With four kids in a family, it’s likely the youngest will acquire some bad habits simply by listening to and watching her siblings--especially if she’s six to 10 years younger than her brothers and sister, as is true in our family.

            As soon as our daughter, Allison, now five, was old enough to talk, she began repeating some of the words that escaped from the mouth of my son, Travis, now 14. I won’t name them here. She also began mimicking the way he behaved at the dinner table: He often slouched and slurped his food. Or, with a french fry dangling from one hand, he launched into song and dance, much to the dismay of Bill, who is Allison’s father and Travis’s stepfather.

            I have to admit that my table manner requirements have always been somewhat looser than Bill’s. I always welcome song and dance, especially Travis’s tap routines at meal time. But Bill has wanted Allison to display the table manners handed down for generations by his family, the blue-blooded Merkels from Cincinnati.

In other words, he didn’t want his daughter to behave like my silly, prone-to-song-and-dance son from Portland, Oregon.

            In an effort to ensure Allison understood when and how to display proper manners, we decided to teach her the Bad Manners Game.

            The rules of the Bad Manners Game are simple: Adults and children gather at the dinner table, dish out their food, then brazenly break all the rules of civilized dining.  Here’s where Travis comes in especially handy. He can think up more ways of violating the principles of proper etiquette than a gang of nine-year-old boys at a pizza party.

             According to the laws of the Bad Manners Game, each diner takes a turn displaying bad manners, then the whole family participates in a scholarly discussion about which rules were abrogated.

            Here’s how it went the first time we participated with Allison.

            My stepdaughter, Emily, now age 14, spouted out a few nouns and verbs while munching on a forkful of spaghetti.

            “It’s bad manners to talk with your mouth full,” said Chris, now age 11.

            “That’s right,” said Bill, assuming the attitude and tone of Mike Brady, the all-knowing dad of the old Brady Bunch TV series. “If you talk with your mouth full, people will see what’s inside your mouth. And it won’t look very appealing.”

            “You mean like this?” offered Travis, extending his pea-laced tongue.

            Allison roared with laughter.

Bill embraced the opportunity to remind Travis that he was breaking two rules: talking with his mouth full and speaking out of turn.

            I asked Allison what Travis did wrong.

            “He was too funny,” she said. “That’s bad manners.”

            “Hmmm,” I said. “Let’s try again. Chris, it’s your turn.”

            Chris smiled mischievously, then murmured the words to “Johnny Appleseed.”

            “Oh the lord is good to me--” he began.

            “You can do better than that!” shouted Travis. He jumped onto his chair and launched into the unedited version of a  hip-gyrating, shoulder-shirking rap song that Bill had banned from our household.

             “That’s Eminem’s song!” shouted Allison. “I know the words!”

            “Travis…” warned Bill, offering him a Mike Brady expression Travis knew only too well.

            “I was only breaking the rules,” said Travis. “You asked me to break the rules.”

            “Allison, listen,” said Emily. “Chris broke one rule: you’re not supposed to sing at the table. Travis broke about 104 rules.”

            “Travis likes to break the rules,” observed Allison.

“Okay, kids,” Bill said, motioning for Travis to sit down. “Why aren’t you supposed to sing at the table?”

            Emily adjusted the shoulders of her dress. “You may be singing a song that the other guests don’t know the words to. That would feel ‘rejecting’ for the guests,” she said, borrowing her psychologist-dad’s vocabulary word.

            “If they don’t know the words, they will feel left out,” Allison offered. “That’s bad manners.”

            “If they sing off key, everyone will get sick to their stomach,” said Travis.

“Very good,” said Bill. “All good reasons to avoid singing at the table.”

             “And what rules did Travis break just now?” I asked.

            “He didn’t raise his hand before taking his turn,” said Allison.

            “He stood on his chair,” said Chris.

            “He used bad words,” said Emily.

            “I sang a song that’s been banned from our house,” Travis added.

            I smiled at Bill. “Now I think we’ re getting somewhere.”

            “Travis likes to be bad,” Allison said. “That’s bad manners.”

            Bill nodded at Allison. “The whole point of the Bad Manners Game is to learn when it’s okay to break the rules and when it’s not okay,” he said. “Sometimes it’s okay to break the rules, if we’re all at home being silly or playing the Bad Manners Game. But when Gramma comes to visit or if you’re eating at a restaurant, what do you do?”

            Travis grinned, then stood up and pantomimed a scene that even I objected to.

            “Gross,” said Emily.

            “That’s really bad,” said Allison. “Gramma would send you to your room.”

            “That’s right,” I told Allison. “When Gramma comes to visit, you need to practice good manners.”

            After Allison’s introduction to the Bad Manners Game that night, she begged to play it over and over. After about a half-dozen rounds of the game, she clearly understood the rules.

            Now, she likes to follow Travis around the house and remind him about proper etiquette.

            “You shouldn’t talk to your friends on the phone while you’re sitting on the potty,” she says.

            “Why not?” he asks.

            “If they hear you flush, that would be bad,” she says.

            “You’ve got a point there,” he says.

            “You shouldn’t put your finger in your nose,” she says. “You’re supposed to use a Kleenex.”

            “Tattletale,” he says.

            Thanks to the Bad Manners Game, Allison now knows what’s expected of her when she’s eating at restaurants, when guests are visiting and when Bill’s boss comes to dinner. However, thanks to the Bad Manners Game, she also understands when it’s okay to have a little fun and break the rules.

            On my birthday, when Travis belted out a soul song and began break-dancing during dinner, Allison simply laughed and joined him.

            “It’s not bad manners to sing and dance tonight,” she said. “It’s Mom’s birthday, and she loves it when Travis sings and dances.”

 

Lisa Cohn is co-author of “One Family, Two Family, New Family: Stories and Advice For Stepfamilies,” (RiverWood Books).