I’ve gone to a lot of restaurants in my life – hell, I used to eat out something like 3-4 nights a week for a few years in my 20s – and I didn’t find screaming children common at all. I can’t even remember any particularly horrifying experiences.
Now, maybe I’m less sensitive than some, but I don’t have kids, and I don’t really like ill behaved kids or high pitched screams.
It could be my restaurant selection/expectations. If I’m at a pizza restaurant with arcade games in it, a Denny’s or an Old Country Buffet, I would expect a little rambunctiousness. Generally though, I prefer ethnic restaurants, cafes, and that sort of thing, which doesn’t appeal as much to families. When I travel, I tend to not go to resorts or amusement parks or other family destinations. You still see kids around, but not as many, so you don’t have as many chances to get a particularly bad one.
I don’t know, but I tend to think a few people on the Dope are just slightly curmudgeonly at times and that one or two times when some asshole parents didn’t step in leap out in their minds as this terrible epidemic. I just don’t see it as a big problem. Like most kids, I was expected not to be a hellion in restaurants, but I’m sure every kid of my generation didn’t get parented right, just like today.
Maybe it’s the area of the country, too. Iowa tends not to be too full of self-involved assholes, even in the urbanized parts. I don’t tend to see the other rudeness ‘epidemics’ like people texting all during the movie or otherwise being oblivious around here. But I also tend not to sweat the small stuff.
Like pbbth, I live in NYC and have a toddler, and we go out to restaurants a lot.
This makes me wonder if this is part of the issue - going to a restaurant isn’t that big a deal to my kid, in the sense that it’s not a crazy derivation from routine. Maybe some of the kids who are acting up in restaurants are with families who choose not to eat out very often, and so for that kid, it’s a wild new experience with tons of unexpected stimulation.
I eat out at least as much as pbbth, and I know I’ve been annoyed with uncontrolled Devil’s Spawn. But if I had to name a specific instance, I couldn’t. I’ve been paying more attention to it in the last few years and what I mostly found is responsible parents. Or no kids at all.
I guess I mostly go to places that don’t draw a lot of kids. The couple of places that do, the kids are generally really well-behaved.
Teenagers are another story. They don’t run around, but they can get pretty loud. This tends to be at places that they can afford. I’m looking at you, TGIF and Mel’s.
Well there’s your answer…you rarely go to restaurants. Since you’re an adult with no kids in tow, who rarely goes to restaurants, and on vacation, you probably do not choose Denny’s or Applebees when you go to a restaurant. Are there even toddlers at the restaurants you visit? Think hard - it’s probably been 6 months since you’ve been.
No. However, the substantial minority of occasions where badly behaving kids and their clueless parents cause problems are quite memorable.
When your attempt at a quiet dinner out is being ruined by shrieking kids or children running around the restaurant, “it usually isn’t this bad” doesn’t cut it.
It should be embarassing, but to many parents who apparently tolerate the same or worse behavior at home, no embarrassment is evident. Ditto for loud and boorish behavior by parents and their cellphones.
See previous statement for a possible explanation.
I live above a restaurant with an outdoor deck that is a popular spot for people with children (kind of a high rent Chili’s clone), and I can confirm that on any given weekend day there are at least two or three children having uncontrolled meltdowns or behaving as if the deck were a playground (jumping up and down, screaming at the top of their lungs, climbing the railings, standing on the tables, et cetera) with the parents doing absolutely nothing to attempt to limit or mitigate the behavior. I also often see families out on the deck well past 9 or 10 pm with children that are clearly past any reasonable bedtime and the inevitable temper tantrum that comes with being exhausted.
As to the question of whether this is an age old problem or a new phenomenon I do not have the objective history to assess other than to recall that as a child I remember parents being asked by waitrons or managers to remove their misbehaving children and being warned by my parents that the same would happen if I misbehaved. Since going out to eat meant eating foods that I would not get at home (French fries, ice cream, et cetera) I made every effort not to misbehave despite not being an otherwise remarkably well-mannered child. I have not seen anyone being asked to remove their children for misbehavior in the last twenty years. Such behavior, like talking in the theatre, has become a new baseline that isn’t even perceived as being in any way wrong or exceptional.
It is tempting to blame poor parenting, and certainly keeping young children out well past bedtime falls in that category, but I’m equally inclined to blame the poor quality and obscene sugar content of food that is provided. As a child I recall being alotted only a small soft drink (probably 8 oz) and having my food selection dictated by my parents. I don’t think restaurants even provide child-sized beverages anymore, and every time I see some four year old downing a 24 oz soda I know I can count the minutes on my fingers before the inevitable sugar crash and resulting tantrum. Anectodotaly I’ve notices that the children of friends who careful control their children’s food choices (e.g. no sodas, moderate portions with vegetables, et cetera) tend to have much better behaved children.
