This one is for MTJAM (and the title is for my brother and sister).
Emily wrote about Accidental Parenting and how she has inadvertently let her children develop a habit of nude baked beans. I’m not sure what to make of her comment that my accidental parenting is more deliberate (certainly Max would say that just introducing children to baked beans at all is worthy of a Social Services visit) but I’ll let it pass 😉 She’s not to know that I intended to bring my children up thinking that they lived in the Chalet School and I’ve fallen further from grace than I could have ever believed possible.
There is, however, a matter of etiquette that divides this house more than most people would deem necessary and shows up the differences between Max and me only too clearly. Dinner tables are divided and sometimes it is a close call as to whether tempers will get lost. And it goes something like this.
I’m left handed and all the rest of the family are right handed. I’m a terrible parent when it comes to good table manners and thinking ahead and so when my children were little and I wanted to get food down them, I just used to give them a fork each and let them get on with it. They, of course, used this fork in their dominant hand, which is their right hand and so learned to use a fork right handed. This didn’t cross my mind as a bad thing; when you are left handed, people doing things right handed, or opposite to you, doesn’t tend to look strange in the way right handed people seem to find left handedness cack handed and weird. I suppose we see a lot more right handedness and get used to it. I know when I used to work in a shop I got so used to people needing a pen handed to their right hand that it always surprised me to get a left handed customer.
Image credit theukmenu.co.uk
So anyway, I didn’t notice that they were eating backwards and of course when they eventually moved on to needing knives, they naturally used them in their left hand.
This was where the revelations and problems started 😯 And let me tell you, it had nothing to do with how many cute and interesting and educational table mats I’m allowed to bring home from work. *cough* (See what I did there? 😉 )
It was only at this point that it occurred to me why being given a spoon and fork for pudding at school was always such an issue for me. I use my fork in my left hand, like most of us, but I also use my spoon in my left hand, so I had to choose which one to favour. I never could quite get it all sorted out – but then a spoon and fork for treacle pudding seems like overkill anyway, if I’m honest. My children however, now eat backwards.
This doesn’t even remotely bother me; I’m left handed but I eat ‘right handed’ but my right handed children at ‘left handed’. Given I can manage a knife in my non-dominant hand, I don’t really see why the girls can’t manage to do the same. Well, they can, they manage at least as adequately as I do.
For Max though, it is a red rag to a bull in a high class cutlery shop. It appears to be completely beyond him to comprehend that they are not being compromised in their ability to cut and shovel by having their cutlery ‘the wrong way round’ and more over he is convinced that it is bad manners to eat backwards. Our conversations go round and round.
If *I* a left hander, ate backwards, as ought to be my right (as it were, no pun intended), would I have bad table manners?
Have I indeed failed my children by letting them eat in the wrong direction?
Will they ever be invited to lunch with the Queen if they use their knife in the left hand?
Do people look at them and think they’ve been badly brought up due to this bit of early lax parenting?
Personally, I don’t give a flying toot what way they do it, I can’t personally see it makes any difference and I’m simply relieved that these days more food goes in their mouth than on the floor but he does seem to genuinely believe that not only should the children be forced to alter their habits to suit a Victorian etiquette, but it is totally reasonable to force left handed children to eat right handed if they don’t want to in order to serve such an outdated thing. Or right handed to eat left handed. or whatever. Even I’m confused now 😆
So I really don’t know? Certainly eating backwards tends to illicit a comment, usually “are you left handed?” But is it bad table manners? Have I… oh my god, failed?????
Gosh, how interesting. Firstly, I apologise if I caused offence – my comment was badly worded! It wasn’t that I thought you had deliberately introduced bad habits, honestly! Take cuddling babies to sleep, for example (you may or may not do this – it’s just an example). I choose not to do this, and I choose to view it as a bad habit. Therefore if it happened on my watch and became a habit, for me that would be a bad habit. But for many of my friends it’s an active chose, and therefore not at all accidental parenting, but quite deliberate parenting. Does that make sense?
