To not enjoy eating out with my kids?

When they were little and still now we found street food venues were a great option. Multiple things to order midday in the city was chilled with lots of other families. Sometimes our friends without children would meet up for a drink while we went home and they stayed out.

We also found our local ethnically diverse areas great for family dining. Again lots of families eating out together, relatively inexpensive for very tasty food the kids loved and introduced them to different foods and flavours.

With 3 children, one of them still a toddler, no, it’s not enjoyable.

But I’d say, break things up and take the older ones out 1 to 1. It can be lovely to sit and chat and try new things. It doesn’t have to be a £100 extravaganza. You can share a meal for £20-25 if just the two of you. Do it a few times a year. It teaches them social skills for eating out and being patient, but it’s not utter chaos.

I’ve been doing this with mine since they started weaning. From about 5, we’d take a set of dominoes or top trumps and play and talk while waiting for our food.

At that age, we just took our kids out for brunch on a weekend as we found it didn’t take as long to be served and able to sit and do stickers / colouring / not as frazzled at that time. Didn’t have an enjoyable dinner out until they were much older (around 10/11).

@GratedCarrotandCheese We LOVE eating out and have done so since the twins were about 12 months and DS1 was 5. They're now 10 and 15.

We just made sure we had plenty of colouring in, ask them questions about pictures on the wall, guessing games, alphabet game, maths, Sometimes a walk to the toilet if they got too fidgety.

I think we mostly went to louder restaurants when they were little or family friendly ones.

We have never had to use screens to keep them quiet as I hate seeing kids on screens in restaurants . I spent a lot of time in France and meals are an experience so having a child on a screen is very rude!

We’ve just given up 😆 We get a takeaway and they can wander away from the table when finished to go and play in the living room while we eat. We haven’t been on holiday abroad for ages for the same reason. Youngest isn’t 3 yet and I keep telling myself it will get better but we’re just at the stage where everything is a problem and it’s slowly eroded away any desire in me to leave the house 😂

If I go out we almost never get dessert. It makes it just too long. Main meal and an ice cream at home. Cuts the cost too!

Stick to coffee and cake etc in family friendly restaurants

they’re very little.

teach them table manners in your house where there is no pressure.

meals in naice places are for once you’ve worked your way through lesser places like cafes and fast food restaurants etc… once they can reliably sit and eat in low key places, then you can try more ‘grown up’ places.

until they are ‘trained’ - get a babysitter if you want to go out for a nice lunch and then you can have an hour to yourself and enjoy it rather than being up to your eyes in wet wipes and arguing kids with crayons and stickers all over the table.

I feel there is a real rush to do everything with kids when they are tiny - (people taking them for long meals, long theatre shows etc) sometimes it makes more sense to just wait to do these things when they are a bit bigger with longer attention spans and ability to behave appropriately for the situation.

enjoy them for the age and stage they are rather than consistently trying to get them to do things that are developmentally too advanced for them.

YANBU.

I quite enjoy taking my three (4, 2, 8m) out for lunch, but only if I’m on my own or maybe with my husband. Add anyone else into the mix and I don’t like it. I think I just need to laser focus and not have anyone distracting me, as if my back is turned for a moment it might all go to seed. So, I suppose I like the thrill of the challenge (worth it for no washing up) rather than a nice relaxing leisurely meal. 😂

I’m a single parent with an 8 year old boy and I absolutely love it but I can imagine with multiple kids it’s less fun and more money . Maybe just don’t until they’re a bit older?

We just didn’t bother at that age. I used to love eating out too, but it soon dawned on me that it’s boring for young children, they don’t get the social aspect of it. They are 16 & 14 now and whilst they are good company at dinner, we still don’t bother often because invariably they want the fillet steak, so a meal for 4 of us costs about £200!

I think your expectations are too high. Does it work better at a certain time of day? Brunch or lunch is always better than dinner.

And unfortunately it might not get any better. Their very young children behaviour may be replaced by sibling bickering which also makes that £100 feel like a waste of money. We’ve walked out of a few places before ordering (or when still cancellable) when it was clear it was not going to work out.

So dont eat out? They can learn table manners at home surely, its not that big a deal?

Ive always enjoyed taking mine out, not having to cook and clear up was a chance to connect, talk and play games like eye spy but if its not enjoyable then just do something else.

A compromisd could be a supermarket cafe, they are often cheap and cheerful but serve proper food - mine used to see it as a treat nonetheless, and a reward for behaving in the supermarket

I can’t stand eating out with my kids 😂 but that’s mainly because of the astronomical cost. I just end up thinking about what else we could have done with the money lol. We do it rarely, kids birthdays etc. But yeah I find it hard to “enjoy” it!