Book Offers Etiquette Tips for Teen-Agers

What was the most “miserable moment” of your life when you were learning the social graces? Getting food caught in your braces at the dinner table? Forgetting names at introductions?

Etiquette consultant Judith Re hopes that her book “Social Savvy, A Teenager’s Guide to Feeling Confident in Any Situation” (Summit Books, $19.95), will steer today’s teens away from these and other such “miserable moments.”

“Social savvy is more than just etiquette and manners,” explained Miss Judith, as her students call her, during an interview at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel before a weekend seminar for youngsters. “Social savvy is a way in which you present yourself, a way in which you believe in yourself.”

Re, who is 35 years old, says the lack of manners in her generation’s children prompted her to found her Boston-based consulting business five years ago. She felt sorry for children she’d watch in restaurants. Waiters blamed them for bad manners when their parents were at fault for failing to educate them, she said.

“There’s been a breakdown in the family. There’s no longer the family dinner,” says Re, noting that youngsters who cook their meals in a microwave oven aren’t learning table etiquette.

She has been trying to remedy the situation through classes at The Judith Re Academie for Instruction in the Social Graces, private lessons and her “Weekend of Social Savvy” for 8- to 12-year olds at hotels throughout the country.

Re learned her p’s and q’s growing up in private schools and from her parents, with whom she frequently travels to their native Portugal. Well-schooled in European protocol, she says her clients have ranged from an only child wanting to learn how to plan her parents’ funerals to a well-established Seattle clan seeking to polish their manners.

She admonishes parents of the ‘60s generation to do some “post-graduate work” in educating their youngsters about social savvy.

Says Re: “I look at this as an heirloom that you pass down to your children because it’s something that you put into your child that stays within them.”

Re opens her 208-page book, written with Meg F. Schneider, by discussing social savvy, which she describes as “a quality of interacting with the world with ease and style.” She teaches teen-agers to achieve this by working on five “building blocks,” namely by exercising responsibility, compromise, respect, sensitivity and know-how.

“The book was based on my classes and students in private instruction,” she notes of her down-to-earth and chatty text. Participation is key to her method of teaching, says Re, who lives with her husband and 9-month-old daughter, Alexandra, in Boston. She smiles, saying she looks forward to the day when her daughter can assist her during her classes.

Re’s book draws on questions raised by students and the “miserable moments” they’ve shared. To help minimize these moments for readers, the author offers chapters on table settings, dining out (including how to deal with making reservations, the maitre d’, the check and tips), partying, money, conversations in person and by telephone, friendships and sensitive subjects like drugs, divorce, prejudice, religion, illness and sexuality.

Re explains the reasons behind customs and always tries to put etiquette in real-life terms. For instance, she compares conversation with “playing volleyball” and passing the ball back and forth. When kids get stuck, she tells them just to talk about things that interest them. The pitfall she sees among teen-agers is their need to follow the crowd.

Miss Judith says she tells her charges: “Just be yourself, but know how to be yourself and feel good enough about it.”