For younger set, a call to charms

Parents turn to etiquette pros to counter habits of a casual era

DUXBURY - The candles were lighted, rows of silverware arrayed. Linen napkins sat in pert triangles on china plates. A four-course dinner was to be served for 20 at an elegant restaurant in Duxbury.

But first, a few talking points for the guests: No slurping the clam chowder. Avoid "yuck" when referring to disdained courses. And, please, cut chicken fingers into bite-size pieces that can be transferred from fork to mouth - a directive that one 7-year-old paraphrased for his tablemates as "Stab the chicken! Stab the chicken!"

"Etiquette is a forgotten form," Colin O'Keeffe of Duxbury, a 45-year-old real estate developer, said as he huddled with other parents in a corner and watched his daughters, ages 7 and 9, as they fought the urge to lick ketchup from their fingers. "This is nice to see."

Across the region, parents are flocking to sign up younger and younger children for etiquette classes that they say are needed to reinforce the finer points of dining and courtesy that they may struggle to instill at home.

Parents say they themselves never took etiquette classes. They learned their manners at home and school. But times have changed. Dinner, a traditional venue for such teaching, is often eaten on the run between sports practice and piano lessons. Teachers are often too busy drilling MCAS skills to focus on finesse. Television and movies celebrate boorish behavior, and e-mail and text-messaging have eroded the art of conversation.

The result is an increasingly fast- paced and informal society where some children aren't readily absorbing social graces, and concerned parents are turning to outsiders for help.

"Parents are doing the best that they can at home," said Jen Schaeffner, a Marblehead mother who organized an etiquette class for her daughter's Brownie troop of 9-year-olds. "This is just to give the kids a little additional reinforcement."

The classes, some for children as young as 4, often focus on table manners and social communication. Teen classes may also emphasize interview skills. Instructors say their classes draw boys and girls in nearly equal numbers, and are not stuffy, white-gloved affairs where rules are drilled into budding young socialites, like the charm schools of yore. True, children tend to dress formally; at the Duxbury class, many of the boys were in blazers and girls in dresses and Mary Janes. But the tone is casual, with humor threaded throughout lessons in such mysteries as salad fork usage and handshake protocol.

"We do have afternoon tea," said Judith Ré, who teaches the 12-hour "A Day of Social Savvy" for children at a swank Boston hotel and is expanding class offerings due to demand. "But the tea is about learning how to have a conversation, how to keep it going, or how to end it . . . It is completely different from, 'And now we are going to cross our ankles.' "

Still, some say that even something as socially de rigueur as etiquette might be inappropriate for young children when taught in a class setting.

Two area psychologists said teenagers can benefit from learning etiquette surrounded by peers. But they questioned the utility for younger children, who tend to pick up the social skills they need - such as altruism and empathy - from parents and teachers.

"How sophisticated do you want your 6-year-old to be?" asked Jeannie Brooks-Gunn, professor of child development at Columbia University.

Others worried that adding etiquette class to already-packed schedules further deprives children of play time.

"It's something that should be integrated into their entire day and not transformed into a structured activity," said Susan Linn, a psychologist at the Judge Baker Children's Center, a Harvard Medical School affiliate in Boston's Mission Hill.

But etiquette instructors say their students learn things that they otherwise might not glean from daily life. Training in proper mall behavior, said Cindy Post Senning, great-granddaughter of the etiquette maven Emily Post, is included in children's classes that were created six years ago and are offered across the country by the Emily Post Institute based in Burlington, Vt. Participants learn to speak respectfully to store clerks, not cut in lines, and clear their food court tables after eating.

"Even in fast food, there are manners," Senning said.

While children's cotillion and ballroom dancing lessons have long been staples in some area towns, demand for etiquette classes, particularly for elementary school children, is growing at a rapid clip, instructors say, such that prospective students have been turned away or wait-listed.

Amy Tunnicliffe, owner of the Proper Manner of Hingham, said she has more child applicants than she has spaces. Adult etiquette experts have added children's programming to their repertoire. Mannersmith Etiquette Consulting, a Salem-based outfit that has taught etiquette for 12 years, launched its Manners for Minors program in August. Marianne Cohen, who heads Manners for Minors, said she recently had her busiest period, with 250 students in a two-week span.

New instructors are entering the field, as well. Christine Curtis, who received her certificate in etiquette training from the International School of Protocol near Baltimore, launched Etiquette two years ago and teaches in Brookline and the surrounding towns. Renate Devin, also a graduate of the Maryland school, opened Boston School of Etiquette for children in Cohasset in September. Meanwhile, the Emily Post Institute, responding to a demand for instructors, this year created a certification programs for adults who want to teach children's etiquette.

Many classes are held at restaurants, hotels, or private clubs such as the Duxbury Yachting Club. But they are also offered at Brownie club meetings, libraries, and schools, both public and private. Wakefield public schools provided etiquette lessons this year as part of their after-school programs for kindergarten through fourth-grade students. Christine Purrington, site coordinator at Wakefield's Woodville Elementary School, said that afterward, she noticed an improvement: More students have been keeping elbows off the table.

Classes range from $45 to $80 for an hourlong session to more than $1,000 for extended private tutoring; they may cost less when taught in larger group settings, such as after-school programs. Wakefield public schools, for instance, charged $12 for pupils not regularly enrolled in their after-school programs.

Children's etiquette instructors said their classes are intended for a broad spectrum of students, unlike the charm schools of early last century. Many of those schools faded away in the 1960s. Today, instructors deplore the lack of knowledge many students display.

"So many of these children had never seen two forks," Tunnicliffe said.

For the children, etiquette classes can swell already chock-full schedules.

"This was my only day off," 9-year-old Louis Nejame lamented after attending the recent class at the Duxbury Sun Tavern.

Andrew Hanus, 8, said he had struggled to sit through the hour of instruction, which had "felt like 5,000 hours."

But, he said, he had learned a few things, chief among them: "I shouldn't act like a monkey."

Correction: Because of an editing error, the name of a company was inadvertently shortened in a Page One story yesterday about etiquette classes. Etiquette Made Easy was launched two years ago.