To not take my 3 and 5 year olds to restaurants

I never understand this thing of 'how will they learn?'. Surely they learn at home. When I was a kid we even had breakfast as a family at the dining table. I wonder how often that happens these days?

YANBU to not take them, small children don't need to be in restaurants. It's fine.

I would be concerned about their behaviour though because they should be able to have a quick meal out without issue. Is their behaviour generally bad or is it specific to restaurants?

Maybe you're doing too much of a big jump? Do you enforce table manners at home? That is a good place to start. If that is already done, you could try "playing restaurants" at home kind of like a role play.

The other thing to do is consider timing. If you're aiming for their usual mealtime then they're going to be hungry and all young children find it harder to behave when they're hungry. Time it so that including the time taken to order and wait for the food, they're getting their meal a little bit earlier than they usually would so they aren't ravenous waiting.

Lunch might also be easier than dinner.

You could also pick places that you don't usually have to wait long, like pizza hut or a carvery or Chinese buffet. Or McDonald's. Just to get them used to the idea of eating out and about and some of the expectations before you upgrade to a pub or restaurant.

And yes if you take a break for a couple of years they will be older and more able to manage but you can also do it in the short term if you meet them halfway.

We don't do screens either. Whilst ours will sit with a sticker book or whatever they do get restless. They don't get up and run around but generally can get silly or slightly louder than we like. For this reason we don't go out to restaurants for social reasons it's more just eat and go kind of thing. This suits us quite well they are 4 & 6. They probably seem better at sitting still than some children, we have had people around us in the past compliment us on how behaved they are. However as parents we find it stressful and what you pay for meals nowadays it's just not worth it for us to do it often.

My older two were fantastic in restaurants, right from being tiny.

My youngest - Christ on a bike. We knocked that on the head as it was just painful for everyone involved.

She turned 5 in August and the last few months, we’ve tried a couple of meals out with family and she’s been brilliant. But when she was 2/3, no thank you.

A harvester is a great child friendly option. We go regularly with two under 4's and about 95% of tables have an under 10 on them so there is a far higher tolerance for the odd behaviour slip.

I do sometimes quite enjoy going out for lunch as a family with my 2 and 4 year olds, but it has to be a very child-focused outing for it to actually be fun. So we'd need both parents, a cafe with food options the children enjoy, served promptly. One I would go to on purpose has a lunch service that starts at 12pm, so if you turn up right at the start, you can order and be served quickly, and they will bring the children lukewarm macaroni cheese so they don't have to wait for it to cool down. But I wouldn't be going out of my way to train my kids to be good at restaurants unless I actually needed them to be (I can imagine you might want this if e.g. you like to go on AI holidays where they need to eat in a hotel restaurant every night, or you have extended family that does big family meals in restaurants etc.). Otherwise as PPs say, they can learn the skills when they're old enough to be interested in trying new foods and sitting and chatting, so they actually want to be in the restaurant. I'm sure all the techniques people use do work, but if the outing is not actually fun for either adults or children, why do it?

Brother and I were taken to restaurants from birth - the rule was that if you didn’t behave, we left. Brutal but effective (and no scrummy food or dessert to look forward to, just some dry toast at home).

We’ll be doing the same with our little one, but will bring colouring etc with us (which my bro and I never got lol). But each to their own, OP, you have to work out the best thing for your kids, given their personalities.

Well done you 👏 (sorry that sounds so, so sarky! It's not, it's just nice to see someone trying their best and accepting when it isn't working)

What works at home? Could you try taking them out 1:1 or seating them apart?

Fwiw, I think you've got the right idea. It's so expensive to eat out now that you're best off saving the money if it'd going to be stressful. Just grab nice pizzas and chips and have a floor picnic and 100% less stress x

I never went to pubs and restaurants as a child because my parents couldn’t afford it, somehow as an adults I can manage these situations just fine.

basically it doesn’t sound enjoyable for you, OP so don’t do it! It’s not necessary and a waste of money if you don’t enjoy it. Save the money you would spend and spend it on something you would enjoy eg cocktails with your mates 🥂
@Meerkat6373

I don't see the point in taking them unless you need to eat out, for example you are on a day trip and have to eat.
Then I usually find child friendly options, pizza express is always good, pubs with play areas.
I see no point whatsoever in taking young chiidren to a restaurant for the sake of it.
Why are you concerned? Do you think you should be taking them but can't?

That's rough but you're doing the right thing. Why should you pay extra for a stressful experience plus (I don't know if this was the case) worrying about getting eyeballed judgmentally by other diners?

My sibling used to take their children into restaurants constantly, not watch them, let them run wild, getting under staff feet, sitting at other tables,and scream the place down. I mean sometimes scream through the entire meal. At one point the owner came over with the bill, sibling huffily said we haven't ordered dessert yet and owner said you need to take your child outside to calm them down. Sibling then refused to pay for the meal on the grounds that if they have high chairs they are welcoming children.

