Last night, my wife, 3 yeard old daughter Joanna and I we went down to the “Family Restaurant” in town for a bite to eat. It’s a fairly small place with the smoking and non-smoking sections divided by a low half-wall that you can see across. There were about 3 other couples in the non-smoking section with us and one group in the smoking section. As we were waiting for our food, Joanna (who is standing on top of the seat in the booth) points to a large man over in the smoking section and shouts: “HE’S SMOKING A CIGARRETTE! HE’S SMOKING A CIGARRETTE!” Of course, everybody in the restaurant looks at her, sees where she is pointing, and then looks at the smoker.
It gets worse.
We calmly tell Joanna that it is OK, he is over in the smoking section. She pauses for about 2 seconds, contemplating the situation. She then points at the man again and shouts: "HE’S GOT A BIG BELLY! HE’S GOT A BIG BELLY! Much shushing (and giggling by the other patrons) ensues and we finally got her quieted down.
At least the man did, in fact, have quite a large belly. I was too embarrassed to look and see what his reaction was.
The rest of the evening was spend with Joanna announcing to the rest of the restaurant what the status of the waitresses eye glasses was. “SHE’S GOT HER GLASSES ON!” and “WHY DOESN’T SHE HAVE HER GLASSES ON?!”
Now, why don’t you parents out there make me feel better by sharing your most emabarrassing kid moments!
Sorry. No kids here. I do however have a wonderful story about what we did to my mother.
One lovely Sunday morning, in the cathedral-like St. Dominic’s catholic church, my brother was passing the time during the reading of the gospel by “not-touching” me. You know, holding his finger milimeters in front of my face to annoy me but not actually coming in contact with skin. After much squirming to try to get away from him, he missed. He poked me dead in the eye. Now, being the good & lovely child I was I kept silent. My mother, on the other hand, had been monitering the progress of our game closely out of the corner of her eye. Reaching down the pew, she forcefully pinched a leg. My sister’s leg. My poor clueless, uninvolved sister. Who, upon being assaulted by my mother, let out an outraged shriek of “Why are you pinching me?!?” When the echos off the vaulted cathedral ceilings died down, Father Batts continued the service.
Well, we were out walking at Balboa Park a few months ago, when my 3 year old cried out, with her beautifully clear diction: “Look at that great big fat lady!”
To be fair, the lady in question was quite unusually large, and wearing a red sweatsuit, but…
Oh, I just remembered a really good one the manager of our apartment complex told us about. She has 5 kids (all grown now) and when they were in grade school and junior high they developed this schtick where they would lag behind her when they were out walking or shopping and all start acting like they were retarded. Apparently, they were very good at it and and could keep it up for quite a while before she noticed.
Hmmm, which one do you want? The time I broke my front teeth out on the skateboard? The time I almost hung myself playing with a rope in a tree? The time I crashed into the back of a motorhome while riding my bike? Or, the time I cut that big, juicy fart in front of the girl I had a crush on and cried?
Oh right, SouthernStyle. I’m sure you never did anything to make your parents cringe. And of course they kept you in the house in a large cardboard box until you were 21 and could be trusted to behave in public.
People who are that sensitive should stay home and play soothing music to themselves until they are ready to go out into the big bad world again.
Children will be children. That’s part of growing up. My problem is with the parents.
The first time the child yells out to the restaurant the child should have been admonished (or punished). It is extremely selfish of the parents to allow a 2 year old to dictate the atmosphere of an entire restaurant.
If you read the OP, you’ll see that she was admonished and quieted down. I wouldn’t “punish” a 3-year-old for stating the obvious, although I might try to explain that some things are not nice to say, even if true. It takes a while to learn that. I know a number of adults who haven’t mastered it yet.
And I still say that anybody put off their feed by comments about the waitress’s glasses at a family restaurant should be at home having warm milk and toast.
One of the women in our office had an extremely big baby, who unfortunately earned the nickname “porkchop.” I guess I relayed that tidbit at home, because we were at a wedding and I pointed out to my two year old that there was Cindy, and her baby was with her, my princess cried out “Cindy baby pork chop!”
The bride was surprised when the princess and I decided to watch the ceremony back in the vestibule.
Where is your “embarrasing kid moment”? Ohhhh, you thought this was the “restaurant pet peeves” thread and posted here by mistake. I see.
So how do you explain that last line?
Never fear, I’ll get back to the OP:
My son, and there’s a thousand excellent reasons he’s an only child, did the following:
Age 2 and a half, was behaving poorly in a store, I admonished him, and pointed out that if it continued, I’d have to tell “Santa” that he was being naughty. He said “I’ll tell him” then shouted - HEY SANTA I"M BEIN NAUGHTY"
several years later and many, many embarassing moments later, his English teacher had given the assignment "how does your family celebrate holidays?’ My son, at that point 13, told me what he wrote AFTER, of course, he’d already turned it in… “on New Years, we drink wine and eat cheese, and on the first day of spring, we shave the family goat and prepare for the ritual”. I didn’t know if Child Protective or ASPCA were coming first.
