can you believe this?

[cassiesmom]

My mom and dad took my whole family out to dinner for their anniversary. A friend from church had told my mom about a local restaurant that had a playroom set up for kids. It was a nice restaurant and it really did have a playroom at the ready. My youngest nieces were probably 4 or 5 at the time. My mom had brought new crayons and coloring books for them, but the playroom was set up with lots of neat things. They loved it, we could see them from our table, and the whole thing turned out great. Some are just more family-friendly than others.

[Catty1]

There are family-friendly restaurants. And the one restaurant owner who has banned kids will have a more adult clientele that will appreciate the quiet.


A friend of mine posted this on Facebook - he works in a car dealership and parents can REALLY show a lack of parenting there - he doesn't know who the original quote came from, but I think it applies here:

Your children may be the centre of your universe but they ain't the centre of THE universe.

[sparks19]

So I can totally see why places are doing this. Kids can be so ill mannered. I will never understand why a child is permitted to run around a restaurant and scream.

that being said it's a tough time to be a parent. EVERYONE thinks they know better than you do and if you do something someone doesn't like you could wind up talking to the cops for simply disciplining your child (I'm NOT talking about abuse... but a smack on the butt is NOT abuse). I know people this has happened to when out in public. Kid acts up, kid gets a warning, kid doesn't heed warning, kid gets a smack on the butt. The end. but some bleeding heart calls the police and now you have to defend yourself for trying to be a good parent and instill some discipline and rules.

If your child can't behave in a restaurant then don't take them out. We don't have a regular sitter for hannah. I can count on one hand the amount of nights we've gone out just the two of us and left Hannah with a sitter. so if we wanted to go out at all we were going to have to raise Hannah to know how to behave in a restaurant. She does. she sits and chats and behaves herself. This isn't anything special but it seems to be rare so people act like it's the most amazing thing they've ever laid eyes on lol. A child behaving in a restaurant

But on the flip side... if everywhere starts following this trend then we are going to have a whole generation of kids who have no idea how to act in a restaurant because they aren't allowed in any... even the well behaved kids.

it's just too bad that the lack of common sense these days is forcing people to resort to this kind of stuff.

[Asiel]

I agree so totally with you Sparks. It would make so much more sense to teach children to behave in a restaurant or any public place than to have everyone banning them from everywhere. I can understand the restaurant owner doing this as we've had many meals ruined by screaming and running wild children. I often wonder how the parents can enjoy their meal themselves with their kids misbehaving like that but they seem oblivious to it. We always took the kids with us when we went out and they knew that they were to behave as not to disturb other people. It's so easy to have well behaved kids that I don't understand why parents today just don't seem to care or bother with them.