Banning Children in Restaurants

DJ, I love you darling, but you're wrong when you say it's all the parents' fault. It's not always. I agree it is in many cases, but not always.

My daughter, 5, has always been taught how to behave in a restaurant. She's always being told to be more polite. She is always being corrected and taught. She still acts out. Not for lack of discipline. She gets disciplined. Frequently. I know I'm a good, attentive mother, but sometimes kids are obstinate and choose not to behave. With my daughter, often times, the consequences do not phase her. She doesn't UNDERSTAND what's happening. It's compartmentalized into a part of her brain that just phases out and she looks at me blankly. less

Understood and well put. I obviously don't know the solution and am merely stating how it affects me personally and some ideas I had. It's hard to take everything into consideration, especially when I am only 21 years old and do not have children myself. I hope you realize nothing I said was meant to be offensive I can't know everything parents go through so it's hard to know what will and won't work since I can't possibly know how both sides really feel unless I am told like the opinions and ideas posted here. It's not something that's easily solved or can be seen in black and white, that's why it's controversial. It just sucks that so many people do see it as a black and white issues and do things like ban children under a certain age. I mean at a super fancy restaurant I can understand, but otherwise it's just not right and it doesn't solve the problem.

The after 8pm or whatever time rule might be an interesting idea. Most children are in bed by a certain time I assume, so perhaps something like that would be more effective? less

I can see both sides of this coin and can only say that when my kids were/are being loud, I took care of the problem, sometimes at the table, sometimes outside. Whether I come back in depends on how my kid reacts. I can tell you 99% of the time we go back in and all is well. Call me old fashion but I am the parent and they WILL listen to me, one way or the other. Oh ya, never had to lay a hand on my kids to get them to behave.

I do understand that not all parents have kids that are so easily controlled, to them I send hugs and love.

It is the parents that let there kids do anything they want that I have a problem with.

Should kids be banned from restaurants? I would say it depends on the restaurant. Furthermore, the ban should be on anyone, parent, kid, teenager etc.! I have left due to adults more than kids. less

Understood and well put. I obviously don't know the solution and am merely stating how it affects me personally and some ideas I had. It's hard to take everything into consideration, especially when I am only 21 years old and do not have children myself. I hope you realize nothing I said was meant to be offensive I can't know everything parents go through so it's hard to know what will and won't work since I can't possibly know how both sides really feel unless I am told like the opinions and ideas posted here. It's not something that's easily solved or can be seen in black and white, that's why it's controversial. It just sucks that so many people do see it as a black and white issues and do things like ban children under a certain age. I mean at a super fancy restaurant I can understand, but otherwise it's just not right and it doesn't solve the problem.

The after 8pm or whatever time rule might be an interesting idea. Most children are in bed by a certain time I assume, so perhaps something like that would be more effective? less

I'm not offended.

As a parent, I can tell you, that NEVER in my RIGHT mind would I take a child into a fine dining restaurant. NEVER. EVER. EVER. The idea seems insane to me. Hell, my kids won't eat much unless it has ketchup on it.

My POV, if there's no Kid Menu, my kid shouldn't eat there. If you give my kids crayons and a special menu, then they're welcome and we WILL eat there. less

it would only work if it wasn't a hard and fast rule, my son is up till 1-2am these days, which is an improvement with medication he takes nightly, he used to be up until 5-7am. So you can just imagine the times we are going out to a restaurant, granted we haven't been in a really nice restaurant since our honeymoon lol but we have been to quite a few chains who are not child friendly and will give you attitude even when your kid is being well behaved. We are usually found at red robin or dennys, thankfully our local ones know us and love our son. less

I said it "up to the figure of 90% of the time the parents' fault" in some way or another. In all my history in retail and service very, very few of the public scenes caused with kids being overly loud were because parents failed to care and step in (neglect) or that the parents were actually being abusive (in which case they were reported).

I just was trying to say that all kids under a certain age shouldn't be assumed that they can't behave and be banned from a location. Age is rarely a factor is how well the child behaves. And I definitely understand that not being able to take your kids into establishments to enjoy a meal can completely disenfranchise parents as a group.

