Love, love, love the book, Amy. I'm trying to pace myself, since it seemed to take you awhile to write it and I don't want to run out too fast. :)

I despair, sometimes, of teaching my children decent table manners. They're not pigs, but there are certain things that aren't done at table that they don't bother to observe, since they don't see a reason to follow those rules. I probably deserve that, since I taught them to question things. I'm not talking about how to hold a teacup or using the proper fork or any of the fine-tuning you'd need for dinner with the Queen, either. "Others expect civilized people to act in certain ways" doesn't seem to be adequate for teenagers.

This is also a subject I discuss on my blog as it pertained to my upbringing. As I mention in the post, my brother was such a handful as an infant, my parents completely forgot to teach me about proper table manners until it was almost too late.

I'm trying to get my 3-year-old to not burp at the table. She burps and says, "I know, not at the table! Excuse me!" but keeps doing it.

How cute!

I used to have breakfast every Saturday morning with one of my friends and her son, he's 20. His table manners are deplorable. He uses his fingers to eat everything. Pancake? Fingers. Scrambled eggs? Fingers. And even worse, he never freaking uses his napkin! Wipes his grimy fingers on his jeans every.damn.time! I've slowly started tapering off on breakfasts because this makes me insane. I've tried to cajole as well as encourage him to use minimal table manners, and he just sees no reason to. I've tried to convince him that no one is going to want to date him with those manners, even that gets brushed off. I would thump my kids upside their heads if they behaved like that at the table, whether we were at home, or in public.

Define "no one."

See here (another FBOFW strip):

http://catalog.fborfw.com/indexid.php?q=7279&Submit=Search

Spoiler:

Some women have the same bad manners, even if they can be a bit hard to find.