed immediately, be persistent.
Change the vocabulary Be wary of asking your children whether or not they like the food you’ve served them. If a child is allowed to be critical of food at home, she’s likely to be critical at a friend’s house. Use your mealtimes as a practice ground not only to try new foods, but also to work on responses by complimenting the cook or keeping thoughts to themselves.
Involve them in the planning process Allow your children to take part in some of the meal planning. Not all, but some. As parents, it’s our responsibility to help expand our children’s culinary confidence by exposing them to a variety of cuisine.
Make food an adventure The beautiful thing about falling for food is that the process is tasty! Although grocery shopping with our children can be more disastrous than adventurous, the game changes when we approach food as a teaching process. Take a trip to the produce section and talk with your children about what they find.
Get them cooking Invite your children into the kitchen rather than shooing them away. The invitation doesn’t have to happen every day, but when you invite them in, show grace as they learn. Let them crack an egg without worrying about the shell. You can always scoop it out or crack another later. Talk with your children about spices, oils, and seasoning so they understand how flavors are made.
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Celebrate good tableside manners as a family Celebrate when your children pick new foods. Encourage them as they try foods they’ve tasted previously and not cared for. Praise the ways they communicate their feelings about food that aren’t their favorite. Stock their gracious guest arsenal with phrases such as no thank you, it’s not my favorite, and I don’t care for it, rather than I don’t like it, that’s yucky, or gross.
Last but not least, eat together! Meal time is not only a time to practice dining manners but to touchbase. Giving parents an opportuinty to stay up on what’s going on in their children’s lives and children a check-in point where they are accountable.
Meet your tutor, Mindy Lockard: Many of us grew up with the manners our mothers taught us. Mindy is no different. Except that for her the teachings were not as much an annoyance as they were the beginning of a love affair.
After graduating with a degree in communications and settling down with her favorite person—her husband, Ty—Mindy attended the Protocol School of Washington. From there she combined her passion for the civil side of etiquette with the polished details it requires to create a career in etiquette consulting and training. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, with her two daughters and her husband and enjoys her work throughout the United States.
Mindy teaches formal etiquette courses for people of all ages and provides valuable corporate training for schools, government agencies, and private companies. Mindy writes for Crane & Co.’s, The Crane Insider as well as Stationery Trends magazine’s column “What’s Write.” She is also the online etiquette consultant at GartnerStudios.com and works as a freelance contributor for several other publications and Web sites. She maintains a daily blog from her website (MindyLockard.com) “On a Personal Note” that explores the ins-and-outs of living a gracious life. For Mindy Manners aren’t about being perfect, but about being gracious and kind, learn more on her other site ManneroftheMonth.com.