Do you bring your babies to the restaurant?

JennyLisT

I wish restaurants took the old smoking/non-smoking sections and used that to create child-free zones.

That may sound harsh, but I used to be a waitress, and having one darling child trip you while you're carrying a tray of coffee and wine will make you a bit bitter.

feliciapeters

I will not bring my baby to a high class restaurant. In my opinion, if you want to bring your baby out to eat with you, you should go to a child friendly restaurant: that's to say, they have a KIDS menu.

My b/f and I have breakfast at a local diner...nice place but a diner....and kid friendly. Well this one couple had a son who looked to be about 3....and he would every once in awhile let out a blood curdling scream, just for fun. One time I wasn't expecting it and it startled me....I dropped my fork on my plate. The mother heard it, turned and smiled at me and said "Sorry", as if to say "Oh well....you know....kids will be kids".

So you see, it doesn't matter if you are in a diner or the Ritz...its still not acceptable.

I should add that I took my kids to restaurants from the time they were a week old. If one of them cried, I nursed them.

children do at a restraunt what they are allowed to do at home.

children who eat at a table, with proper manners, and who's parents dont think its funny for them to misbehave at the dinner table like "ha ha johnny, dont dribble your milk onto your plate, ha ha"

as for a baby? my oldest is 21 about to have one of her own, and she went out to dinner for the first time when she was 10 days old.

My youngest is 10, and UNLIKE MANY ADULT MEN I meet in the course of a day, he KNOWS to not only eat & behave properly at a restaurant, he also (as does my 12yr old son) holds the door open for a lady, pulls out my chair & stands when a lady enters a room

did he or my other 3 cry as babies when we went to dinner? yes, and we did at the restraunt, the same thing we did at home. one parent removes themselves & the baby, while the other eats, then if the baby still hasnt calmed down, we switch. in an extreme case, we ask for our food to go & we left

being sensitive to the people around you & teaching your children that is part of parenting. and there is no reason i need to eat crappy food in a crappy place because i have children.

i have been in restraunts where babies were crying, or children were misbehaving, and I KNOW its stressful & embaressing. If I feel it appropriate, I offer my assistance, and the amount of grateful mothers i have encountered over the years....................

a child cannot learn to behave in a situation it is never in, and frankly, i would much prefer to eat my meal listening to a crying baby then to a loud obnoxious drunk, or (my personal pet peeve) someone who uses their cell phone at the table speaks so loudly that eveyone is bothered by their conversation.

feliciapeters

(or am i the only one who still sets the table & makes everyone sit down to dinner?)

njmp

Point totally taken. My issue is not with the babies then, it's with the parents reaction to their child. Babies and children welcome, so long as a parent parents their child if necessary.

feliciapeters

My ex-husband & I took our kids out at various ages. If they got fussy, we’d take them outside until they calmed down. If they didn’t, we’d ask the server to box up the food & we’d go home. If we hadn’t ordered, we’d just leave. Our kids learned quickly that they needed to behave if they wanted to go to a restaurant.

Even before I had kids what would irritate me the most is when the parents ignore their obviously distressed infant in favor of continuing their meal. Or when they let their toddlers run wild. Really? My boss told me a story about how he & his wife were at a local Mexican restaurant and toddlers were running amok. The parents did absolutely nothing to control them & they kept running by the door to the kitchen where the servers would enter the dining area. Well, they ran by one time right as a waitress was coming out with a tray of sizzling plates of fajitas. The kids damn near tripped her…she lost her hold on the tray & ended up dropping the sizzling plate on another patron. The paramedics had to be called & the poor woman ended up with 2nd degree burns. The waitress was beside herself because of what had happened & the parents…NOTHING. They collected their kids & left.

my husband is a chef, i have managed several upscale restraunts over the years. the MANAGER of that restraunt should have take care of that. Asked the parents to control the children or asked them to leave. and YES you can do that as a manager, even a corporate location.

