Where Have All the Manners Gone?

Where Have All the Manners Gone?

What? Huh? Move! Gimme a …, Hey can I …? Where oh where have all the manners gone? What ever happened to: Pardon me? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. Excuse me please. May I have? Those phrases are almost extinct for children today. You may still occasionally hear those words from adults aged 40 and older, but pretty much not anyone younger.

How long has it been since families all ate around the dinner table? Can you remember enjoying a meal when the person speaking wasn’t interrupted? People just knew not to phone during meal times; and if your phone did ring, there was no getting up from the table to answer the phone unless you thought it might be an emergency. Of course, during that time of polite table manners, Caller ID and answering machines weren’t around, so the caller would just need to call back another time. And shall we discuss long phone calls? You just didn’t phone people after eight o’clock at night, and certainly never past nine. It was just considered rude.

Sure more and more families are single parent homes and double income houses, and opportunities to sit around the dinner table are few and far between; but that’s no excuse not to instill good manners in your children. Elbows off the table, napkin in your lap, don’t talk with food in your mouth. Then there’s no one starts eating until everyone is served, and blessings are said in some cases. Now everyone sits down and starts wolfing food down their mouths all the while reaching over each other. “Please pass the salt” is rarely heard anymore. And back in that day, no one dared leave the table until everyone was done. If there was something urgent which caused a family member the need to leave the table early, the child always asked the parent, “May I please be excused?” No one says that anymore! Why not?

How many of you can remember growing up saying, “Can I…” and before any more words uttered past your lips, you were corrected to say “May I.” May I go to…? May I have… ? “Of course you’re capable, you can, the real question is do you have permission to, which is MAY I?”

Manners are a lost art. Sadly if the parents don’t use good manners, their children certainly can’t be held responsible if they were never taught, nor ever were led by example. It’s never too late to start calling people Sir and Ma’am or to use the magic words (that’s Please and Thank you, for those who have forgotten!) If all else fails and you just don’t know where to turn, start listening to people over 40, many of them still use manners, or trot to your local library and pick up a book. Heck, just Google “Manners” and see what you come up with!

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