Don’t Take Your Kids To Public Places

Is there anything more annoying than loud, unruly children in a restaurant when you are trying to enjoy a nice quiet meal? Why do their parents even take them out knowing how loud and disruptive they will be?! Just don’t take your kids out in public. It’s much easier for everybody concerned isn’t it? Stay at home, let them go on their computer games and eat candy whilst you sit on your phone having a quick flutter or something else that makes you feel like you still enjoy life once in a while, right?

Tonight my husband and I went out to a restaurant for dinner to a quaint, quiet place in the countryside. We were near two school age children for the entire meal. I still have indigestion now thinking about the evening. The two kids should have been in bed, it was a school night afterall, but instead their parents had taken them out.

The two children got louder as the evening went by, and I could see the aggravation rising in my husbands eyes. We came out to enjoy a quiet meal, but instead we were witnessing something from a Looney Tunes cartoon.

The children shouted, laughed loud, shook condiments over people, climbed under the table, squealed loudly, were rude at times, and kept standing on their chairs. The mother tried to reason with them but to no avail. One of the children ran off around the restaurant and was dragged back!

I looked on in utter disbelief.

The children, surprisingly, ate their food despite moaning about its impending arrival. It was obviously way past their usual meal time, but each parent to their own I guess. When the kids had finished their main course they demanded pudding like their parents were slaves. Manners were scarce!

After the kids had eaten their food the rampage continued. They started swiping at the grownups with them with their teddy bears. They climbed over chairs, they made patterns in the condensation on the restaurant windows, and they jumped on the back of their mother. At one point the mother was on lockdown with the one boy. He had her hair in a death grip and they were literally both lay across the bench style seat for a good 3 minutes. What the hell? I was shocked. I was disgusted.

The whole restaurant was aware of this family, and it felt a little uncomfortable to say the least!

Why do parents with children like these inflict them upon the public? Are they really this selfish?

Anddddd stop.

The kids in this post are mine. The teddy bears were Snoodle. The hair was also mine. And the sanity has well and truly gone. Would I take them back to a restaurant? Hell yeah! That’s the life of this momma, and as ‘abnormal’ and ‘crazy’ as it may have been, they were actually pretty well behaved on this occasion. Ha, for real!

Don’t ever be ashamed or embarrassed, ever. Those onlookers know nothing about your children, or your parenting skills.

There are additional needs in our family, invisible ones, SPD and ASD, but regardless, if a restaurant has a children’s menu the fact remains that children (in all forms) are welcome.

(For all the new people over on here who don’t know my origins, my story, my life…my children are normally in bed by 7pm, this meal was 5pm ’til 7.30pm, my children didn’t run into other diners – he ran off once, it was a family celebration – we don’t go out when it’s school the next day in everyday life, my kids had ‘things’ to keep them entertained, I said manners were scarce not non-existent, I also said the mother intervened, and BAM! There you have it! This post was written to make other parents feel less alone in their struggles, nothing more, nothing less)