I mean really. For fucks sake. Do you encounter screaming asshole kids every time you go to a restaurant? (See here.)
Parents usually have control of their kids, don’t they? It’s embarrassing as hell if your kids are acting up in public.
I’ve never had a bad experience with other people’s kids in restaurants at all, ever. The few times my own kids started anything they were pulled aside and told in no uncertain terms that that’s not how you behave in a restaurant.
How pandemic is this assholish “kids in restaurant” phenomenon anyway?
We don’t eat out a whole lot now, but we did when the kids were younger, and I don’t ever recall being annoyed by other people’s kids.
I don’t encounter it too often, but my neighborhood doesn’t have many kids in it. The main times I’ve encountered the loud screaming kids stereotype are when the kids are with a large group, usually after 9 PM at night. Typically they’re with a family that has just gotten out of an event. The kids aren’t used to being up that late.
It happens. We had friends that we couldn’t go out to restaurants with anymore because their kids were so badly behaved, and they were starting to drag our kids into the same behavior. And I am not any kind of stick up the ass dad either. These kids were throwing food, running around the restaurant, and literally screaming. Haven’t seen them in years, never liked the mom anyway.
I have had a brat dump mashed potatoes and gravy down the back of my neck. No way it was an accident, he had to stand up, pick up the little side bowl of smashies, turn and dump.
I have had a kid sit sideways and drum on the seat back and seat at a diner, effectively drumming my back.
I have seen kids running laps around the center set of tables in a Dennys, screaming at the tops of their little lungs with the womb unit ignoring them and having her own lunch and conversation with someone else.
I think so, yes. It’s mostly confirmation bias, for two reasons. One is that you literally don’t see or hear a quiet infant sleeping in the carseat under the table, or a short child sitting quietly in a high backed booth. The second is that, even when you do notice kids, you’re far likelier to remember negative experiences than positive ones. That’s just science.
I can recall five or six real horror stories with terrible children in restaurants. I remember a couple of particularly adorable excellent ones (napkins in laps, “excuse me” to waitstaff, “please pass the salt, Mother Dearest” at the table) because they were times I interacted with the kids to compliment them on their Restaurant Manners. I cannot begin to guess how many fair to good ones I’ve seen, because there’s nothing much to remember.
I don’t eat out a lot, and I suspect that the restaurants I do patronize are not popular with kids/families. So it’s very rare that I see kids in restaurants at all, let alone behavior problems.
I have only ever seen it at family chain type restaurants, but I have seen it. We don’t go places like that very often. Even when Kiddo was young we generally chose nicer restaurants to go to. Nicer restaurants tend to have patrons who teach their kids nicer manners. A better experience for kids and adults alike.
I think a lot of it is confirmation bias. Since we’ve had the kidlet we’ve been out to probably 30 restaurants with her and Monday night was the first time she has ever done anything worse than smile and wave. She cried for about 30 seconds (which, I’ll grant you, seems like a long time when there is a crying baby) out of almost 3 hours at the restaurant and I can almost guarantee you there were people that left that night complaining that we let our brat squall the whole evening. If you walk into a restaurant expecting a kid to ruin your night I bet you’ll be right.
When you go to a place like Red Robin (burger joint), you find yourself in a place basically like Chuck E. Cheese on LSD. It’s no surprise that you are going to also find screaming, rambunctious little kids in a place like that too.
I wouldn’t know if it were a problem because, though I only dine at family-friendly restaurants, I don’t notice it if other people’s kids cry or are bad. Unless they are bad in a funny way. I try to not encourage them too obviously, though.
May I hijack my own thread temporarily? You’ve been to 30 restaurants and your child is still a baby? I’m gobsmacked. I don’t think I’ve eaten out in 30 restaurants in the last 10 years.
Yeah, pretty much. We live in NYC and have about 50,000 fabulous restaurants to choose from so, though we have our favorite places that we use as go-to restaurants for bringing people to when they visit and such, we tend to try new places pretty regularly. We have what we refer to as our “NYC Bucket List” of places to go, restaurants to try, shows to see, etc. and we’re trying to get as much of it done as possible since we know that it may not be feasible for us to raise a kid here. If we decide over the next year or two to move somewhere else I’d kick my own ass if I had missed all the awesome stuff the city has to offer when I had the opportunity.
Who said it WAS a pandemic? One thread and you exaggerate it like that? Come on. Take a deep breath and calm down.
The people around you appreciated it. Trust me on this.
My standard opinion on this is that if the parents are at least making some effort, I’m okay with that because those are children, not angels, and parenting is a hard job. Plus, even the best kids can have a bad day.
I don’t work in restaurants anymore, but in the grocery store I work at I assure you that you can hear at least one screaming child at any hour of day or night (and most of the time, at least 3-4).
I’m kid-friendly to say the least, but I’ve seen it a couple of times. Not very often, but once or twice, I guess. My nephew went a little nuts in Denny’s once. Frankly, it’s a Denny’s.
Yes, people blow it out of proportion. There’a a tendency to multiply everything by ten in an effort to get some traction out of one’s complaint.
A few years back we had a poster claim she - I think it was a she - had literally been run into at least a dozen or more times by kids with fully laden grocery carts hurtling down grocery store aisles. That is the literal sense of what was being claimed. I pointed out that if that really was true she would have been seriously injured several times, at least; if you clobber someone with a loaded grocery cart at full blast you’re going to injure them. You ain’t getting nailed by a full grocery cart twelve times and NOT go to the hospital a few times. No answer to that point was given. What I suspect happened is she got bumped twice, and the story grew with the telling.
That’s not been my experience. Parents seem blythfully ignorant of the children’s wild behavior.
The problem is not that the issue is overblown. If there are 5 tables in a large restaurant that have a child or two at it, and they are all behaved but 1 there is perceived problem. So generally speaking in that situation kids are well behaved but the 1 can still ruin your dining experience. Made all the worse because the parents usually just ignore it.