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.