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We encourage children in our cafe BUT

5 replies

childfriendlycafeowner · 14/06/2013 20:07

I hope you don't mind us asking any readers for their opinion on child behaviour in public places.

We run a small cafe in a small town, and we love doing it (opened up 4 months ago). The previous owners did not encourage children and families, we do, we bought high chairs and do what we can to make families feel welcome. But today two girls came in with a baby and a toddler, my guess is the toddler was 2. From the moment she arrived the screamed, not crying because she was upset but screaming because I guess she liked the sound of her own voice. We made comments to the mum in the hope she would take the hint that the child was disturbing all the other customers but her comment was "she is a little tinker isn't she" The other customers threw their food and drinks down their necks and left as quickly as they could, some complaining as they left. She did go quiet for a little while but she was screaming for probably at least half of the 1 hour plus that she was in the cafe.

When the lady came to pay we said to the lady that we are very sorry but unless she can stop her little girl disturbing all our other customers and driving them away perhaps she could sit in our outside seating area with her or not come in. We felt terrible to say this but it really was a terrible din that upset many people.

Are we being reasonable or unreasonable. Would you tolerate your child no matter how young being so disruptive to other people in public

JulieMumsnet · 15/06/2013 20:23

You've seen our campaign This Is My Child?

HelenMumsnet · 17/06/2013 11:42

Morning.

First of all, huge apologies that we have not posted on this thread in any length before today. We definitely should have done.

What we should have done - and are doing now - is make it very clear for those who don't know already that we will remove posts on this thread (and elsewhere on the boards, where they are reported to us) that are clearly disablist in tone and intent.

We have no wish to censor discussion about children's cafes but we regard posts that suggest children with special needs should not be allowed in/should be removed from cafes as disablist.

From what we have seen of this thread so far (and we're still catching up with it), it's clear that our upcoming This Is My Child campaign has much to do in terms of raising awareness and extending tolerance of children with special needs.

HelenMumsnet · 17/06/2013 11:48

@GobbySadcase

Some of the posters here should be mindful of 'this is my child'.

Mind you, with HQ decreeing unintentional disablism acceptable then the whole campaign starts to look a little brittle.

So does that mean I can say " insert ethnic minority of choice shouldn't be in a cafe as they smell" as long as I don't intend to offend?

Ok that would make me a complete twat, but that's no different to the 'unintentional' disablists on here. Not that I believe it's unintentional for a second.

Again, our apologies on this one. We should not have sent any mails saying, or implying, that unintentional disablism was OK.

It's obviously not.

HelenMumsnet · 17/06/2013 11:50

@ArbitraryUsername

But it doesn't have to be a zero sum game.

Nor do we need to okay parents of children with SN off against each other.

It's about flexibility, tolerance and community spirit. As tab has pointed our several times it is possible that the two SN families could assess the situation at hand and respond accordingly.

Exactly. We would also hope that those near/around the SN families in question would also show flexibility, tolerance and community spirit.

That's what our This is My Child campaign is aiming to encourage.

HelenMumsnet · 17/06/2013 12:05

@MaryKatharine

But, Helen and Arb, I am a parent of a child with SN. That doesn't mean I think there are easy answers to it all. I'm not liking the whole to tribes thing and I don't want to go through the rest of my life thinking I now have to be a member of that team rather than that team.

Of course there aren't easy answers. Life is blinkin' complicated.

But we'd contend that, rather than separating into teams/tribes, we could all make a point of trying to be more tolerant of each other ? and we can only do that if we become more aware of the challenges others may be contending with on a daily basis.

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