to ask mums of toddlers not to use screens in places that aren't appropriate.

[getoffmybramblepatch]

I went out for a meal with dh yesterday without our children. We do take them out for meals often and our 20 month old is usually really well behaved because he has been taught to be. If he ever does get impatient we just talk to him at a level appropriate for the dinner table and maybe give him some colouring in to do or have a game of I spy.
either way, we try to communicate with him to keep him calm and we'll behaved at all times, for our own sanity as much as everyone else's.

Yesterday we were enjoying our child free meal until a family arrived at a table on the other side of the room and a child of about the same age wouldn't settle. Nothing was said to this child.. No discipline, no chat, the first line to come from mum and dad was "here, watch pepper pig". Out comes the tablet and on comes pepper pig so loud to the point where I can't hear myself think. It would have been quieter if we had stayed at home with our dc and this is usually a nice place.
I've seen it happen a lot lately, and pepper pig seems to be programme of choice. Aibu to think that I don't give a toss about the rod you are making for your own backs, but to let these parents know how irritating it is when this is your first resort in places that have etiquette?

This is two separate issues; the noise of the tv programme and whether the child should have been watching the programme in a restaurant.

If the volume was too loud I would have spoken to the manager/waiting staff

As to whether the child should have been watching the programme, children are all different and have diverse needs. There may also be several situational reasons why the parents wanted to put the tv programme on for the child. How can you judge someone if you don't know them? (shouldn't really judge them even if you do know them)

I do hope you never have a child on the autistic spectrum because they are not a pretty sight sometimes when having to wait for something. You would be begging for peppa as opposed to mines ranting swearyness

Another goady thread. The OP must have known how this would go.

The noise was the inappropriate thing, not the screen.

This is 2015 and a screen is just the modern version of crayons to keep a child quiet in restaurants. Do you have a problem with crayons?

As for your 20 month old behaving...great. He's 20 months. My DD sat in restaurants nicely at that age too. Wait a couple of years

I have 3 children - 2 of them would happily sit nicely at the table at that age and do some colouring or chatter on as toddlers do - I get you about that
My eldest wasn't like that at all, he sat like his bum was on fire until he was about 5, always up and down and we had to make an early exit twice because of it. This was in the days before tablets and YouTube on phones - pity really because it would have been a godsend to put Thomas the tank engine on with some headphones so we could actually eat!
They were all raised in the same way with the same rules - it was just the bad luck of the draw that DS was incapable for a while!
We've used Peppa pig and headphones once with DD2 as a last resort but in general we don't like using it.. I do agree with using headphones when possible so YANBU about that. YABU to assume that you have that much control over how a 20 month old sits at a table though, it's mostly not down to good parenting, more good luck

It's all fine saying that if you are having a bad day you just don't eat out, but in my experience you can be having a perfectly fine day and yet when it comes to sitting down in a restaurant for dinner, small children can still get restless and embarrassing. In our case we only eat out when we are on holidays, or when we are on a day out that is miles from home. So just deciding to go home to eat if they are a bit tired isn't necessarily an option.

This is why people get so frustrated at the likes of the OP making a judgement based on a snapshot. There are so many variables and you have no idea what the circumstances are. I can totally understand you being annoyed by the noise if a child is watching something with the volume turned up, but a quick word with the family, or the waiter if you didn't feel brave enough to speak to them yourself, would probably have sorted that out. And if a child is quietly watching something on a tablet and jot disturbing other diners I just can't get my head round why anyone else would care.

We all judge sometimes, it's human nature. But it's worth remembering that none of us are above being judged ourselves. Eg I know people who think that reading isn't something that should be encouraged (I don't mean at the dinner table, I mean in general) and yet reading is the holy grail on mumsnet. (And I say that as someone who loves reading).

Lol at 'I'd rather hear Peppa Pig than someone performance parenting in my ear! Groan!!' How very true

The ins and outs of the OP's post are, to me, not the point. She is right, it is unreasonable to have the sound on a tablet turned up in a public place to the point it disturbs other people. Whether this is a train, a restaurant, a library, a church or an airport lounge nobody should be forced to listen to the soundtrack of someone else's choice of entertainment. They can look at whatever device they want, showing whatever they want, because that doesn't affect anyone else, but they don't have the right to hijack someone else's hearing just to entertain themselves.

We spent many tedious hours playing i-spy and the even more gripping "guess who I am thinking of" in restaurants praying for food to come. The guess-the-person game is especially tedious with a child who really only knows their family and the tellytubbies. If tablets had been invented we would have had them in a second. That stage of life was mercifully short and actually soon we will be childfree again. Those 20 years sweep past in the blink of an eye.

