Children on Ipads in restaurants

@theDudesmummy they can just sense who are the special needs kids and they of course are leaving them out of their judgement!

The issue of the sound being audible is a completely separate issue from kids having screens in the restaurant. It's absolutely unacceptably rude and totally avoidable. Earphones can be bought for practically nothing. I wouldn't allow my DS to use a device in any public place with the sound audible, ever, and yes, I do judge those who do!

dont apologise to two bullies shouting down everyone who disagrees with them. That’s how bullies win. You’re entitled to a point of view.

Naah, they all so entitled, they have the sound up full and the parents are oblivious! I moved tables on Sunday night on a restaurant because a small kid seated on the next to me at 8.30pm had tinny kid cartoon music blasting out of his tablet.

You parent the child you have, not the child you'd like to have.

Before children, I had notions of lovely, calm mealtimes with children, everyone exchanging stories about their respective days - just like my family did when I was growing up in fact.

Then ds came along. We tried crayons and sticker books, miniature Paw Patrol toys, fidget toys, everything. Still he was more interested in the salt and pepper pots and cutlery. Literally all the table furnishings migrated from within his reach to the opposite end of the table. Nothing kept him occupied for long - not engaging him in conversation, not his little rucksack of trinkets. And then we tried a tablet, and our mealtimes were transformed. Two rules - earphones or volume low and it gets switched off while eating.

Six years later we had dd. She has a similarly low boredom threshold, cannot sit still for long and fidgets and fiddles. Unlike ds, she is perfectly happy with sticker books, colouring books and crayons, puzzles and so on. When none of those is available, she will play puzzles on her tablet or occasionally watch something - volume low, switched off during eating.

We're on the verge of an adhd diagnosis for dd, and strongly suspect the same with ds.

I couldn't give a shit what others think of our parenting. One mealtime is a snapshot of the totality of our lives. Our children are intelligent, sociable, mature and engaging. We give them a wide variety of life and learning opportunities, we encourage their education. They play football, swim, go to gymnastics. We talk to them and with them, discuss important issues, ensure they're kind and empathetic.

If you want to judge us from a one hour sitting, I really think that's your problem, not ours.

@Futb0lHumans live in society. For that to function well, its necessary as a group for people to take interest in how all children are reared and have a concern as to whether they are being taught appropriate behaviours for successful adulthood. That includes social skills.

Quite so. How would my teenager then know how to behave in public places if (as you suggest) he wasn't hadnt been allowed in them in childhood? Or maybe you don't mean us when you say "all children". Oh, of course you don't. Silly me.

@Ohhbaby thank you - very informative and interesting read. I appreciate you taking the time to reply. Food for thought indeed!

Look if I could, I wouldn't make it accessible to kids at all. These are the first generation of kids growing up with screens from baby time.
No one else NEEDED it for millenia before. (I often hear, 'but there is just no other way')
But we're often reluctant to say no screens is best, because it's so prevalent.) So then people will give a number such as 'oh an hour is fine' or we recommend no more than 2 hours on weekend or some arbitrary number .

Realistically watching 30 minutes here or there is not going to make your kid cookoos, but I do think the perspective should shift.
Parents often want to know with how much screen time they can get away with? "What is too much?" When we really should try to see what is the least amount we can get away with. 'what can I do to make tv the absolute last resort?'

Because I'm reality ever minute watching a child is deprived of using their body and therefore developing necessary physical skills. (Tiny babies do less crawling, toddlers do less running and jumping and crawling, directly impacting things like muscle tone and core muscle endurance which in turn impacts a kids ability to sit still at a table and write (school) because they just don't have the core muscles for example.and mind.

Less of using their brain and mind (tv takes no use of their brain / cognitive skills). No puzzles, figuring out how am I going to use this chair to get to that thing ok the counter (problem solving). It's a minute less of practicing social and emotional skills (by playing with their brothers and sisters).
It's an extra minute of activating the reward system in the brain, dopamine release etc.
I could go on and on.

