The Mashed Potato Maneuver
Today, I’m breaking form and using one courageous reader’s follow-up question to present a challenge to all of you. (Read time: 6 minutes.)
I’m going to break the question into parts and address both the text AND the subtext. This may seem nitpicky, but we all go through stages where we need to be more picky about our own thinking. So as you read the following, I challenge you to dig below the surface and look for parallel patterns of thinking in your own life.
The question was sent in reply to my last Daily Groove, Rethinking “misbehavior”. The two main takeaways from that post were (1) “You cannot end ‘misbehavior’ nonviolently until you decide there’s no such thing as misbehavior,” and (2) “The mis in ‘misbehavior’ stands for My Interpretation Sucks!“
Q: My question is about manners (cultural expectations, “bad manners”)...
A: By putting “bad manners” in quotes, it appears that you got the gist of the post and you understand that (a) “bad manners” is another way of saying “misbehavior” and (b) it’s an interpretation of behavior, not an actual thing. In other words “bad manners” cannot exist without the help of your mind overlaying an observation with a judgment.
It’s great that you’re developing the skill of discerning an actual thing from your perception of it. That’s a very powerful skill to have. However, based on the rest of your question, I think you missed an opportunity to go deeper:
I want my kids to eat nicely so that I can enjoy eating meals with them and feel relaxed taking them out to restaurants and to grandparents’ houses...
You didn’t use the word “misbehavior” here, but it’s in the subtext: your kids are not nice eaters because (as we’ll see in the next part of your question) they misbehave at the dinner table. Furthermore, you’ve given away your power — the power to relax and enjoy meals and special occasions — which now depends on your children’s behavior. That’s how an interpretation of someone’s behavior can suck the power out of the relationship (and you).
...They find it impossible to sit facing the front, eat with their mouths shut, and use cutlery not fingers. They are 10 and nearly 8 years old. We have been practicing this for a long time...
Yes, it takes a lot of practice for a 10-year-old to act like a 3-year-old. :)
Forgive me if that sounded snarky, but I want to help you see that what you think you’ve been practicing isn’t what you’ve actually been practicing!
When a pattern of behavior is persistent, that’s what you’ve been practicing.
How is it possible that you’ve been unintentionally reinforcing the very behavior you dislike? It starts with your negative interpretation (which you probably learned from your parents). It doesn’t matter if you call it misbehavior, bad manners, or “not nice,” as long as you hold onto that interpretation you’re assigning power to the behavior. You’re essentially telling the kids that the way to be powerful is to do exactly what you don’t want them to do. The more upset you feel about the behavior, the more “impossible” it will be for your kids not to repeat it.
...I’d like to think that if I model good manners they will naturally follow suit.
I promise they will follow your model eventually. They won’t be eating mac’n’cheese with their fingers at age 30.
But their instinct to mimic your behavior gets derailed when your reactions send mixed messages about power. Children follow their parents’ behavioral examples most readily when the parents are (a) clearly empowered as they engage in the behavior, (b) confident that the children will adopt the behavior in due time, and (c) not particularly interested in the children’s deviations from the behavior.
Do-Over
Let’s go back in time to when your first child was barely 3 and just beginning to understand “manners.”
You’re having dinner at grandmother’s house when you notice he’s begun eating mashed potatoes with his fingers. You immediately feel an adrenaline rush as you remember being reprimanded for such behavior when you were a child.
But instead of allowing a cascade of fear that will lead to a repeat performance of your parents’ (and their parents’) reactions, you remember to pause and take a deep breath. You consciously connect with your heart and tell yourself that there’s no real danger, that everything is going to be okay. You focus on appreciating him, your partnership with him, and the fact that this partnership is the loving, welcoming, safe container of his natural learning process.
From this expansive awareness, a creative impulse arises, and you feel inspired to use your spoon to offer him a bite of mashed potatoes from his plate. He smiles and takes the bite. Now you fill the spoon again, but this time you indicate that you’d like him to feed it to you.
By now, everyone is enchanted by this game of generosity and doesn’t seem to care that his fingers are covered with mashed potatoes. There is laughter when he spills the spoonful of potatoes on the table. “Oops!” You pick up the spilled potatoes with your fingers and nobody minds that, either. You place the potatoes back on the spoon and hold it steady as he guides it into your mouth.
Spontaneous applause erupts! He is beaming with pride for his growing social competence, and you are filled with gratitude for the moment of inspiration that brought you waves of love and laughter instead the predictable parental criticism and control that would have triggered his defenses and weakened your partnership.
Perhaps this scenario is unlikely in his grandparents’ home, but that’s beside the point. Most of his mealtime social learning takes place in your home, where you can easily establish patterns of partnership through similar creative interactions. When that happens from the beginning, and there aren’t too many early outings where it’s harder to uphold partnership values, children develop the ability to handle such outings with “good manners” much sooner.
In your case, it will be a bit harder, but nature is on your side. When children aren’t defending against controls or judgments, they naturally want to master social skills. When you take your power back and start demonstrating positive expectations, be forewarned that your kids will probably test you to see if you’re really accepting them unconditionally. That won’t last too long if you stay the course.
In any case, remember that Partnership, Authenticity, Trust, and Heart work together to create relationships that are empowering, harmonious, and resilient — but it’s not a quick fix. Give it time, and let it work from the inside out. In the meantime, you might want to eat at home for a while. :)
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