Effectively asked to leave cafe..AIBU or was he?

[Hoptoit]

Today my husband, 3 yo and 2 yo twins went for lunch in a small local cafe that we go to maybe once a month. It's quite informal and I took the pile of kids toys as an indication that families were welcome. The twins were fractious and hungry, and having a bit of a shout, but we ordered food and waited for them to settle. There were about two other tables of people in there at this time.

After we ordered the owner made a comment along the lines of 'give it a rest now kids' which I took as a joke, then about 5 minutes later, after the children's food had arrived, but before my husbands and mine had he came over and said,'your going to have to stop them making this noise, they are disturbing everyone else lunch. It's just not on.'

So, my husband ate a bit of his lunch then took the twins to sit in the car while I picked at mine. Just after he left a lovely lady on the table next to us came over to say she'd heard what he said and was disgusted and wanted me to know she hadn't complained to him about the noise, and that she planned to say something to him when she left. I'm ashamed to say that I was so embarrassed and stressed that this made me cry.

As I went to pay my £30 bill for the mostly uneaten food, he asked me if everything had been ok?! I said I was mortified by what he'd said. He got all chippy and defensive about it so I didn't say anymore.

It has ruined what should have been a lovely day. Twins aren't easy and I am very conscious if not impacting on other people negatively, but this place gives the impression of being child friendly, and we weren't letting them run wild or anything like that.

So what do you think, was he out of line or should we have left sooner? It was a terrible mortifying experience.

I'm guessing she didn't take them out straight away because there are 3 of them, all very young, and that's logistically just hard. Its very different to having one.

I didn't eat in cafes when my kids were young. It was so much easier at home! But that doesn't mean I'm not happy to see young families when I'm eating in cafes now. It really does not occur to me to care about kid noise.

Fair enough, I can see why I might have given that impression. I agree that people have different thresholds of tolerance for child noise, but in an essentially public, informal setting then a bit of tolerance goes a long way when kids are (unusually) kicking off and parents are dealing with it, and as the proprietor you can't have the penny and the bun.

As for the defensiveness, there has been a fair bit of attack and antagonism.

Btw love the name BanjoKazooie. I'm a massive, massive fan of the games (sorry for derail)

OP i had some sympathy for you but its gone after i read your next 2 posts. You dont sound like a reasonable person at all.

What `Earlybird# said @18.41.30

Some most of us haven't forgotton what it is like taking babies and toddlers out to eat - we just remember that if our child/ren 'shouted and screamed a bit' we would take them outside.

Hoptoit, maybe I've missed this in the thread - is there a reason you didn't take the child(ren) outside to calm down after the manager approached the first time? That would surely have been "active management" of the situation.

And I think to describe her as letting her kids scream is a bit unfair.

She has three kids. Not one. When you have three, you do sometimes have one or two making a fuss while you sort the other out. That's pretty normal. You're always juggling a bit.

Christ I would not let a single child scream and shout. And I would absolutely take that kid out. One kid and two adults? Even one kid and ONE adult? That's not hard :-) . Three toddlers? Hard. But not only hard. Unpredictable. I read it that the OP thought they'd quieten down, and they didn't.

I can't stand stand other people's screaming kids. I couldn't say how I would have felt if I'd been in the same cafe as you because I don't know how noisy they actually were. I do know that I wouldn't expect other people to put up with my fractious kids.

Also what one person thinks of as 'an informal cafe' someone else might think is a really special place - I read on Mumsnet about a poster eating out as a family at Pizza Express as a 'quick meal when out shopping' - for my family that would be a special night out .

Just to add to my earlier post, kudos for taking a three year old and twins out for lunch. And if I'd been there I wouldn't have cared about the noise. Better than hushed whispers and "muzaque" atmosphere. Families have to eat too.

Sigyn, there were two adults, mum and dad, unable to keep 3 children reasonably quiet, entertained or taken out.

Three children can make a lot of noise between them. I wouldn't want to hear it if I was out for lunch.

Thanks for your comments, but having read them all and considered this from many different perspectives I do think he was being an arse

AIBU? 'oh yes you are' - 'well, I don't care what you think'. Why ask?

Your children were "fractious and hungry, and having a bit of a shout, but we ordered food and waited for them to settle"

That does not sound like active management of the situation to me.

So basically Sigyn your saying that because the OP has more than one child it is fine for others to have to listen to them screaming? If 2 adults can't entertain 3 children then perhaps they need to rethink their plans!

What ZiggyZoom said :
I think the kind of person who can read a thread where most people are saying YABU and only notice the ones saying YANBU is the kind of person who could convince themselves that 3 screaming children weren't making much noise!

and, like others - I haven't forgotten what it's like to have 3 little ones - I used to consider other people then just as I do now, which, in some ways makes me less tolerant of people who think they have a right to disturb others. I have been there and done that, and I have dealt with it to keep any disturbance to others to a minimum.

YWNBU and he sounds like an arsehole.

I'm similar to Sigyn though, the only child noises that ever bothered me were my own children's. Anything else I can just screen out, and be grateful it's not mine

Agree with Sirzy too - it 2 adults can't cope with 3 children, then maybe they aren't ready to be eating out as a treat at this stage in their development.

It not really possible to say whether you or the owner was being unreasonable without having been there. It obviously wasn't bothering the lady on the table next to you but on the other hand, the fact that you continued with your meal even though you were told the children had to be quieter suggests that you knew they were being too loud. If he was being unreasonable you would surely have told him not to bother bringing the adults any food as you would be leaving as soon as the children had theirs.

If I take my (under 5 year old) kids to a family friendly cafe, I don't want to hear other children screaming and shouting tbh - especially if there are two parents there.

OP - just stick to outdoor cafes, that's what we do with ds1 - you find people are more tolerant in those sorts of places (and if you need to walk one around, it's easier & you can still feel part of the family).

Given the other customer's comments I would guess the cafe owner was over reacting to a normal level of noise from children. I sometimes have people comment in that sort of way when people react shittily to ds1 behaving in a learning disabled way in public (oh the horror) - and they always make me cry as well (to the point where I now ask them not to be nice because I know it will set off the waterworks)

Thing is no one can answer this thread as no one heard the noise

But if you don't want to hear kidnoise, why not just go to a cafe that doesn't signal itself as being family-friendly?

I can imagine getting a little miffed if you'd gone somewhere that has a grown up "feel" and then there are noisy kids. But this doesn't seem like this kind of place. It has kids toys, and lunch for 5 people, incl drinks (I assume) came to £30. Depends where the OP is, but this sounds to me like a slightly upmarket caff.

We have adult places, and kid friendly places, near me. They feel very different. I'd never, ever take my kids, even now, somewhere that felt "adult" because I appreciate that being an adult-feel place is more than even being quiet, its about being able to behave a certain way and so on. But I think somewhere where there are kids toys on show, I dunno, chill.

I think it would be different if op was somewhere she had to be, in a doctor's waiting room or on a bus or at the checkouts after doing a big shop, but no one needs to go out for lunch at a cafe.

The way op talks about pre lunch shouting and screaming makes it sounds like it is not an unusual occurrence, maybe the best idea would be to wait a year or 5 until the children are more predictable or the parents have better coping methods.

some miserable, intolerant posters on here (who've probably forgotten what their precious offspring were like at that age).
Children are sometimes noisy.
And yes, the UK most definitely is NOT child friendly.

Kid friendly cafe to me says - it's ok for children to chatter loudly, cutlery might get dropped/drinks spilled, toys to play with, changing facilities.

It does not mean screaming and shouting.

If you want somewhere where kids can scream and wander about then go to softplay cafes or McDonalds.