Yy to preferring the sound of peppa pig to the sound of someone performance parenting playing I-spy with a 20month old!

It's kind of a lazy parenting option to stuck a child in front of a screen to avoid having to, you know, parent (unless the child has some sort of sn and needs said screen)

Tablets weren't invented when I was a child and the vast majority of children were well behaved in a restaurant environment because their parents were on the ball and not so heavily reliant on techy baby sitting devices...

Indeed WD41. Thirty years ago there would have been a thread about this modern parenting thing of taking crayons to a restaurant and the outrage etc.
Perhaps the parents in OP's case knew that their child might launch crayons like missiles and (ironically) had the OP's best interests and eyeballs in mind.

Oh and ds is 5 and has never been given a mobile/ tablet or kindle (insert any other techy item) to keep him 'happy' when we're out

Of course, those golden old days before screens...
Consider the possibility that screens allow parents without babysitters to actually enjoy meals out with each other and toddlers rather than constantly pre-empting tantrums.

wayward, babysitting devices like the OP's child's grandparents?

The sound should have been turned right down. I have a nineteenth month old who is usually happy to sit when we are chatting to him or colour. Sometimes, though, towards the end of a meal he gets bored because I am a slow eater. When he does we do play a nursery rhyme app for a couple of minutes. Is that really so bad?

I must have taught my ds to have ADHD.

Agree it's only the volume level of the device that's the issue.

I've no idea how things were done when I was little because eating out was nowhere near as common when I was a child. As a child we only ever ate out when on holidays. The idea of going out for dinner in our home town would have been completely alien to my parents - why would you eat out when you didn't need to? I don't remember my friends ever talking about eating out as a regular occurrence either. So when I was a child I probably behaved well in a restaurant mainly due to the fact that it was such an incredibly unusual place to be. Whereas now, eating out is common and fairly mundane, which is probably why children need distraction techniques.

Don't care about screens or not screens - mine never had one at that age, mainly because I couldn't afford it and wouldn't have thought of it, but now he is a teenager my DS has square eyes with the rest of them. When he was small, my preferred technique was, if DS was playing up in a cafe (or anywhere else) and books/talking/colouring in didn't work in short order to settle him, then I paid the bill and marched DS home. This was ENORMOUSLY inconvenient to me, but much less inconvenient to the other diners, and taught DS that playing up would result in immediate action. (This method really worked for me.)

However - screen noise at any volume makes me rage. If you have a screen on a bus, train or in a cafe, then you turn the volume down to nothing, and use earphones. And yes, it always seems to be Peppa Pig.

Again ? This topic is getting dull now

I remember my parents being judgey about children who were given colouring in to do at restaurants in the 80s. And being smug about having 3 children who sat 'nicely' and joined in the conversation.

I think their friends might have preferred it if we had been colouring in But I hated colouring and loved talking to at adults so I was quite happy with the arrangement.

speaking of judgemental, why is I spy deemed performance parenting?
Seriously? its not done loudly at all but someone has just raised the point that the 20 years you enjoy with your child sweeps past in the blink of an eye.
I (personally and it is a personal opinion) would much rather be playing eye spy with the kids and having a laugh with them, teaching them things and watching them tick over than plugging them into something loud so their imaginations are controlled by something else. And yes, they are capable of this at 20 months. It's not smug or performance parenting to play I spy.. its enjoying time with my child.
To the person who said crayons are the same as peppa pig, it's not. It's called drawing a picture for a reason. It let's out imagination. kids are capable of stimulating themselves. Yes I may sound judgey but quite frankly so do a lot of you. I'm not judging mums specifically, I penned a note to mums on a site called mumsnet and got flack for my thoughtless wording. I'm not having a go.. I just wanted to vent that I wish people that used it as a first resort would think about the people around them first. It's much nicer to hear people engaging with their kids than a kids TV show.
fwiw it wasn't a child friendly place and if headphones had been used I wouldn't have noticed.

You're right, the sound shouldn't have been on, or certainly not at the volume you describe. No problem with the screen itself being used, mind.
I, too, really want to know what techniques you have used to teach the 20 month old to behave well in restaurants. I'm not being snippy, I really genuinely want to know, because it baffles me how this could be done. Did you use praise? Reward? Sanctions, like removal for poor behaviour? Etc.
My own dd was good in restaurants at that age, but not due to any teaching - wouldn't have known where to start, to be honest! But I often think I am quite slack, compared to the parenting others describe.

catsize do you need my address to call social services?

Agree ghosty

Why do you get to decide when it's 'appropriate' for screen time OP?