It was just their personalities but why should everyone else suffer?

We have DC who by nothing more than chance are very docile so we've always been able to relax in restaurants. If not I would stay home too.

I agree with you on the screens too; short term win for medium term suffering.

Like others have said, start with McDs, build up to 'Spoons, and soon the restaurant world will be your oyster. I had three children with less than 3 years between them, and this worked for us.

I would keep to the 'no tablets' rule. Harder for now, but it will pay dividends.

We take ours to child friendly restaurants that have either outside apparatus like climbing frame with swings, slide etc or a soft play.
They love it, we get to sit and chat, they get to play and don’t get bored waiting for the meals to arrive
and then they’re happy to eat nicely with the bribe of playing again after while we enjoy a glass of wine.

I think you're right not to take them anywhere while they don't really understand how to behave.

But they do need to practice, otherwise how will they ever know? Taking them to family friendly places might be a good way to start? not too often, not least because it is stressful for you, but enough so that they can see that most people are sitting down and eating?

Do you practice this at home? meals at the table, making conversation etc? i think it is an essential social skill but am aware that i may be in the minority there.

Don’t go at the weekend. Go somewhere quiet. Maybe try somewhere where you can speak to people beforehand and tell them you’re practising

At home, are they expected to sit at table and eat. Do you eat together and expect them to sit there for a suitable amount of time and eat and behave?? If not, then start there. It should help.

As a mum to a 5 and 3 year old i completley sympthasize... 9 times out of 10 its a disaster ... i dont enjoy it because im on edge!
We have a local restaurant with a kids play corner and thats the only one i feel happy to take them to at the moment 🤣

Different kids are different.

Mine have gone to restaurants their whole life (we moved around a lot, so never had trusted baby-sitters). If it was an adult dinner (ie they were there because I didn't have childcare) then they had tablet and headphones (generally evening), if it was because we wanted to go out and eat, then they left their ipads behind and we hung out (generally lunch time). Although I hated places with crayons and the inevitable fight over whichever colour they both decided they wanted.

I was lucky that they were reasonable about this - I never had issues with them leaving the ipads behind, because my rule has always been that the moment there's fuss, I will start implementing harsher rules around ipad use. As long as we are all reasonable, I will be reasonable too.

This worked from a young age, but again, I suspect I was just lucky with mine - if I'd got my cousins kids, they're absolute whirlwinds and I don't think I'd have been successful.

Ds was about 6 when we finally began to enjoy family meals out. Then his sister came along and we were back to square one again. We resolved to take them for meals out in the summer (beer gardens with play things) or places where they have a soft play. Dd was much easier to entertain with crayons, stickers, arty things but ds was never entertained by those things and preferred fiddling with cutlery, salt and pepper pots etc. And when there were two of them they just wound each other up incessantly. I'm afraid we did cave in to tablets when they were at their worst, though we preferred to knock the meals on the head altogether for a while. Ds was diagnosed with adhd last year, which explains a lot in hindsight! We sit down together as a family once a week now, both fine for short periods - ds is now a teenager, dd is 9. It does get easier, but some kids are just high energy and aren't satisfied with reading quietly or drawing etc however much you try. Their attention span and patience levels improve naturally with age in most cases.

What happens at home for meals?

We would only take them to pub type places at that age but even that was only because we found a strategy that worked. We would take a ‘high value’ toy for each that they only had access to in such a situation. The best was a Thomas tank engine portable kit, where the case became half the track and you packed in extra track, trains etc into it. We had ‘special trains’ on rotation they only ever saw in that case and we would also cycle special extras such as the aquarium into the case. Butterflies that were silent but beautiful and hovered at most 20cm above the table. Stuff like that. The only issue we had was that they were all so busy playing with their special toy that they were never interested in eating, which was fine.

Did you engage them in a game, book, colouring-in at the table?

We wanted to eat out sometimes and so with my eldest (ADHD,ASD but at the time we just thought high energy and wild) we did use screens, he didn't sleep, he ate well, we like nice food, life was very busy with a child we didn't get know had asn. And a couple of episodes of being or later a mario game on his switch got us through. We obviously never went anywhere crazy fancy.

Later with my youngest she has never needed a screen to sit in a restaurant or cafe. Infact she loves everything about it to the extent that at 4 a cafe date with mum a d a trip to the book shop is her favourite day out.

All kids are different. At 7.5 my eldest now will sit at a table in a restaurant with a notebook and pens and write stories or journal or categorise Pokémon cards or just talk to his sister. He shifts about in his seat a bit and we have a screen for emergencies if we've a long wait for food.

It gets better us what I'm saying whether you use screens or not.

How are they at home? Do you all eat together round the table. ? I’d practice at home first. And when you go out aim for places that’s are fairly quick seating/service first. Like a Toby carvery for example. Plan the outing, so maybe a group activity something like card games while waiting for food (you play too) and colouring after so you can chill a bit.