AuddAlise

What you experienced was not only a parenting fail but a resturant one. I guess common sense is no longer common.

lindseym1983

I am a parent and have been out and had to listen to a screaming child during dinner while mine are at home with the babysitter. It is frustrating and I take my kids almost everywhere with me. You don't know their circumstances and maybe don't have a sitter and were out with family and such so try not to judge so hard. It isn't easy to have a babysitter at hand all the time when you want to go out even for a nice dinner. But having said that the parents should of judged better if it was appropriate for a small child and should at the least been trying to console the child instead of making it everyone else's problem too.

mfoulkebrown

I would never take my infant to and upscale restaurant if I'm paying $25 just for the entree then that's obviously not an infant friendly place! But, I wouldn't get worked up over it the baby is just doing what it does crying. I think because you don't have children you find it annoying once you have your own trust me you just kind of develop Mama ear filters you can just drown out what you don't wanna hear!! lol

Whether you hear it or not, your screaming child is f***ing annoying.

Look, a well-behaved child in a restaurant is just fine - it's not as though the presence of a child is upsetting. However, the screaming, crying and mess are just a handful of reasons why I don't want kids. Just because you have to suffer through your kids' tantrums doesn't mean I do, especially not in an upscale place catering to adults.

The parents have just as much right to be there as you do. I don't have kids, but I don't get upset at babies being babies. If the kid is five and running around, that's different. But an infant crying--get over it.

The parents have just as much right to be there as anyone, but their children do not.

Here's the thing, having children is a choice. You get many good things out of it. However, like any other choice, there are also downsides. That means that if your child cannot behave and you cannot hire a sitter, you don't get to go out to a nice restaurant. No one likes to hear it these days, but everything is a choice that comes with upsides and downsides.

vbmama2012

Several months ago, my husband and I finally had a night that we were free of children, and decided to go out for a nice dinner. Being that we live in FL, and it was beautiful evening weather, we opted to dine in the outdoor area of Carabba's.
There were several families who had just finished having a birthday party, in which several small children were in attendance (and I'm talking age range 5-7 years old, along with a toddler or 2). Since the party was wrapped up, and the "entertaining" factor was over with for the children, they obviously were getting bored waiting around for the sets of parents to finish up their conversations (which had now moved from the tables they were using to standing in the corner of the open air dining area). As they chatted about their luxuries, flying planes, vacations, etc to each other, these small children decided to make a race track out of the open air dining area, including weaving in and out of the screen curtain that was down to minimize traffic noise from the main road. These children were RUNNING circles, yelling and screaming and playing, while the parents just proceeded to talk OVER their noise. Meanwhile...our "couples" dinner was being ruined by the second.
I brought the situation to the attention of the manager, and of course, they did nothing. The group of parents finally moved their conversation to the sidewalk outside of the dining area, but the children continued using it as a racetrack. Fed up, I FINALLY got up, walked over to the sidewalk, and told them, "While I understand you are having a WONDERFUL conversation amongst yourselves, your children are running circles around here, and we're trying to enjoy our meal." The moms were apologetic, and of course you always have one cocky male in the group, who replied, "Well...YOU have a GREAT night". SERIOUSLY???

They finally loaded up their children and left, and we got a discount on our bill, although it was not necessarily the restaurant's fault.

I have 4 children, and I ALWAYS took them to restaurants, whether they were family-friendly or not. If they started acting up, I simply had our meals boxed, and we left, so as not to inconvenience other guests. This did NOT happen but maybe once or twice. Don't parents understand that children running around a restaurant are a danger not only to themselves, but to the waitstaff and other guests as well??

gkwatra

Not a screaming experience, but one time my husand and I were at a buffet-type of restaurant and there was cute little boy sitting across from us. Once he saw he had our attention, he smiled and said ....... "F@$k off." The whole rest of the time, he kept saying, "F@$k off, F@$k *kitten*, F@$k you" while the parents just sat and ignored him. Gee, I wonder who taught him those words. He looked like he just barely learned to talk. Nothing like raising a little potty mouth :mad:

agthorn

1 - Kids scream/cry. You did it when you were a child...It's a fact of life, Get over it. Think of the parents needing to keep the magic in their relationship at all costs...could have been the situation
2 - Parents allowing the child to continuously cry/scream without attempting to calm them...FAIL.