now, Beacher, before this thread gets highjacked anymore, let me share with you what I did with my son for dining pleasure (mine and every one elses). I had what we called, the “Ben be quiet bag” and in there were QUIET games, toys, coloring books, crayons etc, that ONLY came out on special occasions like restaurants where he’d have to sit quietly for a while. Worked wonders. I still, to this day, carry around a bag of rubbery toys for such times when some one else’s child is having an attack of the squirmy wormies, so I’ll offer some 20 cent toy to the parent to help distract the child. makes for a quiet dinner for me.
another alternative, frankly, is that once your child started acting out and wouldn’t stop, YOU could have left with your child. Learning experiences are always available. I DID in fact do this a couple of times (most notably in a movie), until my son was aware that outbursts in public were not going to get him anywhere good. This is NOT intended to be a put down of any sort for how you handled it, hey, you’re new at this. just a mention of an alternative.
good luck, as you can see from my two incidents (and trust me there were more), as they age, the level and intricacy of embarassment goes up exponentially.
. SouthernStyle hijacks thread and states personal displeasure regarding behavior in OP
. Cher3 hijacks thread and states personal displeasure with SouthernStyle
. lunapark hijacks thread and points out that SouthernStyle failed to honor OP. lunapark neglected to honor OP in pointing this out.
Seeing as it’s going to be tough for the thread to get back on track…
cher3,
By the time the kid had noticed the glasses the damage was already done. The OP stated that the kid had already pointed out the man’s big belly and that the poster was too embarrassed to look at the man.
The scene has degenerated enough that the PARENT is that embarrassed and allowed the child to continue to disrupt the other patrons.
Oh, that’s right… it was “cute”. Remind me to drop in on YOUR table unannounced and let’s see how quickly you call for the manager.
In my OP I put quotes around “Family Restaurant”, because that is actually the name of the place. That is sort of a code word to parents that your little ankle biters will be tolerated (encouraged even) as long as you don’t let them run wild.
Now, if the restaurant is a more upscale place for adults, I agree with you. Parents who bring babies/toddlers/preschoolers are rude and selfish.
As for “letting” her behave like that, you might notice in the OP that we did respond to her behavior in an appropriate way. When you have a 3 year old that is discovering the world, strict control of their behavior isn’t the objective. Correcting their mistakes is the objective
I apologize for leaving out my embarrasing moment in my first post. My parents were extremely strict, so i didn’t really have too many. However,…
I was about 6 and the whole family (aunts, uncles, grandparents et all) went out to dinner at Chi Chi’s (mexican restaurant). Well, i filled up on salsa and during the middle of the meal i started throwing up everywhere.
I mean everywhere. While my mother was cleaning me off in the bathroom the waiters/waitresses were moving all the people in our area to different section because it was so gross. So as you can see, my mother was horribly embarrassed.
I don’t usually resort to hijacks, but, hey, SS was threatening to turn my kids into poor helpless orphans if he didn’t approve of the subject and volume of their dinner conversations. If I held a lot of the adult conversations I hear in restaurants to that standard, well, let’s just say it would be a lot easier to get a table.
In payment, one more embarrassing kid story:
My daughter is very sociable and tried, even as a 2-year-old to hold up her end of a conversation. For a while, she developed a standard patter whenever someone greeted her, usually involving something that just happened to her, like “Hi, I’ve got new shoes,” or “Hi, I’ve got a baby brother.” For an excruciating couple of days, though, it was “Hi, I pooped on the potty.”
Ooops! Realized I made a goof in by last post when I said: “strict control of their behavior isn’t the objective” I meant to say that strict control of their behavior isn’t very realistic. Correcting their mistakes to control their future behavior is the idea.
Anyhow, I’ve got another quick one. Sometimes Joanna will behave perfectly, but then suddently blurt something out. Which is really pretty much what was happening last night at the restaurant. We were on vacation last month and standing in line to check out of a hotel. Joanna stood there quietly for nearly 10 minutes and then, without warning. pointed to the balding man standing in front of her and said “He doesn’t have much hair!” As in the restaurant, this let to much shushing and “that’s not a nice thing to say” instructions from my wife. To this, the man’s wife turned around and said: “Well it is the truth!”
It’s Thanksgiving. Almost the whole family is present (44 people). They are all holding hands and waiting on h_thur and baby_thur. h_thur slooooowwwly and carefully makes her way (with 2 week-old baby_thur in her arms) to the circle, clasps the hands of her neighbors, and bows her head. h_thur’s father delivers a moving Thanksgiving prayer, remembering to thank the good Lord for “our newest addition to the family”. Just before he delivers the final “Amen”, baby_thur lets rip the loudest, wettest, nastiest fart ever emmitted by any human, large or small.
h_thur is embarrassed and and at the same time, oddly proud, as she belts, “That’s my boy!” to her surprised relatives.
My 2 sisters where grocery shopping with my 4 yo niece the kid was in the cart and they were passing a group of people going down the isle the other direction when she suddenly says loudly, “You and mommy shouldn’t do drugs!” Flabbergasted they try and tell her that they don’t do drugs of course by now the other people are out of earshot when she says, “Ya Huh! Alcohol and cigaretts are drugs!”