As for your post – I love it! I can’t see that using a knife and fork the wrong way is bad manners. My father was left handed but made to write (and use cutlery) right handed and he always felt rather resentful as a result. I have to say I have never heard of right handed children eating the ‘wrong’ way round!
lol, no you didn’t cause offence – I thought it was funny 🙂
In terms of your example though, yes, I probably do have that sort of bad habit although however hard i tried, one of my children wouldn’t let me cuddle her to sleep or take her to bed with me!
When I read the phrase “nude baked beans” I thought it meant baked beans without any tomato sauce!
I can’t imagine that using their knives and forks the “wrong way round” would cause a problem. if it works for them then fine. I would imagine your husband is just being rather pedantic 😉
I wear my watch on the wrong hand apparently, I’m right-handed so it made sense to me to have it on my right hand. I often get people asking if I’m left-handed.
Great post! I’m now trying to think of any accidental parenting moments we’ve had here….. some point over the next few days something will suddenly twig!
“would imagine your husband is just being rather pedantic ;-)”
I think you may be right 😀
I have a friend who went to a very expensive private school. She (and all of her school mates) were taught to eat “backwards” because it encourages the non-dominant side of the brain to develop (allegedly). If it’s good enough for them . . .
Well, I have never heard that!
‘wrong’ way round doesn’t bother me, but we have a lefty here too, but holding cutlery like a shovel might make me nervous!
xc
Grin. Well, you know what I mean!
I think the only question I would consider asking, is, do they calmly and without fuss, swap the knife and fork around in restaurants/other people’s houses, etc? As long as they manage that part of the equation without making an enormous fuss, I don’t see how it affects anyone else!
Oh yeah, they don’t flap about that. They do lay the table backwards for Max though, which makes him rant. It is of course possible they now do this on purpose!
I can’t imagine *any* of your dear sweet inocent offspring possibly doing something to deliberately wind up Max…..
Forks as shovels in our house 🙂
Genetic mothering/manners failure perhaps? 😉
Love it!
My lad eats “backwards” always has. He’s mostly right handed but eats like a lefty. It drives my Dad nuts….
Funny isn’t it 🙂
At least your children use cutlery, mine start out eating with their fingers, then learn to use cutlery, but it seems as soon as they reach about 5 years old promptly forget what cutlery is for. Honestly India could eat mashed potato with her fingers…
Grin, I think Fran and India would get on then! We had to institute a dinner winner contest to improve her manners!
As someone that sat at your table and failed to use their knife AT ALL, I should probably sit this one out.
*goes back to reading Mrs Beeton*
So you did. Your mortification was very funny 😀
What an interesting question. Knife in right hand should be easier for right handed people as the dominant hand will give better cutting control. Are the girls used to watching you do other things ‘backwards ‘ so made an assumption they should mirror cutlery use also?How have you taught them a table should be set? I have to admit though that I am with Max on this one. I was always taught fork in the left hand for all courses. I find it looks really odd when someone has cutlery the wrong way round and it really irritates me. Fork as a shovel is worse though, as bad as chewing/talking with the mouth full. I don’t think using the wrong hands is a failure, more something that will be inclined to draw comment from some. I doubt it will prevent a lunch date with the Queen (and no comment would be made as all would be too polite to say anything) but may prevent a repeat invitation 😉
No, it definitely came about because they had used their fork in right hand so the knife naturally went into their spare one. As a left handed person I have no problem with my knife in my right hand, I don’t find it hard to manage. In fact, I can’t do it the other way, the same as I can’t use left handed scissors – I use right handed ones in my left hand.
Setting table – hmmm… they do set it backwards when they do it, but often people just grab cutlery from a pile and start eating. We eat together every night but we don’t lay the table in a terribly posh fashion.
Funnily enough, although they used forks prong upwards when little, I think as they’ve eaten with us more in the last 6 years, they’ve turned them over to eat ‘properly’. They don’t shovel, it was just an expression of haste really.
When Fran and Maddy were little, we didn’t eat together at all and so it can’t have been them mirroring me.
I’d like to see my two try eating with forks prong down… might say to Rowan that it’s the new rule and see how she gets on with peas just for fun 🙂
I think forks as shovels is fine… my fork is a shovel right this moment 😉
You are such a baad, mother 😉
I’m a lefty, and so is my husband and our son (aged 4), but we think our daughter (aged 20 months) is leaning rather to the right, although we will obviously beat this weirdness out of her sooner or later.