To be fair, I also see a lot of adults behaving in ways that would also have been unacceptable twenty or thirty years ago, e.g. conversing in a constant stream of audible vulgarity, screaming/whistling across the restaurant, watching what are clearly pornographic videos on their smartphones, et cetera. So I think it is less a problem with small children specifically than just a greater tolerance for general rudeness among the population.
I eat dinner out a few times a month, and I’ve only had one bad children experience in my life that I can remember. (It was at the dinner following my mother’s memorial service, which also might be why it bothered me enough to remember.) My family ate at an upscale restaurant and the table across from ours in the corner had three rambunctious young children and one crying baby.
That’s the whole story. No one dumped food on us or tried to sit on our tables or grabbed the food from our plates…they were just really loud, and we were already emotionally tense.
One reason is to know the local restaurants so you know where to take your out-of-town guests.
I can tell you that El Trinquete is great if we have guests who’ll appreciate fine dining but not for a family with kids or for a group with someone very large or with a claustrophobe: they have only half a dozen tables and your typical linebacker would not be able to walk between them, and there’s no natural lighting at all. That’s information I wouldn’t have gotten from a review. I can also tell you that any of the restaurants in the town where I live (El Trinquete is in another one nearby) does offer children’s options, even though they’re not listed in their menus: rather than list them, they’ve got the makings for several dishes which most kids like. Again, not something you’re likely to find out from a review.
I eat at at least 3 or 4 times a week! Even when I was a kid, we ate out several times a week. My family worked long hours and wasn’t particularly big on cooking, and it we felt our time was better spent enjoying time as a family than doing a lot of shopping, prep, and cleanup.
I’ve never seen it, either. I don’t eat out much these days, but I used to.
My own daughter was always easily distracted by crayons and toys - I took our own; as a baby, she also loved to play with ice cubes - and the other kids I’ve shared a table with were similar.
However, last weekend my friend’s baby made a mess while eating (smears of food on the table) and the new waitress was pissed off, but gave us no napkins and we couldn’t find any in the cafe, on the counter where they usually are, to clean up with, and no staff were around to ask for them. I don’t doubt she’s now remembered as a rambunctious child. Sad, given that the other staff in there are fond enough of my daughter to ask how she’s doing in school.
I think so :nodding: Like I said upthread, going out to eat wasn’t a big deal to me as a kid because we did it often. If a kid isn’t used to it, however, it’s a whole other story.
Not every time, but it happens often enough to be annoying as hell. Last time we encountered it was about three weeks ago. Family was seated about 5 minutes after we were, youngest thing proceed to melt down about a minute later. Parent’s couldn’t shut him up and wouldn’t take him outside. We wound up cancelling our order and going somewhere else, and we told the manager why we were.
There’s a local brewpub that hosts a weekly running club. One couple brings their two young daughters and pushes them in a stroller. After, everyone lingers inside or outside the pub to socialize. Their two kids can get pretty spun up and shrieky after the run/walk, but my friend and I usually just shrug our shoulders and bear it, or go inside/outside 'till they quiet down.
But last week my friend snapped and told one of the daughters to quiet down, this isn’t a playground, etc. Then a friend of the family pulled him aside and told him she was autistic. Yeah, pretty awkward. I think the mother stayed home this week with the autistic daughter while Dad and other daughter came to the run. My friend still feels bad, but it’s past the point in his opinion to apologize to the Dad. Friend has two young kids of his own, so he’s exposed to more shrieking than I am.
Probably, coincidentally enough, at right about the time the particular adults claimining kids are uncontrolled hellions these days happened to be a kid themselves - that would be my guess.
We eat out with baby smaje (just over 2 years old) every month or so, and she is usually picture perfect – but we focus a lot of our attention on her, help her draw on the placemats, amuse her with toys and books, help her drink her drink (kid-sized cup with a lid and a straw – straws are tough!). Mr. smaje and I know that when we go out to eat with her, it’s not gonna be the same as the two of us going out on a dinner date by ourselves.
We went out to eat *once *with our neighbors and their two young boys. Just once. Once was all we needed. While baby smaje sat in her highchair and cooed and gurgled, their 4-year old boy got up from his chair, ran around the restaurant, bumped into waiters carrying heavy trays laden with hot, hot plates, and eventually was nowhere to be seen. Mr. smaje commented that he hadn’t seen the little devil in a while, and the dad casually said, “Oh, I think he ran outside.”
INTO THE PARKING LOT???
My husband stood up and marched outside, found the kid (WHO HAD RUN INTO THE PARKING LOT) and brought him back. His parents were like, “Oh, thanks.”
These are the parents who give the rest of us a bad name. You run into parents like this with kids like that, and you’re going to assume that all parents are like that. But some of us aren’t. Some of us just want to get out of the house, not have to do any dishes, and teach our kids how to behave in public. That’s why I love that story that’s been circulating this week about the family who got a “well-behaved kids” discount on the bill at some restaurant!
