I should also get extra food at any restaurant that has a “kids eat free” deal!
You heard him, get the fuck over it. No more pointless discussions on the internet. :rolleyes:
Thank you for your compliance.
All of this “should” or “should not” is ridiculous.
People “should” behave a certain way, and thus “should not” be rewarded or recognized for simply doing what they “should” do.
Wah, it’s not fair, it’s benefiting someone else and not me. I behaved myself and didn’t get a discount!
Seriously . . . this is the non-issue of all non-issues.
And, if it’s really so horrible, then probably their business will suffer until they disallow such wanton and judgmental discounts.
I think the ‘reward’ should go to the kids not the parents.
So yeah, give the little guys some ice cream but don’t bother with the four dollar discount.
If they’re going to offer a discount for good behavior, they should probably clearly state the conditions for the discount, including child age, what constitutes good and bad behavior, etc…
It’s an awfully subjective thing- some people would consider anything other than totally silent children to be badly behaved, and others give a lot more latitude. Others would exempt infants and younger toddlers, and others wouldn’t.
My vote would be to give parents who take the misbehaving kids outside or otherwise deal with the problem the discount, even if their kids were a little loud at first, but parents who let their kids run rampant through the restaurant, or ignore them while the scream at the top of their lungs shouldn’t get it. It’s not so much the behavior in an absolute sense, it’s the parental response that’s important in this case. I’ve spent many a restaurant meal either eating alone because my wife’s outside with the larva, or eating my part at home, because I was outside with him when he was acting up.
no soup for you.
People pay good money to eat out. If kids are not mature enough to eat out then it’s the fault of the parent if the people around them are disturbed by the ruckus. There are options available such as removing the child to the car until they settle down or getting the food as take out.
The alternative to the reward system is a manager asking the parents of noisy children to leave or banning children outright.
I have no idea what this even means.
That’s the way we roll at any restaurant. If they kids behave, they get dessert. No good behaviour, no dessert (or worse depending on the level of misbehaviour).
I think it is nice for the kids to get a treat for being so well behaved. Especially for young ones, it is a pretty hard skill to learn.
I used to. Then I found out that it was false advertising as the meals weren’t made with actual kids. I mean, that’s like finding out the lamb curry was really goat!
I guess it depends on the kid. My kid is three and a half, we’ve been taking her to our local child-friendly restaurant for at least a year (not a fast-food joint - just a really good local place that’s informal during the day and steps it up a notch at night), and she *loves *it. I’m not sure why - possibly because the food really is great and this kid loves her food, possibly because of the sense of occasion? She has to sit in her chair and eat like a civilised human at home, too, so the restaurant isn’t that much more restrictive.
We try never to use food as a reward, so the good-kid-ice-cream thing wouldn’t work for us. I’d be pissed off if the waiter gave her a serving of ice cream I hadn’t ordered. Not because of the judgement on my child-raising skills - the head waiter actually has told us before that she’s really well-behaved, and it never occurred to me to be offended, or to be naything other than pleased. But there are all kinds of reasons why parents might not want their kids given ice cream, ranging from allergies to our ‘food is not a reward’ thing.
ETA: I don’t think that parents who do use food as a reward are Doing It Wrong or anything. I just don’t want to do it.
If you think people don’t judge you and your kids when you’re out in public, I want some of the tea you drink.
The truth of you being insulted by the impression you give people is; sometimes the truth hurts.
I’ve been saying for years that we really need non-child sections in restaurants, especially ‘better’ ones. Perhaps it’s time to give the discounts to the other patrons who have to put up with the little darlings.
As a small child, I often went to restaurants with my parents—and you’d better BELIEVE I was well-behaved—after least, after the first time. (grin)
Never said that, but thanks anyway. Not sure what the tea comment implies.
If the restaurant, as a matter of policy, judged my kids’ behavior in order to give a reward, I just would find it a bit intrusive. If you don’t, then that’s fine too. If you judge my kids’ behavior, more power to you. Don’t mind, don’t care. If you come to my table, tell me my kids met your behavior requirements and you toss 4 bucks on my table, the two words out of my mouth won’t be thank you.
This doesn’t sound intrusive, though; it sounds like you don’t know anything about the discount until you see the bill, and see that you received the Good Kids discount. My take on it is that they don’t say anything about it, just give it to people who have made an effort to keep their kids under control without realizing that there was something in it for them if they did.
Brilliant.
I thought it was just me.
As a parent I totally agree with you for the most part (not the banning of all kids outright, though).
We started taking the Kiddo to restaurants from a very small age. We made sure he wasn’t too tired, or too hungry. We brought small quiet toys or paper and crayons with us in case the wait was longer than expected. If he was tired or cranky or whatever, we just didn’t go to a restaurant. We drove through fast food if we were out or we just stayed home. We never had a negative restaurant outing. I never felt like I needed some reward for having a well behaved child. Though it was really nice and totally unexpected when the wait staff at Roy’s at Pebble Beach brought our son (18 mos old at the time) a pack of 24 crayons and a Del Monte Forest coloring book (presumably from the hotel gift shop).
As I posted on Reddit, it’s inevitable that some parents who don’t get the discount will accuse the restaurant of discrimination due to race, religion, or some other factor.
In the cases where waitstaff or store clerks have wanted to reward my kids with something, they have always asked my permission first, making sure that the kids can’t hear in case I say no.
I appreciate the chance to grant or deny permission, but I can’t see being offended. That, to me, is along the lines of, “How dare you hold the door open for me? I have arms that work!” No good deed goes unpunished.
And it’s inevitable that there will be discrimination. Racial stereotyping is deeply imbedded in the food service industry (look up conversations on “Canadians”) and there is no doubt that to some wait staff, what is “adorably precocious” in, say, a white child, will be interpreted as “loud and inappropriate” when done by a child of another race.