Dear Care and Feeding, for Some Reason People Keep Judging Me About My Shitty Non-Parenting

[rosefox]

Dear Care and Feeding,

My wife and I and our 4-year-old son were out to dinner last week. It was a medium-nice restaurant, not fast food, but not super fancy either. My son is a normal, active little boy, and it’s hard for him to sit through a whole dinner, so we let him explore the restaurant a little. I noticed our waitress giving him the hairy eyeball, so we asked him to stop running. He was pretty good about it after that, but he did get underfoot when she was carrying a tray, and she spoke to him pretty sharply to go back to our table and sit down. I felt it was completely uncalled for, and she should have come and spoken to us personally instead of disciplining someone else’s child.

I tipped 5 percent and spoke briefly to her manager, who gave noncommittal replies. My wife agrees with me, but when we posted about it on Facebook, we got a lot of judgy responses.

—It’s Hard for a 4-Year-Old to Sit Still

Dear Sit Still,

Yeah, this is your fault. It’s hugely your fault. Of course it’s hard for a 4-year-old to sit still, which is why people usually stick to fast-dining establishments while working on restaurant manners. It’s why one parent usually responds to a fidgety kid who wants to “explore” by taking him outside the restaurant, where he can get his wiggles out while not taking laps around servers precariously carrying trays of (often extremely hot) food and drink.

A kid “exploring” a restaurant is not a thing. When you did intervene, it wasn’t to get him back in his seat. It was just to instruct him to “stop running.” You weren’t parenting, so a server did it for you. She was right. You were wrong.

Your son is not ready to eat at a “medium-nice” restaurant again until he is capable of behaving a little better. You can practice at home. You can practice at McDonald’s. You can try a real restaurant again with the understanding that one of you may need to take him out when he starts getting the urge to run an obstacle course.

I doubt that you will do this, but I encourage you to return the restaurant, apologize to the manager for complaining about your server, and leave her a proper tip.

Mend your wicked ways.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/09/kids-running-around-restaurants-care-and-feeding.html

Comments

[azurelunatic]

There was a beautiful but terrifying Twitter thread or two on the physical hazards of "exploration" like that.

[minoanmiss]

Three snaps up!
That poor server. I hope someone noticed these twits and tipped her 30%.

[jadelennox]

This.

[adrian_turtle]

The problem is that it's easy to notice the kid's behavior, and nearly impossible to notice how much another person is tipping. Pay with a credit card? Put the tip in the little folder so many restaurants use to bring the bill? When I see a child in a restaurant being an inconvenience to waiters (like this one was, because she had to say something to him) I sort of assume the family will apologize and tip generously.

I would NOT have looked at their table on my way out, to check how many of the bills they left were $10 bills rather than $1 bills.

[minoanmiss]

Yeah. I hope, but I don't expect.

[needles]

I would be hard pressed to tip 5% if the waitress literally ignored me all night, much less if someone "spoke to [my son who was running around the restaurant unhindered] sharply[, you know, because that's dangerous]". What an asshole.

[jadelennox]

Yeah, I find it hard to undertip even when the server is behaving like a complete dick, and I'm trying to imagine thinking you can undertip when you let your toddler run underfoot of the people carrying trays of glassware and hot food. I'm glad their facebook friends saw them as nightmares, too.

[cereta]

Same here. I can count on one hand the number of times I've tipped under 15% (I usually tip somewhere between 20 and 25%, more if the bill is very small). At least two of those were male servers who spoke only to my husband and in one case didn't even look at me the whole night. Even after I handed him the bill case with my debit card, he brought it back to spouse and continued to ask "senor" how the meal had been.

[cereta]

Wait, what do you mean by "hard pressed to to tip 5%" ?

[needles]

Couldn't bring myself to tip 5% (ie I would, at minimum if they blatantly ignored me all night, tip 15%). Sorry if I was unclear.

[cereta]

No worries! I have typos in damn near every post. I am just working very hard to clarify things before I react. One too many times getting indignant over a misreading ;).

