If your kids use screens in a restaurant

[bravefox]

... at least have the decency to bring headphones or put them on silent.

Took my two out for a bite to eat after clubs this morning, would have been quieter to sit in an arcade. If you must let your kids use a tablet etc while they're waiting fine, but please don't make the rest of us listen to it.

YABU: deal with it
YANBU: turn the sound off!!

Completely agree. I had to endure an entire flight recently with noisy screens behind me. I think one kid was on an iPad watching a cartoon and the other on a games console. Mum sat there the whole journey saying nothing to them. Pathetic.

I literally pay a lot of money not to have this antisocial behaviour. It’s crap parenting. If you have kids that young then don’t take them to restaurants. Get a babysitter fgs

Yes - my 4 year old is a delight to take out to restaurants now so I really hope my toddler will be one day too 🙈

YANBU. Every bloody day I have to listen to that awful AI type shite from YouTube - like the budget Cocomelon blaring out from a pram on a bus.

My 4 year old is frequently complimented on her behaviour in restaurants - she also had access to screens when needed. It’s not one or the other.

We’ve not needed/wanted to use screens out of the house yet so I’m hoping that continues.

Screens are fine as long as there is no noise. If parents want to stick their kids in front of screens while they eat their meal, it's absolutely ok unless they're inconveniencing others.

So I agree with you, OP, but I can't get on board with this "it's so sad" bollocks. Parents spend far more time with their kids and invest much more in them nowadays than they ever did in the past, especially women who, btw, are also working many more hours. And the world is a much safer place for children.

Yes, people in the past didn't stick their children in front of screens but 1) they didn't have them in the same forms that we do, and 2) there was a lot more "give" in family life. Once they were past a certain age (4-5), you could shove kids out the door to play anyway.

Allowing a harassed hungry mum 15 minutes to eat her dinner warm and in relative peace in a public place seems one of the better uses of screen-time to me.

Tablets aren't needed for any child. It's a relatively new invention, the mobile device. How do you think parents and children managed before?

My son is autistic and we take a tablet with us to meals.

Always with headphones though.

I don’t really care if people judge, since he is using headphones it has zero impact on them.

He does wear a sunflower lanyard but I generally find those with the strongest views about ‘children on screens’ overlap a lot with the ‘autism isn’t real and down to bad parenting’ crew 🤣 so explaining special needs doesn’t make a difference.

Well with my autistic child we probably just wouldn’t have gone out.

im thankful for any device that can make things easier and allow us to participate in public life.

That's nonsense, @GoFigure235 . We didn't "shove " our kids if of doors in the past. At least, I didn't. We took books and coloured pencils, and things of that nature. Yes, sometimes they didn't prefer to sit still but by 4-5 they most certainly are able to.

Complete agree.

I don’t use screens at the table full stop but when people do, I just don’t understand why they think it’s fine not to use earphones. So weird and entitled.

Absolutely agree with this.

it took trialing 6 different pairs of headphones until we found a set that our ASD dd could use, but having the volume on in public was never under consideration.

and for all the people who hate children in screens and think they never learn manners, we now have an ASD teenager with ARFID who can go to restaurants and order for herself and participate in the conversation the entire meal. Screens were a tool we used to get us to that point.

That's fairly irrelevant, isn't it? Because we have mobile devices now and they are a tool open to us to use or misuse.

When we didn't have smart phones and broadband, we used dial-up internet on computers. Overuse of social media and mobile internet is one of the issues of our time, but no one is advocating going back to how it was before. And yet we managed in the 90s.

We managed 30 years ago without screens when taking the wains out (and we did go out to eat quite a bit). It’s lazy parenting on the whole, so many parents don’t know how to interact with their children for even a short period out of the house these days.

Thats a shame, no one should feel they have to stay home.

Are you participating though, if your child is plugged in to device? I get that it's easier and keeps children occupied and out of causing other noise/issues and it's probably comforting and routine for them, but is there more to be gained by interacting, chatting, playing games together than just plugged in to screen?

Totally agree. Kids are 13 and 17 now but we always ate out on a Sat night or Sun lunchtimes most weekends when they were small. We had a 'no screens at the table' rule which included the adults (harder than you think ) and we still do now.
We'd take little toys or paper/crayons, and if it got a bit fractious a guessing game or 'I Spy' was enough of a distraction.

I've always taken games and colouring things. My two are 9 and 14 now and we take easy games like Pass the Pigs, Dobble and Kluster with us to fill any difficult moments (the teen isn't very chatty these days!). It's so lovely playing with them while we wait for the food, or afterwards. I tell them off if phones come out!

“Aren’t needed for neurotypical children”

fixed it for you.

If things are for the better yes, but plugged in to a screen at a family dinner is not better. That has not enhanced your child's life. Easier for parents yes, but not better for children.

Presumably she means the parents can participate.

Hmm, do you have much experience parenting a severely autistic child?

I don’t understand why restaurant staff don’t intervene and ask customers to mute or use headphones. I am sure that for every customer who flounces there will be 3 more who will actively choose to eat in a place with rules that are enforced.

Well I'll leave the conversation here... I don't understand it! I just don't! Yes I have experience of ND children, I've never needed a screen.

But you're telling me life is impossible without it so be it.

Screens are fine (though I'd prefer parents took books or colouring etc).

Screens without headphones are NOT fine.

A plague on Apple's house for getting rid of headphone sockets.

I agree with the pp who says headphones should be mandatory in public places.