Manners classes a growing trend

Piano lessons. Ballet lessons. Soccer practice. You might consider adding training in good manners to the list of extracurricular activities for your youngsters. It’s a growing trend.

Classes in good manners are catching on across the country, and summer resident Susie McNamee organized related classes last summer on Little Cranberry Island and in Northeast Harbor. The former special events coordinator, who holds an education degree, had started teaching courtesy in recent years from her winter home in Rye, N.Y. Scores of parents signed up for sessions conducted during the school day and after school. In 2003, The New York Times learned about the enterprising mother and published a feature about her work in the Westchester County edition. The course will be offered in Maine again this summer.

Were Little Cranberry’s seasonal and year-round families responsive to Susie’s offer? They certainly were. As word spread, they sent their pre-teen children to her “Please and Thank You 101” courses, conducted in four one-hour sessions.

The theory is that decent manners learned at an early age can help children gain self-confidence, feel good about themselves, fit into the community, do well in school, and eventually know how to apply successfully for a job. And parents are discovering that it can be easier to have someone else teach their children these skills. Sometimes the parents themselves never got much training in good manners.

Table manners are part of it, but by no means all. But starting there, Susie shows them how to sit at the table, how to pass the serving dishes, how to handle the knife, fork and spoon, how to see that others are served properly at the table.

Meeting other people is another topic. She teaches children to look a person in the eye, speak up, and call the other person by name.

Still another lesson is how to write a decent thank-you note, something better than just “Thank you for your lovely gift.” The children learn how to tell how they played with the new toy or where they wore the new shirt or sweater.

Accepting criticism and compliments is another skill that often has to be learned. Criticism can be hard to take, but it sometimes helps and can lead to improvement. The response to a compliment can be a simple thank you. Respecting others, learning how to be gracious and polite, feeling comfortable in new situations, accepting criticism and praise, getting along with colleagues and family ? these all come down to just knowing how to navigate in the community. In the hustle and bustle of today’s world, some people haven’t learned to be considerate and show common courtesy.

In the classes on Little Cranberry, Susie taught the basics of manners including introductions, table manners, answering the phone, conversational skills, good sportsmanship, volunteering in the community and how to treat the elderly and people with disabilities.

She had the children answering the phone politely, setting the table, sitting down for a snack, making conversation, performing introductions, writing thank-you notes, showing respect to others.

A check with some parents showed that, while some kids don’t want anyone telling them how to behave, many enjoy picking up tricks of behavior. It makes them know that they are growing up.

Emma Fernald, 6, learned how to set the table. But the class wasn’t for her brother, Coleman, 8 1/2, who dropped out after the first session.

Perry Callahan, 8, loved the four-week program. According to her grandmother, she went home and went through an orgy of introducing one person to another. She became conscious of the fact that table manners were important not only her family but to others, too.

Abraham Philbrook, 9, and his brother, Peter, 6, were in the class.

“It reinforced what they already knew,” their mother Amy said. “It is always easier hearing it from someone else. Now I wish they would just sit in their chairs.”

Bangor teenagers, Stephanie Russell and Brooke Gardner, took a special course, which gave them confidence in how to dress and make conversation as they were entering Bangor High School. Susie has obviously struck a chord with her concept. She has created a business, “Manners and More” with clients in New York public and private schools. Last fall, she had to leave her Maine summer home 10 days early to fill an assignment to acclimate a group of foreign high school students to American culture.

This looks like a concept that could be included as an extra-curricular activity in all elementary schools.

Helen Sloane Dudman lives in Ellsworth and on Little Cranberry Island.