Badly behaved children in restaurants = £40

[Jewelspun]

www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/restaurants-parenting-policy-could-see-28010645.amp

A restaurant has sparked controversy for charging extra for “adults unable to parent”, adding £40 to the bill for families with badly behaved children. Toccoa Riverside Restaurant said the charge has been around for a long time, but is just now garnering attention.

Great idea in theory but how do they decide what is bad behaviour and what could be SEN?

I went out for a celebratory dinner recently, we had a voucher for a lovely restaurant in town that was close to expiring and it was a really big celebration for me. I'm breastfeeding and ds refuses a bottle and doesn't settle well with my in laws so he had to come. He was really good and behaved really well and the entire time I was so worried about other people feeling he had no right to be there thanks to reading other similar threads as a new mum. Why shouldn't parents who have limited or no childcare be able to mark occasions, why shouldn't they be able to celebrate with their loved ones including their children.

It sounds like your baby was fine, so a moot point really and I'm not having a go at you personally... but what about new mums who are also celebrating a very special occasion, with a voucher, who have pulled out all the stops to get childcare and have a rare night away from baby?

Honestly though I don't think anyone's really bothered by children and babies - in restaurants, planes,etc - as long as the parents look like they actually care and are making an effort. As you were.

You do realise that a busy restaurant is very different from a quiet home kitchen the child will be familiar with? It's not lazy parenting if the parent is actively responding to the child and helping them to behave. Children need experiences to learn. Unless you're of the children should be seen and not heard and shouldn't be in public until they know how to behave like tiny adults opinion? It's just not realistic.

SEN kids should still not have free reign to runabout in a restaurant.
It is dangerous, and the reason they might be running about does not matter.
Also, a kid (or adult) with SEN could still be a nuisance to others, including folks with SEN.

SEN kids should still not have free reign to runabout in a restaurant.
It is dangerous, and the reason they might be running about does not matter.
Also, a kid (or adult) with SEN could still be a nuisance to others, including folks with SEN.

Sen children still require discipline and teaching manners.

@theduchessofspork but why not just ask the parents and children to leave ? Why fine ? No need. It's just restaurants being greedy like those service charges.

Absolutely!
But you can and do get parents of SEN kids saying that they should be absolved from any sort of bad behaviour. If anything, the parents should be keeping a closer eye on them.

True

I work in hospitality and I've seen so many accidents and near misses due to parents letting the kids do whatever they want. They are often the first to complain when their precious child has hurt themselves or a member of staff has told them to stop whatever they are doing.

Don't get me started on unsupervised children at the buffet breakfast picking things up and putting them back 🤢

@SunlightOverBamburgh I agree with you. I had an ex boyfriend who used to be rude to waiters, bank staff, shop assistants. Not outwardly rude but curt and not as polite as I’d have liked. Used to really irritate me. Ex for a reason ehh.

You dodged a bullet there.

I absolutely get what you are saying @ChatBFP but the thing is surely the staff should be asking them to leave rather than issuing a fine ? It's surely a better way of solving the problem.

I think should have been double they came in with 11 children and no rules why should other people eating ,staff and servers put up with this ,control your 11 kids learn them manners and how to behave when out in a public place or restaurant.

How do you apply a charge to the bill like this? People usually are pretty on the ball with checking their bill andvwill refuse to pay this chaege.I mean how do you itemise it on the bill?
I have read news stiries of custodial sentences being habded down to catering staff who have tampered with food in this way

There’s no genuine reason - if they can’t behave, they shouldn’t be in a restaurant.
As a customer I don’t give a shit why they’re running around; keep them at home if they’re going to disturb others.

He's a genius I love it

So you think it’s totally OK for your badly behaved children to disturb other people’s quiet enjoyment of a meal out?

No wonder there’s a need for the restaurant’s extra charge!

People don’t expect much of children when out at a restaurant - that they stay in their seats and that their noise doesn’t disturb others ie their voices aren’t heard above the voices of everyone else.

It’s not a high bar but if your DC can’t meet it, stay in McDonalds.

The way you teach is different and sometimes it doesn't matter how much you try, the nature of your child's sn means they don't have the ability to modify their behaviour any more than a blind child could learn to see.

My children (well adults now, they're in their 20s) both have autism and my youngest also has ADHD. We removed them from situations where they were behaving in a disruptive manner and we were unable to get them to behave appropriately.

As I said, many times we threw them over our shoulders and abandoned half eaten meals.

They learned to not run round etc in restaurants. They learned to not yell etc. (We also learned what situations it was unfair of us to put them in in the first place. )

They behave very well now in restaurants. They understand the rules and they understand what happens if they don't follow them.

Also we are more experienced now and can tell when they are unlikely to be able to cope based on what we know triggers them and also through assessing their mood at that moment and we don't subject them to something we have good reason to believe will result in situationally inappropriate behaviour in the first place.

Not every child with sn will ever be able to do that but you're still left with the same two choices.

Remove them from situations they are unable to deal with or stay and let them behave in a way that is objectively speaking extremely disruptive to others.

We chose to leave. Yes because it was unfair to others but also because our children were clearly not coping and it would have been selfish and disrespectful to our children's challenges to keep them in a situation that was beyond their ability to cope with (sensory overload) just so we could carry on the activity.

It reaches a point where that is simply cruel.

It‘s a PR gag. It‘s a PR gag. It‘s a PR gag.

Businesses do anything to get free press and this is clearly a contrived setup to get the restaurant‘s name in the papers.

I would just laugh. There is no way I would pay it.

I'd rather they told parents to turn the volume down on peppa pig and asked families to leave who allow their children to run around squealing.

Some parents / grand parents are ridiculous.

I was in an Ed's diner once, now it is not the place I expect the menu to be in French or have a sommelier it's a family place, there will be children.

But opposite us were a pair of grandparents looking around for people to say how cute their toddler grandson was.

Toddler was standing on the table squashing chips with his feet.

It's the sort of thing a lot of posters on here love. They get all excited at a chance to be assholes to struggling parents and little children.

I disagree, @Soontobe60 - as previous posters have said, a restaurant is a different proposition to eating at home. Of course you teach table manners at home, but there has to be a first time for eating out, and even the best mannered child may not do as well as you hope.

When my dses were little, we taught them table manners at home, and we took them out to eat, but we chose where we took them carefully, to make sure they were capable of behaving the right way for the restaurant we'd chosen. So initially we took them to casual/family friendly places, where the expectations were not as high as at somewhere posher. It meant we could do our best to enforce the good behaviour we expected, but if they weren't perfect (because they were only human), it was not going to cause anyone else a problem, if that makes sense.

Once we knew we could trust them, we went to different places, with quieter atmospheres, and generally they behaved as well as we wanted them to. We used to get compliments from restaurants for how well they'd behaved.

Obviously, we didn't allow antisocial behaviour, and if necessary, we removed ourselves.