And BBW, I love you too, but I think you're coming off a bit aggressive. I think many are just interested in thinking out loud about the offered topic out of curious interest and then reading the posts afterward and seeing things others offered up that they didn't think about beforehand and finding it quite enlightening to learn about others' views (<---Me).


I do think though that some level of expectation should be made to people bringing in children into businesses that they are responsible for the behavior of the kids. If they don't try to prevent or fix any tantrums (in whatever way is best for the parent and child, as each case is very unique and individual) then all that will happen is the business will lose revenue through customers deciding not to handle the stress of others' kids. The business could fail or merely beyond a spot for other parents with loud children, therefore becoming almost segregated through elimination. Either way is not good for anyone involved. Mere personal responsibility on the parents' part and a little patience for the rest will go a long way and no one will need to be banned from anywhere. less

Sorry, I don't mean to come off as aggressive. I did point out in my initial comment that it is a personal topic for me.

I also agreed that it in many cases it is the parent's neglect, but at the same time, I don't think it's most cases even. I think that there are a lot of parents out there who have had their last nerve tread on hours before you encounter them and their ability to emotionally cope with the situation has been stomped into the ground. There are days when I have tried to be patient, understanding, stern, and loving all at once just to have it go to hell in a handbasket. There are days where I can literally be found in tears. Or days where as soon as Mr gets home from work, I go and shower and walk out the door. But there are days like that where I HAVE to go and run errands. I have no choice in that matter. less

But removing your children doesn't always help. I realize that you're upset, but I am too, and so is my child. In situations like HHSM, where the child is autistic, any interaction with the child's tantrum just escalates it. The same is true in my 5 year old. If she's about to throw a tantrum, she cannot be disciplined in the moment. It has absolutely no bearing on her. She doesn't GET it. All she knows is she's unhappy and now her parents are yelling at her. I've had a simple "go to your room to cool down" turn into a full-blown episode complete with her becoming violent, and I am just simply trying to get her up the stairs.

I reiterate, I'm NEVER violent with my children. This is not learned from me, or her caregivers. This is how she reacts to situations where she feels out of control.

Us who have children could, in the same spirit, ask you to only go places where the minimum age requirement is 21. In other words, go to a club or a bar if you don't want to be around children. What? You don't want to be told where you can and cannot shop or eat? Well, neither do we. less

Hoofa, this is a difficult question. Let's start with what I know (which is typically best). I work in an organic grocery store dealing with customers all day. We get a fine mix of people from people on food stamps to wannabe socialites spending upwards of $900 on organic recycled paper towels. So it stands to reason that somewhere in that mix, there's going to be a screaming child on mama’s arm in there right? Right.
So what is a fellow customer, much less an employee supposed to do when you can hear Junior from 3 aisles over? Well, with how things are in the US anyway, you can’t really do anything nor should you. You can’t just take that baby from the mama’s arms and use that soothing technique Memaw taught you (hellooo angry Officer!) and you can’t berate the mother for something she can’t control. What’s more, how do you know why she has the baby with her or not? Maybe she couldn’t get/afford a babysitter and maybe, Junior was sleeping just fine and she thought “just a couple items, just a couple items…”. But in terms of restaurants/grocery stores/anywhere really, there is a fine limit on how much people are willing to listen and that is what parents and non-parents need to respect and something I’ve seen degrade over time.
If Junior has decided it’s time to channel Satan and run around screaming at the top of his lungs then yes – it’s time for a time out. Outside. From everyone else. If Junior is fussy but otherwise not very disruptive, then no, it really shouldn’t be a problem. Once we enter full blown bawling, then this is also the time to step out and try some of Memaw’s techniques. Some people are more sensitive to fussy infants perhaps and I say good for you. You’ll save on baby monitors one day. But as long as the child isn’t running around and/or screaming, it really isn’t the place of you to decide how mom/dad is going to handle it. Once we enter the land of screaming induced migraines for more than a couple minutes, then it might be time for management to step in if mom and dad are too engrossed in their phones to bother parenting. less

You said you worked at a grocery store and it made me think of this story from long ago.

