Kids Gone Wild

Ultimately the decision must be made.  If you’re going out, do you bring the kids?  For those of you with polite, quiet, little angels, count your blessings and commend yourself on your parenting skills.  Everyone deals with the little annoyances of children in restaurants.  Kids are kids, and an occasional meltdown is to be expected.  As are the hand prints on the glass, the cheerios on the floor, the spilled Shirley Temple. I try to empathize with parents, but sometimes…

The four adults at one end of the table surely must see when the seven children at the other end start a food fight.  Crawling under tables, especially other diners’ tables is not such a great idea.  Putting ketchup in the salt shakers is hard to miss even for distracted parents.  If your child puts a condiment dispenser in his mouth, please don’t just wipe it off, before “the Germies get inside.”  If the gentleman with the one year old absolutely has to belly up to the bar to see the last plays of the game, maybe the child shouldn’t be allowed to crawl up and down the length of the bar itself.

Usually the unattended children are the biggest problem. If the children are not at the table, an adult can’t know what they are up to.  Their game of tag might be more fun if they prop open the door to the outside, but it is January.  One toddler wandering around a restaurant/bar reappeared with a half full Corona bottle pressed to his lips.  He didn’t seem to notice the delicious cigarette butts inside his snack, anymore than his father had noticed he was missing.

However, attempting to control a motivated little mover can be even more disastrous.  Picture the distracted mother following her small child rapidly around the restaurant, trying to corral him.  So we now had both a kid and his mom darting into the mouth of the kitchen, crawling into the service station, climbing onto the high top stools.  To make it all better, the mother was giving a play-by-play of her dining adventures to whomever was on the other end of her cell phone call.  And it was not a good connection.  Yes, we CAN hear her now.

I should encourage the next generation to become adults who like to dine.  However, a nine year old who was raised to snap her fingers at me to demand her decaf latte?  Maybe some kids should grow up to like take-out.

Secret Server

Terra
Tom Evans
Haagen Dazs