One of our favourite things is to give a right handed guest our left handed corkscrew to open the wine. My father in law has fallen for this one TWICE!! Both time he kept trying and looking at the corkscrew in a puzzled way, before declaring that there was something wrong with it/it was broken. Hilarious. (My mother in law and brother in law are also left handers…) We just see it as retribution for all the right handed gadgets that we are forced to use.
Any way, about eating. It doesnt matter. Really. Not. A. Jot. And there are lots of grey areas here, e.g. if you are eating soup at a fancy restaurant/with the queen would anyone care which hand you use to hold your spoon, or butter your roll? Nope. So, why should it matter when it comes to the main course?
How very interesting to be a house full of lefties! I can’t imagine it!
Prongs up, prongs down depends on the age of the child I think and what it is you are eating. Could take forever if little ones try to ‘do it properly’ plus you run the risk of that horrible fork-on-plate scraping. If I’m having the type of meal that is eaten one handed (thinking chilli or similar) then it would be fork in my right (dominant) hand, prongs up and no knife at all. Similarly with long pasta the fork is in my right with the spoon in the left, probably because it is easier to ‘twizzle’ with the dominant hand.
I think my description of fork as shovel is visual and to do with the way the fork is held rather than the direction of the tines and is not meant to be perjorative in any way. Children tend to hold forks with their hands in a fist and elbows sticking out which does not look great. Holding a fork like this regardless of which way the tines are looks clumsy and though acceptable for a younger child is not attractive in an adult. Adults tend to hold the fork like a pen which gives much greater dexterity and looks fine whichever hand it is in. What is really bizarre is the American approach of knife in right hand to cut up food then putting the knife down, switching hands with the fork and eating with the fork in the right then switching back to cut up the next bit. Fascinating. I wonder what the history behind it all is?
Note to self – stop reading this blog it distracts me from doing what I should by making me go and look things up 🙂
“If I’m having the type of meal that is eaten one handed (thinking chilli or similar) then it would be fork in my right (dominant) hand, prongs up and no knife at all. Similarly with long pasta the fork is in my right with the spoon in the left, probably because it is easier to ‘twizzle’ with the dominant hand. ”
This is what makes it so odd – if it is more natural to eat with a fork in a right hand, why do right handed people have it in their left??? At least I’m consistent!!
And as for Americans.. wtf?!?!?!
I’m righthanded but I eat ‘backwards’, don’t know why, I just did it when I was a kid and obviously no one bothered about it so as to change it. No one else in the family does though (well my Dad only has the use of one hand anyway). I suspect that it’s becuase using a spoon or fork by itself it would naturally go in the dominat hand, so the knife would end up in the other hand. HH doesn’t realy like it though, so we encourage (polite way of saying ‘tell’) the kids to eat the ‘proper’ way.
I used to get in trouble at school though when I had school dinners. One of the older teachers Mrs Chivers didn’t like it and would tell me off and to eat the right way round. So when i saw her approaching I would swap round.. But then I couldn’t eat as i’m very right handed, so would ahve to sit pretneding until she had moved on.
I used to have a teacher who tried to make me do things right handed because it annoyed her. Really got up my nose, even when I was 8!
C eats backwards. I think because I used to sit opposite her in her high chair, load up the spoon and pass it directly to her for her to move up and into her mouth. She’s right handed for writing.
Well, this sample of people seems to suggest ‘wrong’ is actually rather common! Max says it is because I’ve sampled a group of odd people 😉
I can’t see how it matters at all and I suspect that anyone who notices such a thing in a child eating alongside them isn’t enjoying their own meal enough! I think it’s much better that people these days tend to value a child’s independence and enjoyment of their food over worrying about elbows and fork grips. Lord knows how many unhealthy relationships with food were forged over tense tables back in my 70s childhood.
I really couldn’t agree more!
As a lefty who was forced by school to sit on the left hand (so much so that i write with my right) I do not believe in correct way to hold hinge, but I am a stickler for good table manners. So much so that I. Reared a fabric table mat showing where the cutlery goes for the boys