I don’t think what you ask is unreasonable. We try to do the same thing with our kids. We’ve taken our kids to restaurants since they were born. Between 18 months and 4 years is still a challenge though. Younger than that, the kids are basically furniture that sits there in their car seat.
As I said, we also have to gauge the mood of our children when we go out. Last time we went to a fancy steak restaurant right after a trip to Target to shop for his friend’s birthday gift. It ended up being a bit of a disaster as we had to take turns walking around with the older boy and my wife didn’t get to eat. We would have been better off going to the nearby Outback steakhouse since it would have been cheaper and more tolerant of “rambunctious toddler syndrome” and saved the steak place for date night.
You’re never ready and prepared. Nobody is. You just have to do your best. That sometimes includes dealing with judgmental non-parents who have not nearly as much of a clue as they think.
Some parents really, sincerely don’t. The Niece is now 9; her mother still doesn’t comprehend that the kid is not even a morning person, more of a break of dawn person. Then again, said mother is 43 and still refuses to accept that she is, herself, a night person.
Becoming a parent doesn’t automatically make someone a good person. Sadly it also doesn’t beget wisdom.
Couldn’t count the number of times we were places that we figured we were on borrowed time, and things could crash at any moment. So we probably stressed ourselves more than some folk might think required, rushed thru some meals/experiences, and left earlier than we might have otherwise to forestall potential problems.
In our minds, that is just part of being a considerate member of society. As a general rule we also don’t talk at movie theaters, park our shopping carts in the middle of the aisles, drive the speed limit in the left lane, etc ad infinitum.
Speaking generally, what I object to in these sorts of threads, is what I interpret as an attitude that EVERYONE ELSE has to change their expectations to accommodate one person’s child.
-Or that the expectation of a certain noise/behavior level is unreasonable.
-Or that parents are somehow helpless (not to mention in the best position) to deal with noise/behavior.
-Or that certain activities (such as nicer dining) are activities that people should engage in by right, whether or not they have small kids. Sure, maybe you enjoyed x-activity when you were single. You can enjoy it again in a couple of years, when your kid is more predictably under control.
As a general manner, I don’t differentiate between a loud, poorly behaved child and an overloud, possibly drunk adult. I don’t care for either to interfere with my reasonable enjoyment. And I don’t care to hear the backstory behind either.
Yeah, I’m generally unfit for public consumption, and am generally happiest at home or in the wilderness. :rolleyes:
I don’t work at Wal-Mart but rather another Big Box store that is open 24/7. Once when I was working night shifts, I asked one of those parents about having a kid in the store at 2 am. Well, it was like this - the one kid was up and running around and the choice was either everyone else the house would also inevitably be woken up, have their sleep ruined, etc. or remove the awake kid from the household so only two people (the kid and the parent with him) would lose sleep. So some of those folks might be at Wal-Mart (or other store) at an ungodly hour to spare everyone else in their household.
Or both parents work nightshift so night is their “day” and in order to see their kids the kids are on the same or similar schedule.
And other reasons given by other posters.
Yeah. Look, I understand that sometimes you really can’t do this, but if you could please let someone know on your way out that you left a cart of defrosting stuff in the bread aisle, or wherever, the store would appreciate it. If you’re at a big box tell the greeter on your way out. We see a lot of kids, a lot of us have kids, even some of us who don’t have kids understand you have to put your kid first but when you can give us a heads up so we can send someone to deal with it.
Actually, we DO have people putting that stuff back (if possible - if you don’t tell us and we don’t discover it for hours all the cold stuff is complete loss). You may not see them, but we have them. We might have them doing something slightly more urgent at the exact moment you’re looking for one, but trying to shelve what it’s possible to re-shelve is part of reducing our loss and keeping prices under control.
As I said, I get it, your kid is your first priority, but when you can do so we’d appreciate a heads up. Then it’s on us whether or not to get the groceries taken care of sooner vs. later.
Er… I’m a cashier in the US. I have never of this. I’m not even sure how that would work. And, holy crap, we probably have over a dozen abandoned carts in a day, that’s be half our work force on the “take”!
We want to know about these carts because we don’t want to have to clean up a puddle of melted ice cream and meat juice, not because we think employees are stealing.
^ This. Some people are just lousy at parenting. Unfortunately, many of them think they’re good parents, but they aren’t.
Most parents are trying to do their best. Many days they succeed. Sometimes, though, the kid is just going to scream and cry.
