Leaving a 10 year old in charge of younger kids with plenty of food to eat on their own schedule is arguably better than letting a child go so long without food they totally lose it from hunger. And nobody’s accusing kbear of child abuse, despite his (her? its? I don’t keep up with these things) description of doing just exactly that, so I have to come down on the :dubious: side of this particular sidetrack.
My aunt is 76 and my mother has become her primary caregiver (although my aunt can still meander about her house, falling only now and then) because no one else in the family will do it (there are two other siblings available). She can apparently cook when she bothers to get up from the couch where she’s watching Mayberry). She feeds her dog a bite of her food, for every bite she has. So she’s got a sausage dog. A Chihuahua.
I love her to death, and she has given me many gifts over the years (I was the closest she had to a daughter since she couldn’t have children). But going to a restaurant with her is, well, not the greatest. The taking forever for her to use her walker (which she needs and which we have a placard for) is one thing. But she will sit and read the menu for ages, and always, ALWAYS, no matter where we are, ask if they have onion rings. Even if she’s been there a hundred times. She acts almost like a child but the thing is, we know she’s in there. She’s just doing it for attention. My mother has spent a lot of time with her and is convinced of this and I believe her. She’s been caught in lies.
We try to make sure she doesn’t disrupt anyone, and I’ve never seen a frustrated server. Mostly it’s we who are frustrated, trying to help her order so the server doesn’t have to die waiting ages for her order.
That’s a very modest proposal you’re making here. 
As you already know, this is out of line for this forum. Dial back the outrage and don’t make this kind of post in here again.
No warning, just a note.
I feel sorry for the people running the restaurant at times like this. Basically, they have two choices:
(1) Deal with the kids, and have those parents tell all their friends to never eat there, or
(2) Don’t deal with the kids, and have the folks at the next table tell all their friends never to eat there.
They just can’t win.
I don’t always agree with Seven, but in thios thread she happens to be spot on. I will not deny her the tittle of “genius” in this thread just because she said something I don’t agree with in another.
Kids being overly complained about is right. People just need to get the fuck over themselves.
Look, in the past people complained: “Ugh! People are smoking in this restaraunt. It’s making my clothes smell and it’s giving me cancer.”
The smokers rebutal to this complaint was: “Well, don’t go there then. Nobody is forcing you to.”
To which the non smoker would claim: “But, but… I have a god given RIGHT to go there dammit!” (So laws were past. Stripping away owners rights.)
So… with that frame of logic, I say parents of small children have a god given right to go out and eat just like anybody else does. And I promise, the screaming children wont give you ear cancer.
So.. there’s that.
No, I don’t think she’s “spot on” at all. The person starting this thread was bitching about something a kid DID DO. Most of her “Oh I’ll be witty and replace kid with old people, that’ll show them!” rant is about stuff old people MIGHT DO. MIGHT. Those are hardly the same thing. If she wants to start a thread about things she saw old people doing or colostomy bags flapping in the breeze she’s fully able to do that. That’s not what this thread is about at all.
Again, I am not here bitching about kids in restaurants and I also said that it is complained about too much, so please save your snide “screaming children won’t give you ear cancer” and your other gotchas for the people who are saying kids shouldn’t be taken out in public. As it is you’re preaching at someone who didn’t say anything like what you’re talking about.
I fully admit that I may have missed it, but are there people here really saying that kids shouldn’t be in restaurants or are they saying that parents should attempt to control their children? If it’s the former then those people need to get a grip, if it’s the latter then YES parents should attempt to control their children. Anyone who believes differently probably shouldn’t be a parent.
And to head off the angry parents: NO, I am not saying that you can always keep your kid quiet. Sometimes your kid is gonna scream. Sometimes your kid may bump a booth and jostle the person behind them. Sometimes your kid may spill something. Big deal. Most normal people realize this is part of every day life and don’t complain about it. I think what most people are bitching about are those people who let their children run wild like animals. Is it so horrible that those instances are mentioned in this thread? So intolerable that somewhere a child is being talked about that you must come in to freak out in this thread when you clearly saw what it was about before you wandered in?
No snark intended, but I honestly don’t understand why so many people rush in to get offended when a thread like this starts if their children don’t behave this way.
Um, yeah. Making up a ridiculous post that has no actual bearing with what anyone is actually saying just so you can brag about how much better you are than everyone else is far more condescending then saying that you shouldn’t be depending on the waitstaff at a restaurant to be raising your kids.
