Dear SOS,

I spent the festive season with family and friends and am truly happy that I was able to do so. What appalled me, however, was the way my young nieces and not so young nephews handled themselves at the dining table. Would it be too much to ask them to remove their elbows from the table and not to slurp the soup? I mean, my sister does an excellent gungo peas soup, but it was difficult to even try to have conversation during lunch.

Dear reader, as challenging as it is, we must continue to stress the importance of proper dining etiquette. We'll respond to your immediate question about "slurping" and continue with more on the soup next week.

As mentioned in a prior SOS Etiquette column, soup is a liquid meal, and as such one eats soup.

Ensure that your napkin is positioned (you might want to tuck it in). Your spoon (the round one; dessert is the pointed one) is used to spoon the soup away from you, remove excess by wiping the spoon on the side of the bowl and lift the spoon up to your mouth.

My suggestion is to make a joke of it by telling your nephews that you'd like to see the colour of their eyes, for example, or tell them to come up for air.

We'll share more on eating soup in next week's SOS Etiquette.

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