As far kids watching tablets and such - look, sometimes that’s the most expedient solution. Better a kid head down in a tablet than screaming and flailing. Likewise, every day I’m at work I have parents hand me empty food wrappers because giving a hungry kid something to eat RIGHT NOW is often the most expedient solution, and as long as they pay for the item on their way out we really don’t care. We’re all happier if a hungry kid is fed rather than screaming. Hell, if an adult does that we’re OK with it, because we’d rather have a diabetic eat something in the aisle and pay for it 10 minutes later than pass out, which is far more disruptive and requires all sorts of paperwork and phone calls. It’s called being reasonable.
(I’m happy to say that quite a few of these parents make some attempt to get something healthy into the kid and not just junk, although it’s a little hard to ring up a banana by weight after it’s been eaten. Then again, losing one banana is not going to drive us bankrupt. We have some rules of thumb on how to deal with this.)
Yes, it would be wonderful if a 5 year old could sit quietly at a restaurant table just like an adult… but the kid is FIVE, he or she is likely not capable of doing that for a prolonged period of time because they’re a kid, not an adult.
If I want there to be someone to pay for my pension and social security later in life I’m just going to have to put up with some public disruption by proto-adults. Kids only learn to behave in public by being in public.
I just have to take a second to shout out to Olive Garden here. A restaurant that makes food that both kids and adults like, has real silverware and napkins, and is fairly tolerant of little kids! )
It’s almost Disneyesque- so many of the patrons have fed their little kids there (or were raised there themselves), there seems to be a real understanding amongst the diners that the little heathens will be expected to behave, but tolerated when they fail.
I’m not saying that it’s the best Italian restaurant in the world, but for a chain, it’s pretty good, and I think it’s a nice arrow in the quiver in the effort to civilize the little savages.
Some grocery stores in my area set out baskets of fruit, usually bananas or apples, intended to be taken, free, and eaten by children, although I’m sure plenty of adults indulge. If they need it, hey, I’m OK with it.
I also rang up quite a few empty wrappers over the years at Target and later the grocery store pharmacy, for the reasons mentioned above. More than once, I was also handed a price tag and a raggedy old pair of shoes; the person, usually a child, was wearing the new shoes and had no use for the old ones.
None of the above is the same as people who “sample” or “taste” things out of the salad bar, bulk bins, or self-service deli.
Bottom line is that yes, it is hard. Parenting is a balancing act. Children are not aware of what is or isn’t appropriate behavior. They are also hard-wired to information seek and test boundaries. What frequently happens is that they regulate their behavior based on punishment and reward. In public places, they know that their parent’s behavior is constrained, so they use the opportunity to test boundaries and unless you are a parent who borderline abuses your child so much that they fear a punishment that will occur two hours later, it’s hard to use typical behavioral strategies. There’s also the reality that typically, parents don’t take their children to nice places, so the children don’t actually have a social script of what is or isn’t appropriate behavior. For some reason, many people (particularly non-parents) think that you can simply explain the situation to a child and they will somehow figure out what is appropriate. Sometimes that can work, but it’s rare. If you have something in your routine that you can equate behavior too (For instance, if you go to a liturgical church every week and you have worked on behavior there, you can say, “I expect you to use your church manners here.”), then it provides a bit of a script that you can feed on. If you don’t have such a thing in your routine though, you can’t simply say ‘Sit still and don’t talk’ since there is no real script for that situation that they can use.
My recommendation for parents is that they actually go to safe places to practice those social skills. I mentioned churches and church functions just because that’s where we take ours to work on social skills. They’re nice because even if they act up, churches usually (though not always) love having kids present, so you get lots of free passes. They also tend to have mixed ages functions like dinners, teas, book clubs, concerts and plays that model appropriate behavior at different life stages and different types of social events and the fact that you essentially get a free pass for misbehavior helps. You can say ‘Look at Jane, she’s only in fifth grade and see how she folds her napkin in her lap and uses an inside voice.’ or ‘Look at the teenagers, do you see how they are getting drink refills for the older people?’ It also helps that they get non-parental rewards from other people when they do well, “You are so well-behaved Johnny. What a delightful young man you’re turning into. We’re so glad you’re here.” I don’t want to imply that churches are the only places to get those experiences, there are other mixed age social groups out there, but they happen to be the one that we use to good (though not perfect) effect.
