Children and Restaurants
For God's sake people, if your children cannot behave themselves at a restaurant, leave them at home!
A five-year-old should be able to sit through a meal without:
1. Screaming at the top of his/her lungs for no reason.
2. Walking on the booth seats.
3. Eating Helen Keller style from everybody else's plates. (Even Helen Keller was not allowed to do that.)
4. Bothering people who are sitting at other tables - including not taking food from stranger's plates.
The parent(s) of said child should:
1. Do some parenting - which means telling them to sit down, be quiet and eat their own meal!
2. Leave the restaurant (with doggy-bag if necessary) if they cannot control their children.
3. Apologize to people at other tables who have had their food man-handled by their dirty little children.
These parents should not:
1. Sit serenely eating their own meal totally oblivious to what their children are doing.
2. Give other patrons a dirty look when they tell the child in question to keep his hands off their plate.
A five-year-old should be able to sit through a meal without:
1. Screaming at the top of his/her lungs for no reason.
2. Walking on the booth seats.
3. Eating Helen Keller style from everybody else's plates. (Even Helen Keller was not allowed to do that.)
4. Bothering people who are sitting at other tables - including not taking food from stranger's plates.
The parent(s) of said child should:
1. Do some parenting - which means telling them to sit down, be quiet and eat their own meal!
2. Leave the restaurant (with doggy-bag if necessary) if they cannot control their children.
3. Apologize to people at other tables who have had their food man-handled by their dirty little children.
These parents should not:
1. Sit serenely eating their own meal totally oblivious to what their children are doing.
2. Give other patrons a dirty look when they tell the child in question to keep his hands off their plate.
1 Comments:
I'm the parent of a young child, and I've been regularly training him in restaurant etiquette since he was five weeks old. So I very much agree with what you've written. The kid TOUCHED YOUR FOOD? That is NASTY. If my kid did that, I would have been mortified, and not only would I have punished my kid as firmly as possible, I would have offered to pay for the food he'd soiled.
The worst instance of restaurant parenting I've encountered was on my very first Mother's Day. My 4 month old was asleep in his car seat, and a 2 year old girl at the next table was acting up and screaming. After several minutes of the parents ignoring the behavior, I politely asked them if they could do something, because my son had woken up and was upset at the noise. "You're bothering the baby," said the dad, while the mom looked in the opposite direction. The kid then got out of her chair, leaned over into my son's face, and screamed as loudly as she could. The parents did... nothing. I was the one who had to scoop up my now-crying child, and take him outside so he wouldn't upset other diners. While I bounce-walked in front of the restaurant, it occured to me that maybe, just maybe, it should have been the little girl's parents who should have gone into self-imposed exile outside of the restaurant. Even then, I knew that a mother's duties don't stop when she sits down to eat a meal, not even on Mother's Day!
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