Capitalizing On Courtesy
Cheeky Children: A Growth Opportunity
Emily Lambert

Kids' manners have never been worse--which is why business for etiquette schools has never been better.

Etiquette classes for children have been popping up everywhere, from the Worthington Mall in Worthington, Ohio, to Dillard's (nyse: and Nordstrom stores. More classes are taught at camps, clubs and schools across the country.

Charm schools were a staple of the 1950s, and etiquette classes have existed for decades. But the business of keeping kids on their best behavior is booming these days, thanks to the increasingly crass nature of so much pop culture. Naomi Torre Poulson, who runs the Etiquette School in Dana Point, Calif., says her business has grown by 30% in the last seven years or so, and notes that she no longer has to advertise her services.

These updated classes say that they aim to the build the life skills and confidence that generally accompany good manners. But some of the modern instruction feels downright old-fashioned. Children learn where to place a knife and fork, when to use their cell phones and how to answer the phone correctly (which means not screaming for Mom). A girl may learn how to polish her nails, clean her closets and write a proper thank-you note for even the most disappointing gift. Instruction ranges from one-on-one tutorials to half-day seminars and multiclass courses.

Although there's no shortage of gruesome kiddie behavior these days, parents also view these classes as preventative measures. Nelu Binafard, a 36-year-old homemaker, was troubled by the influences Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera were having on her children, Andrew, 8, and Nikki, 10. So Binafard enrolled them in the half-day Petite Protocol class at the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles, at a cost of $400.

After one class, her mission is now accomplished. The kids are now very aware of keeping their elbows off the table and placing napkins on their laps. "Sometimes I forget to do it.... They keep correcting me now," says Binafard.

The people teaching manners to children often instruct parents on them as well. Sometimes parents don't have time to teach their children good manners, says the Etiquette School's Poulson. "But sometimes they don't know it themselves," she notes. Poulson uses hand puppets to teach manners to the preschool set and also does seminars for adults at companies like Hewlett-Packard and Cisco Systems.
Even if parents have to drag their children to class, that may be more fruitful than doing the teaching themselves, since kids can tune their parents out. Rosanna Locke, a Los Angeles real estate broker, says she had a hard time explaining to her two shy daughters, 7 and 10 years old, the importance of posture and of looking people in the eye. So she sent her daughters to the Hotel Bel-Air classes and hopes the lessons will stick.

Indeed, kids' etiquette classes are popular at high-end hotels. They give parents a break at the same time that they promote the hotel's upscale image. The Don Cesar Beach Resort in St. Pete Beach, Fla., which is a unit of Loews offers an etiquette course for kids and includes manners lessons in its summer camp programs. And the Ritz Carlton in Dearborn, Mich., offers classes for $135 a pop. The Hotel Bel-Air's general manager, Carlos Lopes, says he started his classes last fall in order to groom his future guests.

That bodes well for business: There are already 40 children on the waiting list to participate in his next class, planned for November.

For younger set, a call to charms

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

Never too young for mannersAcross the region, more and more etiquette classes are being held for young children. Visit one in Duxbury. Video by Scott LaPierre, Globe Staff

By Sarah Schweitzer

Globe Staff /

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.

Manners are getting worse?

By Andrew Hough

LONDON (Reuters) - Britons are ruder than they were a decade ago, according to a survey on Monday that showed almost three-quarters of people think manners should be taught at school.

A third believe bad manners are the catalyst for much of the anti-social behavior in Britain, the ITV poll found.

Experts interviewed by the network blamed a lack of respect for authority.

More than 90 percent of respondents believe parents are failing to ensure their children learn proper manners and that bad behavior of celebrities and footballers are setting a poor example for impressionable youngsters.

Spitting and swearing were the most offensive behaviors, it found, while queue-jumping and not saying "please" or "thank you" were other main gripes.

Almost 75 percent of the 3,000 people surveyed believed manners should be taught at school.

"I suppose it's part of the breakdown in society -- the fact that we stopped having respect for figures in authority partly because those in authority didn't command it," etiquette coach Diana Mather told the "Tonight Show with Trevor McDonald," which commissioned the survey.

The head of the Campaign for Courtesy, broadcaster Esther Rantzen, said a lack of discipline was also to blame.

"I think my generation has a lot answer for because I think the youth culture in the 60s and early 70s threw out every rule book and thought it was really clever to use four letter words," she told the program, which airs later on Monday.

"But I think things should go back, not to the old deference, not to groveling, not to any of that but just to feeling respect, because I think that would make everyone's life more pleasant