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.

But the children in question weren’t running riot??? One was a baby playing with cutlery and the other was crawling … how is that running riot?

If people want child free time then they should book in restaurants that have a no under 18’s policy.

Honestly the entitlement on this thread😂

I think that's the issue. The parents don't notice the noise and inappropriate behavior because they are used to it.

What about people who want to eat out with their children? Why should they get a babysitter just because they have £££?

There is no reason why parents can't eat with their children. They just need to make sure they aren't crawling or running around or making an unreasonable amount of noise.

This has already been pointed out by many posters on this thread. It isn't an all or nothing. There is a middle ground @FlissyPaps

@FlissyPaps "What about people who want to eat out with their children? Why should they get a babysitter just because they have £££?"

Well because in the OPs post the DPs there don't appear to be doing a very good job of entertaining their own DCs or indeed keeping them out of harms way, as not sure a high window sill is really the best place for an active toddler to be.

ODFOD

OP doesn't has social issues and entitled because they don't wanchildren n climbing around their head whilst they are eating.

Seriously how entitled are you?

How entitled are parents who think it's acceptable for their kid to crawl around behind other diners? Kids in restaurants, fine, how else will they learn? Kids being allowed to behave like complete brats, not fine. Bothering other people is not acceptable whether it's Asda cafe or the Fat Duck.

What type of restaurant was this? I guess I'm asking what type of cuisine was served? That might influence my expectations of gathering patrons

Did you enjoy the food you managed to eat? Haven't been out in ages. What did you have?

Entitled much? In a harvester or beefeater this would be fine but I’m not paying fine dining prices and got a babysitter to hear other peoples children. When my children played up I took them straight out. But this is why the young are so useless.

@Username917778

well children don’t particularly deserve an expensive meal out no as they’re not the ones paying for it

Jeez I see a coach load of ‘my feral child can do no wrong’ parents have just landed on the thread. No coincidence it’s tea time - they’re probably just on their phones right now in some restaurant while their kids terrorise decent people.

There's a big difference between children sitting eating a meal at the table and entitled parents with shrieking squealing children running and crawling around.

Spot the parents on this thread who can't be bothered to parent their own children.

I’m sure if the children were making an unreasonable amount of noise the family would have been asked to leave.

Especially since the restaurant was oh so expensive and high-end.

Seriously, they would have. I’ve worked in hospitality. Waited tables for years. We kicked out more unruly adults that children.

If people read the OP’s opening post again they’ll see they were annoyed by a baby playing with a spoon and playing peekaboo with their dad and the other one crawling behind them. It sounds pathetic. And if OP can’t handle that, they should eat at home.

It doesn't sound like the windowsill crawler was getting much out of the expensive meal.

There's nothing pathetic about not wanting some badly behaved kid crawling around you while the parents Watch thinking how adorable he is! Too bloody right I couldn't handle that!

How is crawling bothering someone?

How is crawling behaving like a brat?

Some really strange comments on here. It would be completely different if the children in question were 5+ and were purposely being naughty and physically affecting other diner. But they weren’t…. They were practically babies from OPs description.

I just don’t get it. I’ve been to a lot of very expensive restaurants in my life and the kind of behaviour you describe doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Ignore the kids, tune out the noise and enjoy your own meal. I would have found the roving toddler hilarious and probably would have been playing peekaboo with the baby myself.

But then, half of my family is Dutch and our family meals have always been legendary for their size and volume at whatever age I can remember and I spent a lot of my younger life in Spain, where you eat very late as a whole family and kids with their noise are accepted as perfectly normal.

I just don’t get how someone’s meal can be ‘ruined’ by someone else’s kids. Did you not have enough interesting things to talk about with your own table to take the focus off?

Only on MN would people think it’s entitled for diners to object to feral children climbing on their heads by asking to move tables. Parent-titlement is real.

Got to say that I’m laughing at people talking about the OP being unreasonable, because obviously children should be allowed into restaurants “as how else are they meant to learn how to behave”
seriously? It doesn’t sound as if these children were learning anything about acceptable behaviour.
Children SHOULD be allowed in restaurants, but they also need to learn how to behave, and the only way that happens is when the parents teach them.
Crawling along window sills behind other customers heads doesn’t come into the category of “learning appropriate behaviour”. Far better to teach them how to behave in Pizza Hut, before heading to an expensive restaurant, where other people are trying to enjoy some peace and quiet.

No they wouldn't necessarily.

We were somewhere 'high end' recently where people complained about the behaviour of one table who were obviously completely drunk.

Nothing was done.

You know what they say about assumptions

The life style in the med is different though. Kids finish school in the evening so families eat later. Having toddlers out when they are tired and cranky is not enjoyable for the parents or children and there are family friendly restaurants that are more suitable. My child is 10 and amazingly behaved but I wouldn't have her out that time unless we were on holiday.

Most restaurants in the UK don't allow children after 9pm so the OP might want to go out later in future.

YANBU
I wouldn't have got as far as the starter before getting up and leaving.😞
Besides, 7.30pm is way past a toddler's bedtime imo which may explain the child's behaviour.

Jesus Christ, the kid was crawling on the window sill behind OP's head. How is that not bothering someone?

What was the behaviour?

So people who can't afford high end expensive restaurants have to put up with bad parenting?

Because it's Pizza Hut?

Have you always been such a snob?

I just couldn’t get my back up about a child crawling behind me.

Like a PP said, my attention would be on my friends/family and our conversations and the food.

Unless the child was physically pulling my hair or trying to grab my food, but I don’t think the child did any of the sort to the OP. OP was just annoyed at the existence of children dared to be inside an expensive establishment. Sad.