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Table Manners and Toddlers
Are Toddlers Old Enough to Learn Table Manners?
By Shannon McKelden
Laura Dihel, a mom from Bartlett, Ill., began teaching her nearly 2-year-old daughter table manners after noticing her copying Dihel and her husband. "At 20 to 21 months, my daughter started to mimic our behavior ... and I took this as a good time to begin teaching table manners," Dihel says. "My husband and I say, 'It is time to say grace. Let's close our eyes and bow our heads,' and she covers her eyes with both hands (rather than closing her eyes and folding her hands – it is hilarious) and we say grace."
Dihel believes in letting her daughter know when table manners are expected. "My one piece of advice is starting your meal with a sign that dinner is beginning (whether it is grace if you are religious, or if you choose to say, 'We are ready to eat')," Dihel says. "[This] gives your child a good sense of when to begin to eat and that an expected behavior is required."
Modeling good manners doesn't really begin at the dinner table. Start by teaching them good manners in every situation, including how they speak to others.
"When you use the words 'please' and 'thank you' with your child, he will naturally use them back to you and to others he interacts with," says Kelli Estes, a mother of two boys from Woodinville, Wash. "Consistency is the key, not just in table manners, but in everything."
Those polite words continue at meals. "If they're in a highchair or booster seat at the table, when they ask for, or gesture toward, something they want, gently say the word 'please' and encourage them to repeat it," says Naomi Drew, author of Peaceful Parents, Peaceful Kids (Kensington, 2000). "Don't hold back what they want if they don't say please right away because then you'll create a power struggle. Focus on staying and loving, modeling the word please at the appropriate times, setting a gentle expectation, then smiling, kissing and affirming them when they say please."
