Miss Manners: Grandma loathes mealtime battles

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My granddaughter is 7. She loses interest in her dinner, says she’s full. Her dad says, “four more bites.” She balks. He demands it again.

Sometimes he starts to count to a declared number. Then it teeters on to, “OK, then, no dessert.” Or whatever.

Sometimes it happens at my house, sometime theirs. My husband and I have great difficulty witnessing this. (We have overbearing parents in common.) We have baby-sat for years, and we don’t make problems at dinnertime, so we don’t have them. Is there a flippant response that I can at least say to myself while witnessing this pattern?

GENTLE READER: Reasonable people can disagree on the proper placement of the line between teaching discipline and making dinner unbearable. So can parenting consultants.

Much as Miss Manners appreciates you and your husband not making problems at dinnertime, she is not convinced that the only problem being created is by your granddaughter’s parents. Taking the word of a 7-year-old that she is full – and will not be starving by bedtime – seems to her to require a great leap of faith.

There are many flippant responses that you can say to yourself, but as manners deals in the realm of behavior, it cannot help you script them. It instead urges restraint, as your children are no doubt doing their best with their own children.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My husband was diagnosed with severe liver disease, which means that his days of drinking alcohol are over. Bottles of spirits are common gifts among our group of friends, however.

Under other circumstances (the bestowal of an ugly lamp, say) we would just gratefully accept the gift, then quietly give it away. In this case, however, alcohol will never be a good gift, and the situation is likely to arise repeatedly.

We don’t want to make each occasion a drama-filled discussion of his medical situation, but also feel that a polite lie will just perpetuate the problem. And our friends are good folks – they’ll likely feel awful if they find out the situation only after giving us several bottles.

Can you suggest a polite way to convey our gratitude, while also making it clear that we can no longer accept gifts of this nature?

GENTLE READER: Loathe though she is either to make medical conditions a subject of discussion or to complain about gifts, Miss Manners agrees it is best to act to avoid future embarrassment. But not now.

Accept the gift with gratitude – and without contradiction. In your next conversation with the friend, tell them casually about the “recent diagnosis,” and repeat your thanks for the gift, with the added sentiment attached to it being one of the last such presents your husband was able to enjoy. Skip over the fact that he enjoyed the thought, not the bottle.