Re children in restaurant

[Arbesque]

Four of us booked a table in an expensive restaurant last night for 7.30.
About 10 minutes after we'd sat down a couple came in pushing a buggy and with 2 other children in tow. They were seated at the table beside us.
One child kept bashing his spoon off the table, another kept crawling along the wide windowsill so that he was right behind my head, and the baby was kept amused by the father playing peek a boo while she screamed excitedly. This went on and on.

We asked to be moved to another table. There were none available.Then the baby started crying loudly and the toddler got tired and cranky and joined the wailing.

We left without dessert and complained on the way out. They knocked the price of a bottle of wine off our bill.

AIBU to think expensive restaurants, charging a fortune, should have a policy for dealing with situations like this?

We paid a lot of money for a meal we couldn't enjoy.

I am torn on this. On the one hand I find other people's kids tedious. On the other, after decades in the ME, I love the total freedom children have. Parents know when they are older they will be expected to be educated and work hard and be good parents so they let their little 9nes have a great time nd be free. I rarely see an Arabic kid being told to be quiet or behave, they dont tend to be rude or disrespectful but they do have great fun and freedom of course there are a few little shits, I did see one kid slapp8ng his nanny in the face, she was crying and begging him to stop. The Arab guy at the next table filmed it and called the police and made sure she was safe but that's pretty rare. I have also seen some lovely nd really awful expat brats, US and UK seem to be the most objectionable

YANBU. I take my DC out to cafes and restaurants and interact with them and teach them how to behave, but to family-friendly places and not at 7.30 at night. Sounds like a complete recipe for disaster.

On the rare occasions when we do have to take DC out for a meal at that time (long car trips, hotel stays etc), the tablet and headphones come out, DC is plugged in and you won't hear a single peep throughout the entire meal. Of course, we have had people tutting and making faces because of the screen but we can live with that. I'm always tempted to deposit DC at their table (minus the tablet!) and say, 'Here you go. Feel free to entertain a tired child up past their bedtime and see how well you do", but I haven't yet 😂.

I bet you think that Adults shouldnt enjoy things like Disney either?

The problem is attitude that parents shouldnt get to enjoy things because they have children.

Only in the UK do I still see the attitude that children should be seen and not heard.

The UK is the least child friendly country that I have ever been to. I know children can be loud, but so can adults.

This is pretty much my experience in Spain also. The waiter who is smiling benignly at kids playing up in a restaurant on holiday is quite likely moaning about British brats once he goes into the kitchen and would probably give his own kids a hiding if they behaved the same.
I think the presence of children is accepted - expected in fact, but they don't get treated as "special" like in this country. Apart from in tourist areas where they are catering for what visitors want, it's rare to find a children's menu or a play area in a Spanish restaurant for example - at least the parts where we go - though there's fairly often a gang of kids playing in the garden or the street outside, possibly supervised by a teenager or two. But they are often largely left to get on with things in my experience, there's not the expectation that everyone panders to kids like seems to be common here now. "Would you like to sit down Arlo" or "use your indoor voice" isn't standard discipline from what I've seen!

We built our kids up to restaurants slowly, starting with noisy cafes with quick service and a walk around the block if required because we gave consideration for other people. I expect that consideration to go both ways because I don’t think your noisy child is adorable and guess what? No one else does either.

Ours are now perfectly capable of sitting through a meal in a restaurant and conversing with other adults. It takes quite a while to get to that point though, and I still wouldn’t attempt it with a7:30 booking. We would be gone by 8pm when they are with us.

No I haven't.

If it hadn’t been children the OP would likely have been just as upset at someone talking at the next table instead.

Some people who don’t often go to nice restaurants seem to confuse them with a church, or a library, and expect to sit in near-silence. It’s an unreasonable expectation; there’s no reason to think that a meal in the Fat Duck should be any quieter than one in Zizzi.

I don’t get this at all. Where do you get the idea from that fine-dining should be adults only?

I can’t believe the amount of people who are saying they’d happily tolerate this 😱 I’m fucked if I’m going to get a babysitter for an expensive night out and tolerate someone else’s kids wailing etc, take the to TGI’s/Frankie and Bennys if you want to learn how to socialise them, you also still have to teach them how to behave, it doesn’t just happen by osmosis through sitting in a restaurant.

You have too much time on your hands.

Missing the point completely.

I've never had an adult repeatedly crawl under my table, make grabs at my cocktail glass, then scream and cry for half the meal while the people who brought them just left them to it. But maybe you and I go to different kinds of restaurants.

And, sure, if wanting to enjoy an evening meal out without encountering screaming, whining, running, or parents singing nursery rhymes like crazed circus performers, then yes, call me child-unfriendly.

Again, it's not child-hating to say that some places are simply not (and should never be) toddler-proofed, wipe-clean, bouncy plastic playpens for noisy families.

The difference in Spain (in my experience) is that kids are happily brought out for late dinners, are up until late etc but bad behaviour isn’t tolerated like here-it’s rare you’d hear screaming/shouting/banging cutlery. In fact very rare, I’ve never come across it during our meals out over there!

If the parents had let the two little kids watch some cartoons for an hour (while taking in turns shooting the baby outside/in another room) then presumably all present on both tables would have had a much nicer evening. But letting little kids watch a few cartoons has now become so stigmatised that it’s better to let them get bored, cranky and crawl around everywhere!

I'm in Ireland actually.

My Aunt, until recently, had a restaurant in a popular tourist area in the West of Ireland. She said 30 years ago they found English children very loud and badly behaved, while Irish and European children were quiet and polite.
In more recent times the Irish children have been just as bad as the English, while the continental children are a delight.

I’ve got plenty of time today, I would t be on here otherwise. I’m guessing none of us are that busy if we’re on mumsnet. ☺️

Very reasonable IMO. That echoes my own thoughts. I love my children and have no problem with other people's children but sometimes I like to have an evening where I can, within reason, remember what it was like not to be a parent for a few hours on the rare occasion that we can get a babysitter. If we booked at one of the places that you mentioned at an early-ish time of the evening then I'd have no complaints obviously.

Just my opinion - I'm not trying to change anyone elses.

“Expensive restaurant” and “fine dining” are not the same. You can easily pay £30-40 per person for pretty standard environment/basic food these days.

Don't be silly. The OP hasn't mentioned being annoyed at adults talking. You're inventing things to make someone you disagree with appear unreasonable.

None of that commotion would be even remotely appropriate in a fine dining establishment.

I've posted on a few, because there's quite a few such threads at the moment,but not on an exceptional amount.
For instance, I haven't posted on enough to recognise repeat names, which you obviously can.
So I presume you're on them a lot?

Well I wouldn't expect other peoples kids to keep coming up to my table or crawling behind my head in any restaurant! They'd be told to clear off whether it's the Fat Duck or Zizzi's.

That should read taking turns “soothing” the baby - not shooting it.