[beable]

So many layers of asshole entitlement coming from LW and their spouse!

- the "I feel judged" tip of 5%
- don't expect me to parent
- how dare you criticize my little angel

LW is the sort of person that gets written about on NotAlwaysRight.

And sure as shit if the server had spilt anything on the brat(*) who was running around under their feet they would have demanded to see the manager to fire the server.

(*)brat as in the parents have lost the privilege of my referring to their offspring politely because of their boorish behaviour.

[evilsusan]

I always had at least two Matchbox cars in my handbag when my son was small so he could have something to do in a boring restaurant. Or on the train. A little prep goes a long way.

[rosefox]

My mother always had "amusers", a broad category that might include art supplies, books, or toys. Now that I'm a parent, "amusers" is a bullet point on my daypack packing list.

[cereta]

I got lucky: my kid's favorite thing was coloring. When she grew out of that, those mini- kiosks were a godsend. We only had to take her out of a restaurant twice, and that was when she was an infant. And she darn sure didn't "explore." Or scream. Or throw tantrums.
I suspect that it's less that the kid isn't ready so much as it is the parents.

[adrian_turtle]

Before the baby's first airplane trip, packing list included "quiet toys."
Before the baby's second airplane trip, packing list included "quiet non-rolling toys."

[beable]

OMG, I'm sorry for laughing but I can totally envision this experiential curve!

[cereta]

Can I add: I wonder if the parents would just be, "What can you do? Four year old." if they had a daughter rather than a son.

[cimorene]

Not nearly as likely to, but there definitely are some. I've seen female-coded children out of their seats at restaurants plenty over the years but I don't think I've ever seen one RUNNING between tables, which is a not uncommon male-coded child activity in my experience...

[lilysea]

Ugh, these parents!

Dear LW: how would you feel if your kid tripped over an elderly lady and she broke her hip?

How would you feel if the kid jostled the waitress, so hot coffee spilled on a young baby and scalded it?

You're being incredibly irresponsible about your kid's safety; the waitresses safety; and the other customers safety.

[cimorene]

It's the parents who deserve to experience the consequences of their poor parenting, but in reality it's the children and servers who are most frequently going to be hurt in these situations.

[laurajv]

woooooord.

[conuly]

They're lucky that server didn't trip over their son and dump food on his head.

As for their kid being a "normal active little boy" - most four year olds can stay in their seat, even if they wiggle, for half an hour. (You may need to take him outside to jump around while waiting for the food to arrive.) If their son is not capable of sitting through an entire meal yet (assuming they aren't eating multiple courses) then they may want to keep an eye on this.

[cereta]

My kid was perfectly capable of sitting in a booth for an hour or even more at that age. Heck, she managed when she was under two. We just made sure she had things to do.

[conuly]

Ana and Eva both have ADHD. They were able to sit half an hour in the restaurant, on the bus, on the train. They wiggled, sure, but they could manage 30 minutes. And they were DEFINITELY hyperactive at that age.

[rosefox]

And it doesn't really matter what other kids can do—if the LW's kid can't sit still, the LW shouldn't be bringing their kid to a restaurant at all, much less letting them run around unsupervised. They could be 50th percentile for wriggliness or off the end of the scale. What matters is how the LW parents their specific child, and it sounds they are doing a specifically bad job of it.

[conuly]

True, but I'm really a bit irked that they start off trying to defend themselves with a claim that he's a "normal, wriggly four year old boy". (Or whatever the precise wording was.) They're gonna keep saying that all through his life to justify whatever he does.

[rosefox]

Oh yes, my ire is for them! Falling back on "normal" does less than nothing for their argument.

[ambyr]

In letters like this, where LW's behavior is so over-the-top appalling, I sometimes imagine them being written by someone who witnessed the behavior and wants an authority from which to tell off the guilty party.

[minoanmiss]

! I wonder about that too sometimes.