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.

When you're a parent of small children, you have three choices:

1. Eat in family friendly places, with your children.
2. Eat in fine dining places but get a baby sitter.
3. Stay home.
4. Go somewhere nicer for lunch, when DC are likely to be better behaved and other customers' expectations will be different.

We do a mix of all 4. What we don't do is bring our two pre schoolers to fine dining restaurants in the evening. Not everywhere is child friendly, that's ok. It's all part and parcel of having small children.

If you do numbers 1 and 4 often enough, then when DC are a bit older you'll be able to bring them to nicer places in the evening and they'll know how to behave.

I'm with you OP. Doesn't matter how expensive/cheap the place is I do not wish to eat in the atmosphere of a playgroup.

Personally I find the parents more annoying

We went out for a meal next to a family like this -‘Alex sit down. Alex stop that Alex eat up Alex stop talking. ‘. Poor Alex couldn’t do anything right

kids are kids But the parents really should be more aware that we really really don’t want to hear in that loud voice what Alex is or isn’t doing.

grr

YANBU. We have two pre schoolers and wouldn't do this. We would be annoyed ourselves at that time of night having paid for a babysitter to eat out in peace. You wouldn't see kids that age in restaurants at that time of night round our way. We only go in the day time and will sit outside unless we're sure the kids will sit nicely. We order quick and get out within 30 - 45mins. That's a reasonable amount of time to keep the kids happy. It's different abroad in that kids will have napped through the long hot afternoon and so be well behaved in the cooler evening. In our climate, most kids need to sleep around 7 / 8 pm ime.

I know from experience, its really embarrassing and hard to keep your kids under control.

Sorry but unless the restaurant has a no children policy then you can't expect no children. And children are loud and messy and get in the way. They learn as they go but they will still get it wrong.

Next time go somewhere adults only if you don't want to be around kids.

Surely the parents should have done that rather than other customers or serving staff having to though!

I would have cancelled the main course and left.

I've had more than a few meals myself ruined by entitled parents who think the out of control behaviour of their children is adorable. Noise is one thing but allowing the children to bother other diners is not and had the crawler fallen off the windowsill I'm sure the parents in this case would have blamed the OP for not taking care of their precious darling.

I notice the many in the UK and US get annoyed very easily with children and babies acting like children and babies.

It's best you go somewhere that's adults only if you can't cope with families.

Did you ask the parents to get the toddler out from behind your head or did you expect the serving staff to do that for you?

I would expect the parents to do that without being asked, but apparently that's way out there.

Yes unbelievable. They should have got off their lazy arses and fetched the child and kept him one of their laps. But THEY didn’t want THEIR meal spoilt did they.

Can you name such a restaurant? I see this kind of response on every. single. thread. of this nature, and nobody has yet been able to come up with a place that bans children. Adult-only spaces are vanishingly rare, which leads to this kind of irritation when spaces which should have a quiet atmosphere (expensive restaurants) don't because someone is there who could have gone to 99% of restaurants instead.

This is exactly how it is in Spain and I'm sure many other countries.

Yep. Not Italian, but i’m south-eastern European and I don’t recognise any of the countries that are being held up as an ideal. Outside of the tourist areas, anyway. Funnily enough, if we’re going by stereotypes then I wonder where the one about British kids being terribly behaved came from? Because that’s one I’ve heard expressed more than once in these countries mentioned so far.

Children may dine out more with adults, but they are not pandered to or left to run wild/scream in the way that’s being described here. They’re expected to control themselves, and behave courteously. There is no way I wouldn’t have been removed and/or scolded by my parents if I was sat there screaming as a kid.

How else do you teach children how to behave and act in specific establishments.

But it doesn't sound like these parents were teaching their children how to behave, as they were allowing one to climb over the windowsills.

I don't mind kids in restaurants, but if they're really noisy I wish the parents would be more self-aware and remove them for a few minutes - take them outside or maybe to the bathroom to calm down before coming back in.

We did that with ours when he lost it and had a complete tantrum - we were happy to try and have them included in meals but wouldn't want to impose a non-stop screaming child on anyone else.

YANBU in my view. I'm a parent of two young children and I'm an adult who enjoys expensive restaurants. We have taken our kids to expensive restaurants in the past but only at lunchtime (which I think is fair game, but obviously the kids need to behave reasonably well still). Why can't we have some adults only space in the evenings? I can't imagine a expensive multi course meal is much fun for overtired kids either. There are plenty of more casual restaurants which are more suitable and enjoyable for an evening meal with kids.

I went to an expensive sushi restaurant once quite late. Young child there playing computer games loudly and moaning. The mum was there having a great evening with her mates. For us it was shit as we had to listen to the poor boys annoying device all night. We complained to the waitress who just shrugged and said they come in all the time. We didnt go back to that restaurant. Its really selfish to ruin other people's evening when they have a reasonable expectation of peace. We get up and leave or take our kids for a walk I they're disturbing other diners. I don't really get people defending people who allow their children to spoil other people's evenings.

KatherineJaneway

I believe they have a kids menu at Le Gavroche now

Poissons et Viandes

Bâtonnets de poisson et frites
£62.80

Pépites de poulet et frites
£51.00

Fromages

Sélection de babybel, ficelle de fromage et triangle de Dairylea
£32.00

Desserts

Glaces et Sorbets Maison

£20.80

Boissons

Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Romanée-Conti Grand Cru Fruit Shoot
£165.00

This.

Kids should be trained to good table manners and calm behaviour at home.

You don't practice this on fellow diners at upscale restaurants. It's just not fair to other patrons to undermine the ambience.

Exactly this. Where are these magic places?!

It's not just the money. It's the atmosphere and experience.

I always think the line is whether children are just making background noise and being a pain for their parents or whether they are actually talking to / annoying / bumping into / spilling things on you.

I have young kids (who I almost exclusively take to family friendly places) and one of my greatest joys is going out without my children and being able to ignore other peoples’ 😂. That doesn’t mean I don’t want other kids around and the noise that goes with it, just that I don’t want to have to catch them when they are falling from a chair or talk to them.

OP get over yourself. Paying a lot of money for a ‘expensive restaurant’ doesn’t make you better than other people

maybe your annoyed because your bubble got punctured that you are there at a fancy restaurant and you cannot stand that people with children and not who you deem desirable are also able to afford it so it’s not as posh as you like

F*ck me, talk about projection😂