Teaching Proper Table Speech

Video Transcript

"It's really important that you teach your children how to be gracious guests at a table. Whether they're at home, or you take them out to eat at a restaurant, or you go over to a friend's house. You want them to be polite always, whether they like the food or not. If something is presented at a table that they just don't like in general, for example, if you have a child who doesn't like spaghetti with tomato sauce. Or even if it's served and the child tastes it and it's something that they don't like the way it was prepared. Either way, the child really needs to keep in mind that it's really best to just be respectful and polite, and somebody has put a lot time into a meal, and so there's really no point in voicing loudly at the top of their lungs how they don't like the food, how gross it is, or whatever. Just encourage your child if they don't like something, to just quietly stop eating it and opt for something else at the table. And if there isn't anything else at the table and you happen to be out with, dining with guests somewhere at someone's house, then you really need to just encourage your child to just sit it out and when you get home, there will be some food for them on the way. If this is something that happens every time that you go out and the child is getting a treat like fast food or something out of the deal, then obviously you need to sort of rethink why your child is refusing the food. But if it's something that you genuinely know your child doesn't like, I really wouldn't recommend forcing your child to ever eat anything. None of us like to sit at a table and have to swallow food that we don't like, and a child shouldn't be any different. They shouldn't have to eat something that they absolutely don't like. So if you're at home and you know that your child is going to be resistant to a food, then I would really steer away from it. It's going to make your dinnertime a lot more pleasant. And if you happen to come across a situation if you're eating, at a friend's house, or at a restaurant, obviously in a restaurant you have other options. But if you're at a friend's house, you might be able to even just pull your child aside if something is served that they're not going to like, and explain to them that they need to be gracious and that they will definitely get a meal when they get home, but that they really need to keep any sort of negative comments to themselves. "