Mind your manners

Sometimes I wish that I could peek in on other families during dinner time and see how they teach manners. Hypothetically, lets say that there is a family with 4 young children who's mom makes a great meal for them. Maybe it could be goulash, with lots of little elbow noodles. In a perfect situation the children would come to the table, sit quietly while the prayer is said, eat everything on their plate and then graciously thank their mother while taking their plates to the sink when they are finished. But just for fun, lets pretend that they are not a perfect family, and as soon as they are served up, one child complains about the tomatoes while another starts pretending that an elbow noodle is ringing. As soon as he answers one, another starts ringing, and then another, until he starts acting exasperated and begins telling the imaginary callers to stop calling because he is trying to eat. by this time, every child's plate becomes a mini call center and they are all trying to manage their mini telephones and eat at the same time. Now what would a normal mom do in this situation? I wish I knew. Would she laugh and take a picture, just like I did, just to realize a few days later how incredibly out of control her children are becoming at the dinner table? A few weeks ago, I decided that I had had enough, and I decided that it was time for the dreaded Mean Mom to make her appearance again. My children always know when I am going to morph into Mean Mom because I grab a paper and a pencil and start writing down rules. This is what I came up with:

Rule #1: No roughhousing or touching each other
Rule #2: No tipping on your chairs
Rule #3 No Knees above the table
Rule #4 Use words, not noises
Rule #5 Sit on your bottom until you are finished

It's a work in progress, but after a few days of repeating the rules before eating, and enforcing them mercilessly, my children are starting to get the idea. Once in a while I still relax and let them play . I figure that if they have it down by the time they are adults, I will feel that I have successfully taught them manners.