The restaurant can help you out if they want to, but there is absolutely no obligation. The idea that they are brainless for expecting you to be prepared enough to handle your own kids is ridiculous. The post that started all this acted like the waiters were idiots without allowing that they made any mistake at all.
And I’m the guy who, when we all went out as a group, used to sit with the kids so the grownups can talk, so there’s no way you can say I have a low tolerance to kids. Stop making up strawmen to belittle others.
EDIT: Because some people think I’m stupid: I’m talking about interpreting her post as being about children. Replacing children with old people is using a valid argumentative technique.
Forgive me for asking, but why didn’t one of you take the baby outside while the other finished breakfast, then switched off, so you could both finish your meal and get the baby out of a situation where a server actually decided to kick you out, especially since you were both half done eating?
Leaving Seven aside, I’m agreeing with you Sleeps. My snark was intended for people who get all pissy when they hear a child act up.
Alice The Goon would be a perfect example of what I’m talking about. I mean really? She expiriences this on a frequent basis? Puh-lease.
I’m trying to think back in my head when I’ve had to deal with this. I can only come up with one at a grocery store.
And I’m the father of two children. So when I go out to eat, it’s almost always at a family type restaurant.
100% agreed, but that’s a whole other thread. One that would belong in a hotter forum of flames.
Two come to mind for me right away.
-One time I had a kid yank my hair pretty hard from the next booth. It ended up being kind of funny because I had an awesome barrette in and she just thought it was pretty. Shocked the hell out of me when she did it, but her parents were pretty embarrassed. After the initial “WTF?” I laughed.
-Grocery store. You could tell the poor woman was trying to hurry as fast as she could. She was obviously trying to keep her kid quiet and entertained, but the kid was cranky. She was trying to hurry through the checkout. Maybe five minute of some pretty good screaming, but what should she have done? Left the store that close to being done? Like I said, I really don’t like being around kids but it boggles my mind that people feel she should have to hire a babysitter to go grocery shopping. What if she’s a single mom who is barely making ends meet? She should arrange a babysitter once a week to shop? Crazy talk.
Oh my god :rolleyes:
Only here would “Parents should make an effort to control their children in public places” be considered a controversial statement. And some people would get to the point of frothing at the mouth.
And more to the point, 50 years ago, etc. mothers were expected to stay home with children until they were school age while fathers went out and socialized (at homes, at clubs, at bars and restaurants) and on rare occasions, would go out with fathers while the children had a babysitter. Such occasions were noteworthy for the majority of people, though. The idea of a whole family going out of an evening was a rare, rare thing. The idea of a whole family going out without it being a planned occasion was a rare thing. The “family restaurant” wasn’t a common thing.
I really want to live in the world where everything happens according to plans, and schedules and intentions never go awry. I want to enjoy the utopia where traveling with a couple of small kids means never hitting a traffic jam, never taking a wrong turn in an unfamiliar location and having to renavigate, instantly finding a suitable restaurant near the hotel, never having a rest/gas stop take longer than planned, never getting that one hotel clerk that always drags check-ins out to 20 minute ordeals, and where the snacks are never left in the tote bag or the hotel room because who needs snacks when they’re at a restaurant.
There are a million little things that can happen day to day, let alone while traveling, that can push a small kid past their breaking point for hungry and overloaded. Sometimes the window from “okay but needing to eat” to “growling little horror show” is about five minutes long, and it’s not always possible to tell when that window will slam shut because children are people, not machines, and not pets. They’re not lesser beings. That’s all too often forgotten.
People tolerate – or often, outright accept, if tacitly – all manner of horrible public behavior from adults (unless they are visibly disabled) because it’s expeditious or merely easier than ever saying anything or expecting better.
It’s only children who we feel free to demand be constantly kept at heel, regardless of how implausible that demand may be. Tolerance is out the window, on the belief that children aren’t people who are worthy of it. And that’s a problem that needs some long and serious reflection.
We get “your kids are so well behaved” from other diners a lot. Most often when there’s screaming kids to compare/contrast to 
But we eat out a lot too so I guess it’s bound to happen some percentage of time anyhow. Our kids never scream or run around, though… when they were babies, OK, but we’d whisk them out of the restaurant until it was under control, or leave (sucks but sometimes not a lot of options). My son does tend to talk really loudly, but will quiet down if we point it out. They are FASCINATED by misbehaving kids, though… they look at other kids who are acting out as if they’re from another planet! But in the end, the most effective tools have been (a) never tolerating bad behavior at restaurants and (b) getting them Nintendo DSes so when they get bored they have something to do. Maybe they’re not fully engaged in the family discussion, but they sure aren’t bothering anyone else, either. That Nintendo, it’s good medicine!
