No. It has to stop.
I realised that yesterday evening during dinner. I had spent the previous hour, following school pick-up, correcting their pronounciation yet again. I had gone from cheerful remonstrations of "No darling, it's not 'kindergarDen' it's 'kindergarTen' ", through "No sweetheart, it's not 'scooDer', it's scooTer' ", to an increasingly tight lipped "It's not 'caint', it's 'caahnt' " and others I won't bore you with.
So when Boy #1 picked up his fork, held it back to front in his right hand and started to spoon his rice and casserole into his mouth, followed by a cack-handed attempt to cut his sausage into smaller pieces before transferring his fork back into his right hand and repeating the process, I snapped.
I don't know why, but it seems to be peculiarly representative of the difference between America and Europe, that way of eating. In the past I've watched Americans eat that way on film and wondered to myself; is that for real? Do they really go to all the trouble of cutting up their meat etc (fork held straight up in the air, knife used like a saw), before discarding one of their utensils, bending low over the table and then shovelling food straight into their mouths with their forks?
Well, based on what I see at the school - and now at my own dinner table - some of them do.
This of course begs the question; should I even care? Am I being a ridiculous snob for bothering which way my sons eat? Well, the answer to that is mixed. Of course, I am a ridiculous snob in many matters - I'm happy to admit that - and this is most definitely one of them. But pretentions to grandeur aside, this bothers me on a practical level as well; at some point - and it may well be within the next 12 months - the Potski Familiski will be leaving Russia, and it's extremely unlikely that our next destination will be the US. We will most likely move back to the UK, where eating like that in the school lunch hall, for example, will get you singled out for unwanted attention which would hardly help what seasoned expats refer to mysteriously as 'the transition'.
I know, I'm probably worrying too much. But I care enough to - last night - make it clear to my boys that whilst eating at home or in company (they can of course do what they like in the school cafeteria), they will eat the way we do back in the UK.
Fork in left hand, knife in right, napkin on their laps, casserole all down their shirtfronts and rice liberally scattered all over the floor.
Call me nothing, if not realistic.
What do you think? Would you bother to teach your children how to eat the 'correct' way (whatever that may be)?
