When Adorable Child (AC) was not quite two, Polimom started taking her to restaurants. I had several goals — not least of which was relief from cooking. Single parents are the chief cooks and bottle washers, and it gets tiresome.
But giving myself a break was a secondary goal. What I was actually doing was laying the groundwork for the future, when I would be able to return to the world of fine dining… which for a parent with kids means restaurants that serve something besides cheeseburgers or chicken nuggets, on tables covered with actual fabric.
Furthermore, I want AC to grow into an adult who could distinguish between the various forks and glasses, who knows that she should “lower her white flag” into her lap, and then retrieve it to wipe her lips (rather than using her sleeve). She also had to learn that counting how many green vs white vs pink wads of gum are stuck under our table (and then announcing her results) is not appropriate. (We’re still working on this one.)
Needless to say, AC was never, ever permitted to run around a restaurant, chasing other kids or screaming — much less to scale the walls:
In one Chicago community these tensions reached a boiling point when Dan McCauley, owner of a local cafe, A Taste of Heaven, decided he had had enough of children using his establishment as a playground.
One afternoon, McCauley said, he caught a pair of kids scaling the walls of his restaurant while their parents sat nearby. As the group was leaving, McCauley confronted Julie Walsh, one of the supervising mothers, and told her that she and her children were no longer welcome in the cafe.
[snip]
The following morning McCauley posted a sign on the front door, thinking it would be a simple solution. It read: “Children of all ages have to behave and use their indoor voices when coming to A Taste of Heaven”
Speaking purely as a parent here, I applaud this cafe owner’s stance. It was hard, on both AC and Polimom, when I had to tell her, “No, you can’t get down from the table and chase those other kids” — to insist that she remain seated when other parents did not limit their heathens’ kids’ actions.
Civilizing young people is a slow, sometimes frustrating process, but it can be done. Children are high energy, curious, and loud; that doesn’t make them bad, or evil — but it can make them annoying in certain circumstances.
If Little Janey and Johnny can’t yet control themselves when you tell them, “No”, that’s not (necessarily) a reflection on them… and if they’re still tiny, that’s not a reflection on you, either. As parents, though, it is incumbent upon us to consider that they may not be ready for prime time, and that other diners are also paying for the privilege / relief / novelty of dining out.
Kids are kids; Unless you’re prepared to pay for the meals of those around you who don’t actually want to listen to them thunder about the room or scream because the food’s not served yet and they’re hungry, mom!, take them somewhere that is set up to let them behave that way… and slowly work your way up to ketchup from a bottle instead of packets. It can be done. I promise.
Maybe — just maybe — if parents could start telling their kids “no” in restaurants (and be listened to), they’d find the willpower to tell them no about other things, too. (Remind me to tell you about cellphones in fifth grade sometime. Sigh…)