In reality most kids watch tv these days unless parents make a conscious decision to not have it, because cold turkey is easier than trying to limit it. (Think of you trying to only eat one piece of chocolate and leaving the rest there staring at you. It's easier to decide to just not buy the chocolate or sweet than trying to put the packet away when it's already open).
And it also depends on what they have done for the rest of the day.
So a kid that's played outside for 4 hours and had an hour of conversation with their dad when he came home from work, baked bread and hanged up the washing with mom, for him that hour is not going to matter so much. But for the kid that was maybe in nursery all day with no active, corrective conversation from an adult and stayed inside the whole day, that hour will matter more.

I can't tell you what's too much.
It's like sugar. Sweets are bad for kids, point blank. But we all have sugar. The best perspective would be to try and minimize sweets as much as possible, not ask how much is too much. Like can we push it to 3 packets a day?

Nicparke

Humans live in society. For that to function well, its necessary as a group for people to take interest in how all children are reared and have a concern as to whether they are being taught appropriate behaviours for successful adulthood. That includes social skills.

Have they all got the volume up or are they wearing headphones ? Therein lies the problem . Would drive me insane and is hugely selfish of not. What about the rest of the diners wanting to enjoy the peace ?

Is he allowed to go on holidays? That isn't essential either.

@Futb0l oh sorry, shall we hide away from all public places or is it just restaurants? And at what age would you deem him no longer a child and therefore allowed out? And how will he have learned how to behave in restaurants if he's never been allowed in them?

Your disablist attitudes will NEVER stop me from allowing my son to live a full life and take his full place in society. However tricky you make it with your judgement and prejudice.

Thedudesmummy

The vast majority of children are NT. By default, or we wouldn't call it "neuro-typical.

Honestly though, if eating out makes your child so uncomfortable, is it really a grear idea? Its not as though meals out are an essential part of childhood. Its a relatively recent notion to take children out to eat, i was almost never taken to a restaurant as a child.

I find it more shocking that in 2024 other parents are continuing to judge other parents.

What's the difference between a book, a card game or a tablet? It's still plonking the child in front of something so that they don't partake in the meal.

@Ohhbaby yes, you are misinformed. "Autistic kids" are not a homogeneous group of people. My son is very aware of how people are reacting to him. Others may not be. They are, surprisingly, different and individual people. Some are socially phobic. Some are quite uncommunicative. Some, like my son, are very sociable and highly communicative. All different, amazingly!

@Futb0l and @Bopping298 I presume you are excluding children like my autistic son from your judgement and your discussion of "age appropriate places"? How will you know, though, when you are across the restaurant from us, not to judge us, when you are so "appalled" in other cases?

Autistic kids are notorious for not picking up on social cues. Weird to me that yours (whilst having headphones on and watching an ipad) will pick up on someone looking at them funny.
I'm genuinely curious as maybe I am wholly misinformed

Both of my grandchildren have devices that they seem to be glued to but we have a strict policy for mealtimes. Family and food take precedence, no devices allowed until EVERYONE has finished the meal.

What is also interesting is it's the judgy people that are also nasty people , another correlation!

@Ohhbaby I am intrigued - how much is too much screen time?

My children do watch TV for about 1 hour every day.

We have, we really have. Kids really can't sit through a meal.
And it's just lazy parenting. It's way harder to correct Johnny's behaviour in the shops or at the restaurant than just pop him in front of a screen. Rather than having to actually look up from your own meal /conversation, or often, your own screen and reprimand johnny and teach him the correct cause of action, we use the stimulant of a screen to keep him occupied so he wouldn't do anything else.
Man parents use screens for everything .
From the tiniest baby. I'm appalled. Apart from the fact that it is really damaging to children and babies' eyesight, brain development, physical development , emotional development, you name it, it has the added disadvantage that we don't teach our children life skills. It allows us to be lazy parents .
People can say it's not true all they want, but I'm a pediatric occupational therapist and if a child walks into my practice it takes me all of 2 minutes to know which ones are the kids that watch screens.
But parents don't want to hear it, because screens are just too convenient.

Same. We also tend to choose family friendly restaurants and, when dd went through a phase where eating out was a nightmare, we just didn’t eat out for a short time.

It’s harder for the parents, but it’s supposed to be. We all chose to have children and teach them how to behave, which can suck short term when you just want to eat dinner, but is part of parenthood.

Obviously, it’s different if a child has considerable additional needs and this is the only way to manage it, but I’m talking about children who can actually manage it.