When my son was 2-3 years old, I was practically a single mother (my husband was deployed for months on end) and we were newly stationed in a city far, far from my family. I did not have friends, much less someone I trusted to babysit my son. He hated to go to the grocery store...I seriously mean he HATED it! No amount of toys, distractions, nothing would make him happy except to get out of the store and out of the cart. He would scream and scream. I would be in tears and dripping with sweat by the time we got out of there.

I got all sorts of looks, groans, moans, eyerolls, you name it I got it; but damnit I needed to shop occasionally and he needed to come with me.

I made "Temper-tantrum In Progress" signs that clipped on the front and sides of the cart and when he started it up I clipped the signs on and put on my headphones and played my walkman.

It didn't take but 3 or 4 times of that and he stopped making an unruly fuss. Moms began giving me a thumbs-up and even a few older ladies said they thought it was ingenious.

My son was a real stinker. There was a time I was in the store and he didn't get something he wanted, so at the checkout he screamed at the top of his lungs, "YOU"RE KILLING ME...AHHHH, OWWWWWW, IT HURTS!" OMG! I was mortified. I hadn't touched him at all, but some crazy woman gave me a lecture and threatened me that she was calling DCFS on me. Whatever.

If we go to a restaurant before 8PM we expect there will be kids and if there are and we don't want to be seated near them, then we ask to wait for a different table. We have left because some children are totally off the hook, but we completely understand and there are other places to eat.

It does piss me off when some parents take their infant children to an evening movie or their toddlers to a rated R film and let them runamuck up and down the aisles and do not take them out when they cry. That makes me seriously mad! I expect that in a G and even PG film, but at night and rated R? Come on! less

You said you worked at a grocery store and it made me think of this story from long ago.

When my son was 2-3 years old, I was practically a single mother (my husband was deployed for months on end) and we were newly stationed in a city far, far from my family. I did not have friends, much less someone I trusted to babysit my son. He hated to go to the grocery store...I seriously mean he HATED it! No amount of toys, distractions, nothing would make him happy except to get out of the store and out of the cart. He would scream and scream. I would be in tears and dripping with sweat by the time we got out of there.

I got all sorts of looks, groans, moans, eyerolls, you name it I got it; but damnit I needed to shop occasionally and he needed to come with me.

I made "Temper-tantrum In Progress" signs that clipped on the front and sides of the cart and when he started it up I clipped the signs on and put on my headphones and played my walkman.

It didn't take but 3 or 4 times of that and he stopped making an unruly fuss. Moms began giving me a thumbs-up and even a few older ladies said they thought it was ingenious.

My son was a real stinker. There was a time I was in the store and he didn't get something he wanted, so at the checkout he screamed at the top of his lungs, "YOU"RE KILLING ME...AHHHH, OWWWWWW, IT HURTS!" OMG! I was mortified. I hadn't touched him at all, but some crazy woman gave me a lecture and threatened me that she was calling DCFS on me. Whatever.

If we go to a restaurant before 8PM we expect there will be kids and if there are and we don't want to be seated near them, then we ask to wait for a different table. We have left because some children are totally off the hook, but we completely understand and there are other places to eat.

It does piss me off when some parents take their infant children to an evening movie or their toddlers to a rated R film and let them runamuck up and down the aisles and do not take them out when they cry. That makes me seriously mad! I expect that in a G and even PG film, but at night and rated R? Come on! less

You said you worked at a grocery store and it made me think of this story from long ago.

When my son was 2-3 years old, I was practically a single mother (my husband was deployed for months on end) and we were newly stationed in a city far, far from my family. I did not have friends, much less someone I trusted to babysit my son. He hated to go to the grocery store...I seriously mean he HATED it! No amount of toys, distractions, nothing would make him happy except to get out of the store and out of the cart. He would scream and scream. I would be in tears and dripping with sweat by the time we got out of there.

I got all sorts of looks, groans, moans, eyerolls, you name it I got it; but damnit I needed to shop occasionally and he needed to come with me.

I made "Temper-tantrum In Progress" signs that clipped on the front and sides of the cart and when he started it up I clipped the signs on and put on my headphones and played my walkman.

It didn't take but 3 or 4 times of that and he stopped making an unruly fuss. Moms began giving me a thumbs-up and even a few older ladies said they thought it was ingenious.