Kids do scream and cry. And I'm sure I did it too when I was a child...which is why my parents didn't take me to nice restaurants until I could behave appropriately! As to "needing to keep the magic in their relationship at all costs" - I go out to have nice evenings with my husband to maintain my relationship too; why is their relationship more important than mine??

gkwatra

Also I have often witnessed adults with more disgusting table manners than most kids ... :sick:

hesn92

yes. if he were screaming I would take him out or calm him down.

DMZ_1

No, I have no kids, therefore I never bring a baby to a restaurant.

laurin2010

My son is actually always really well behaved at restaurants...what you really need to watch out for is making sure you pack diapers and wipes (give us a break we were new parents lol)! Preferably a change of clothes too! We went out to eat as a family one night at this new place to eat and after hearing him toot all night (not thinking what else could have really been going on) we had realized that he had an accident all over the floor, all over his high chair and better yet all over him! Oh my gosh it was so hilarious yet embarassing at the same time! I still remeber looking at Justin saying "is this really happening" Never will i forget that, I will have to tell him that one day

SmartWhatever

If you go out to eat in a restaurant, you should leave your baby in the car where it belongs.

sabrinar1982

This is more about the parent being a bad parent than it is about the screaming child. Babies dont cry for no reason. If a child is crying the parent needs to tend to the child. I am a single mom of three boys (ages 10, 9 and 5)and they go everywhere with me...always have...and thats how they have learned to behave. There is nothing wrong with taking your children out to a nice resturant, if you have taught them some manners. There is something wrong with a parent ignoring a tantrum and allowing their child to ruin everyones night.

knittnponder

When ours were little we would occasionally take them but we only went when they were rested and not fussy. If they got fussy at the restaurant one of us would have taken them out immediately and the other parent would have asked for our food to be boxed up. When our son was a toddler we went to a nicer restaurant in the town we lived in and you could tell they'd had some bad experiences with kids there. They seated us at a table right next to the kitchen and were less than enthusiastic about us and our three young kids being there. However, by the time we left they treated us like royalty and I strongly suspect it's because our kids stayed in their seats, behaved in a quiet and respectful manner and said please and thank you to the staff, toddler included. We wouldn't have taken them out if they were ill behaved but since common sense and consideration of others are apparently super powers now not everyone agrees. We expect the same good table behavior at home as we do in public though so there is no confusion for them. Be good or we go home and you're not going to be a happy child when we get there!

Mina133842

My boys go with us to whatever restaurant we've been to - that being said, we typically dine out at family restaurants, and I agree with other posters- if the child is having an issue, you deal with said issue.

@ laurin - my first son - went out to meet my cousins that came to visit from out of town, and it was a few weeks before Easter, had my son's pictures taken in his little Easter outfit, and just left him in the nice clothes since we were going out to eat with company....we order our food, and then I left to go and change his diaper.........about a MILLION wipes later, and fresh outfit too- it was up his back, and everything...(sorry if that's TMI) I also carried gallon ziploc baggies to insert nasty clothes so you wouldn't smell them IN the diaper bag.....our dinner was cold by the time I got out there to eat it, and my cousin thought something drastic had happened....told him no, just a "poopcident." lol

ETA: I also used to put a spare top for ME in the diaper bag- I'd been spit up on with my first son MANY times- enough to start carrying at least one spare outfit for him (usually 2 in there) and 1 top for me.

Fairysoul

Oh yeah it's even worse when people bring them to a movie, sorry a 1 year old doesn't want to sit there! And yes I have kids but no I don't do things like thaT!