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Smile, Make Eye Contact and Don’t Burp

MANY of the children were not pleased that their parents had signed them up for a three-hour manners and etiquette course on what was otherwise a perfectly decent Sunday morning.

Claire Langdon, 8, sipping (not slurping) soup.

“Yucky,” said Tristan Murray, 9.

“It wasn’t what they wanted to do,” said his mother, Monica, who, against all odds, is a firm believer in teaching children manners and had also enrolled her two daughters, MacKenzie, 11, and Delaney, 7.

Even parents whose children seemed to have high potential for manners had modest expectations. Carmen Murphy’s son, Kyle, 10, regularly attends cotillion, where he’s learning to waltz. Her hope for the manners course? “Maybe someday, when he’s 25, he’ll learn to use a napkin.”

Boys did seem less prone to good manners; 11 of the 15 children in the class were girls. One boy insisted on anonymity.

He doesn’t want to be photographed,”

said his mom. On

that she was hoping

the other hand, Delaney told her