My son was a real stinker. There was a time I was in the store and he didn't get something he wanted, so at the checkout he screamed at the top of his lungs, "YOU"RE KILLING ME...AHHHH, OWWWWWW, IT HURTS!" OMG! I was mortified. I hadn't touched him at all, but some crazy woman gave me a lecture and threatened me that she was calling DCFS on me. Whatever.

If we go to a restaurant before 8PM we expect there will be kids and if there are and we don't want to be seated near them, then we ask to wait for a different table. We have left because some children are totally off the hook, but we completely understand and there are other places to eat.

It does piss me off when some parents take their infant children to an evening movie or their toddlers to a rated R film and let them runamuck up and down the aisles and do not take them out when they cry. That makes me seriously mad! I expect that in a G and even PG film, but at night and rated R? Come on! less

I know that must have been absolutely embarrassing at the time! But it's pretty funny now and, thankfully, is in the past. Awesome way around it though.

And I have SO seen and known kids that pulled those stunts in public - throwing accusations of abuse around! Oh my gosh! If it makes you feel any better I'd say that most of us adults with any experience at all with children will see it for what it is. Whenever I witness it and see the look of pure mortification on the parents' faces it just makes me want to start throwing things at the child! Or maybe I just want to see the parents pull out that old classic line, "Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about!" less

As a private business owner, he has the right and I support it. I think he nailed it on the head when he said that while children are the center of their parents' universe, they are not the center of THE universe.

Unruly children annoy me to no end. There, I said it.

My parents would either take us to the restroom, spank us and return us to our seats if we were misbehaving or take us out of the restaurant until we calmed down. If it took more than two minutes, we were packed up and off to the house we went! less

As a mother of two, I do take this personally. I hope that I didn't overstep the boundaries here. I'm trying to act maturely about this; but there are some MAJOR problems with this mentality. And I hope that we can discuss this without a major flag festival.

So the solution is to segregate people because they have children? Like it's a social faux pas? How many more ways are we going to find to discriminate? Is this along the lines of the government here trying to pass a bill that would allow businesses to turn away open homosexuals (that did not pass)? Or are we going back to the 60s and acting like we did for race segregation? Do people with children need to sit at the back of the bus or the back of the plane now too? Or are parents with small children who might misbehave not allowed to enjoy a meal that the mom (or dad) didn't have to prep, cook, and clean up themselves? Most parents of small children are wise enough to know (and usually can't afford it anyway) not to bring their infants and toddlers into fine dining establishments. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to pay $75 for a steak dinner for me, Mr, and the kids. Restaurants like that are reserved for special occasions and date nights.

I understand what it's like to have your meal ruined by a screaming kid. I've had it happen when it WAS my kid and when it WASN'T my kid. First of all, it's embarrassing as FUCK to have your kid not behave in public. You're not happy about it. As a parent, you're trying to figure out the best way to handle the situation without making an even bigger scene.

For example, Do I just try and get her to calm down at the table or do I remove her from the table and have her screaming all throughout the restaurant? How am I going to get her to stop screaming? If I spank her, someone might call the cops and she's just going to cry harder. (I don't spank, FYI, just throwing out the options.) I can threaten to not have a privilege. I can hug her and soothe her and get her to quiet down (which, actually usually works well unless she's misbehaving for disciplinary reasons). I'm apologizing to everyone in the restaurant already. I know that all you're thinking is "fucking shut your kid up." So overall, my night is already fucked. Not only am I the most hated person in the restaurant, but I can't even enjoy the pasta I ordered because I'm having to deal with my child.

This doesn't happen every time we go out to eat. Maybe three times in the last year has either of my children misbehaved in a restaurant. So, now I'm not even allowed to bring them in on the OFF CHANCE they MIGHT misbehave?

I just *LOVE* how people without children think that if a child misbehaves it's because there's a lack of structure or discipline in the house. Excuse me, but you don't live with me. I'd also like to know what makes you, the childless one, a better parent than me? (Sorry if that seems rude, but I have a lot of friends who have no children who seem keen on offering me advice. Perhaps the outside view is needed sometimes, but if you don't have children of your own, I have a hard time knowing how you could possibly know what will work for my children, who you don't even know.) less