The worst is the crying baby that seems inconsolable, and you can tell the parents are doing their best, taking the kid out, etc… sometimes it’s just a bad situation and I feel for them. But babies in public are a tricky thing all the way around.
Oh, but still, in the depths of my mind I really like the child-sized taser. Esp for the ones running in the aisles, next to my table. A little surreptitious “zap” as they ran by, have them hit the floor passed out? Heh!
I was wondering the same thing. Or ask them to put the food in to-go containers and eat in the car.
There are excellent points on both “sides” of this debate: children exist, and fuck anyone for acting like they don’t have exactly as much right as anyone else to be in a family restaurant. OTOH, parents always - ALWAYS, except in extremely contrived hypotheticals and airplanes - have control over the *location *of their child. Perhaps not the behavior, but the location. Kid acts up, kid does not get to stay at the table. Kid gets taken outside to stare at the sidewalk or kid gets taken to car and strapped into the car seat for safety while Mom stands outside the car and counts to 1000 in her head to calm down.
I’m not speaking from a hypothetical viewpoint here. I’m speaking as the mother of a willful child who was a willful toddler with whom I spent several afternoons standing outside restaurants. It took several lessons, but eventually she learned that acting up in a restaurant led to very boring and not-fun results, and she stopped acting up in restaurants! She’s not an idiot. And yes, now she’s a literal pinky-up tea drinker who knows how she’s expected to behave in a restaurant. Amazing how that happens.
You do not know the old people I know. You know, the ones who refuse to get hearing aids because “that’s for old people!”, who wear twenty-three layers of clothing when it’s 24ºC outside and then complain they’re too hot but don’t want to take the coat off so they take one of the sweaters off without removing the coat, with their woolly scarf jumping up and down, occasionally elbowing the person behind them…
Apparently neither 71 nor 98, to cite the two examples closest to me, counts as old.
That said, since Grandma started eating with her hands we only buy her finger foods outside the house, and when Mom does things which would not be acceptable in any civilized setting we point it out and make her stop it (threats of “either you eat like a human being or you can get your husband to take you out next” work - Dad is slightly deceased btw). I’d say “just like with the Nephews”, only these two are better behaved.
So anyway, I was at this fancy restaurant the other night trying to enjoy a nice meal and there was this Asian couple at the next table with a chicken, of all things, and the chicken just kept making noise and making noise and there I was, trying to enjoy my arugula and parmesan salad with a nice raspberry vinegrette in peace and the noise just went on and on and on until eventually I just snapped at them and screamed “Would you shut that chicken up?!?” Only - heh, funny story - it turns out it wasn’t actually a chicken and…well, let’s just say the evening didn’t end well.
I don’t understand how these threads always get derailed. But for the record:
I am certainly not asking you never to take your children out.
I understand children have meltdowns sometimes.
I also understand that a child happily eating at his table, talking in his baby talk, is a beautiful state of affairs.
But, the point I came in to complain about in the first place, was a child running through the restaurant. A little one, maybe 3. You cannot see those little tykes when you have a tray full of glasses, and this was a buffet, so plenty of dangerous things about.
All I ask is that you be proactive about your kids. You made them, didn’t you? Yet people like even sven always take this to mean I never want to see your kids, ever. No, I’d rather just not have to dodge them running on the way to the bathroom!
The poor excluded middle always gets, well, excluded, and we’re left the extremes.
This thread just took a turn for the reasonable 
Really the complaints earlier weren’t about children they’re about parents. Parents who, for whatever reason, aren’t parenting their children at that particular moment.
Sometimes it’s just an overwhelmed parent who hasn’t considered every option but in my experience, most of the children who annoy me in public are accompanied by a caregiver who is paying zero attention to them. I am a big believer in the benign neglect parenting philosophy but rarely in situations where they have nothing to distract themselves with and never when they’re misbehaving.
There are tons of great suggestions for parents in this thread and if you get beyond the outrage to learn from them it would make your lives easier too.
I don’t think we’ve landed in derailed territory yet, but since this is a topic positively fraught with opinions, I’m moving it to IMHO from MPSIMS.