There's absolutely nothing wrong with iPad at the table at a restaurant after a child centric day

[moomoomouseey]

Imagine a day, filled with child friendly activities on holiday. Think beach, biking sandcastles, swimming together, pool, diving, playgrounds, reading books together, drawing, child centred show in the evening, fun fair, trampoline jumping.. etc etc..

At the end of all this, you go out for a meal. You bring crayons and paper etc and other toys, but after a while, your children are restless and bored but you want to enjoy your meal. You get out the iPads with headphones and let your kids watch for a bit/ play educational games, while you enjoy your meal in peace.

Some judgy judgerpants walks past and thinks you're a bad parent.

Kids are 2 and 4 or 3 and 5.

Restaurant, supermarket , cars, home - so many kids are glued to screens. I hate seeing this level of screen use and the effects that it has on development . Having said that most adults are glued to a screen too

You got your two year old to sit quietly at a dinner table and wear headphones? I'm guessing we might not be getting an accurate picture of the situation.

Would be impressive if you’d had an iPad decades before they were invented

If you have children who are already young adults, you are not in a position to comment as the use of tablets and screens when they were young does not even remotely resemble what it is today.

The first iPad was invented in 2010. A parent who had a toddler and may have used it with them from the day it was released (unlikely) would have a 16/17 year old today. Even if that was you, the culture of using in a restaurant was so so different to today - it genuinely was just short times either side of the meal. The content available also not of the addictive nature it is right now to draw children in and want them to keep watching.

Or the children were very occasionally exposed to them when primary school age and already knew how to behave and expectations at restaurants

Kid's didn't 'need' iPads at dinner 20'years ago

No..they didn't know what it was to watch an iPad. Now, they do.

Once you offer them an iPad in any setting, they're going to ask for them all the time.

Screens are addictive. I wish i could go back in time and never offer my child a screen but this is the world we live in

I don’t really think it’s that different but then wouldn’t want my teens on phones at the table either…

We've never let our son do this, as he was happy with books, puzzle books and drawing, etc, but I would never judge anyone else.

Thanks for your judgement!
FYI, the meal had finished for us, but some.of my friends had turned up later than us. It had ended up being past my daughter's bedtime and she was tired. As OP says, we had done a lot of child centred activities during the day - so it's not the child neglect that you clearly seem to think it is.
Just because these things were not around when we were kids does not mean that we are ignoring our children now. I remember many a meal when I was a kid where we would be running around or camped out under the table- the world was not child friendly in the 80s!

How sad. How very sad that after being indulged for an entire day, your children can't cope with a family meal without continous entertainment.
Shame on you for not teaching them how to simply be in the monment. To learn patience, conversation, listening and manners.
I do sometimes wonder when parents decided their main role was to be the Genie of the Lamp.

Nowhere in my post does it say child neglect - you are projecting. I’m not talking about ‘back in our day’, the world is unrecognisable and making comparisons between then and now in this instance would be unreasonable. I’m talking about not even 10 years ago when kids still had the adaptability to entertain themselves and sit quietly without iPads being brought everywhere.

It's clear you have absolutely no experience of parenting a child or teen with SN @NeighbourTrouble63.

I'd love if people could confine their judgements to subjects they have some actual experience or knowledge of, but I guess that will never happen.

Anyway, the point is the child often won't be distressed if they have an ipad with them. They can interact with family for a while, get used to socialising and then retreat to the safety of headphones if (probably when) it all gets a bit overwhelming.

In our case, what's happening is really the opposite of what you think is happening.Tech is allowing social inclusion, not promoting social isolation. The ipad allows my autistic teen to interact with the world much more than he would otherwise be able to. It allows him to try out a setting like a restaurant and gradually become more used to it.

Without accommodations like this he'd just have to stay at home instead.
He loves food and enjoys eating out and interacting with people when conditions are right. It's a godsend to have a device that helps achieve this.

It's also lovely to be able to socialise as a family instead of one parent always staying home too. It's good for siblings that we can do this even occasionally.

Do you understand now?

Goodness me people do talk some drivel on here.

No, she won’t understand. People like this really do believe that if disabled people can’t behave exactly like them, and have exactly the same needs as them, then they should stay at home.

I get told that various venues and activities are not suitable for me/my son by posters on here regularly- some of the places that are apparently unsuitable for us are supermarkets, busses, swimming pools and shopping centres. Its not remotely surprising that restaurants are also unsuitable.

Gotta love the way the smug and condescending posters (who say you're a terrible parent if you give your child a tablet or smartphone to play with or look at) are looking at the past with rose tinted glasses and making out parents 20, 30, 40+ years ago were much better.

What a load of old cobblers! Most of the parents of my children's friends back in the late 1990s and early noughties, (before all this portable tech kicked in) would push their kids off out of the house as soon as they came in from school - until darkness, and THEN they'd stick them in front of the TV! (And most of the time during the school holidays.) Most of them didn't do anything with them, they mostly just thought of them as a nuisance and many of them certainly never went out with meals with them - unless you include McDonald's.

And when I was a kid back in the 1970s - my parents and most of the parents in the street (and in the school,) just used to push the kids out into the park, or on their bikes, on their roller skates, on their skateboard, out with their friends, out to the swimming baths etc. They didn't really do much with us.

My dad would take me swimming quite often when I was about 6 or 7 to teach me how to swim, and he taught me to ride my bike, but for the vast majority of the time, kids just entertained themselves. On the occasions people went for meals post 1980s, people would stick their kids in the bloody playbarn/play area of the pub or restaurant. Giving a kid a tablet to play with is not much different. It's occupying a really energetic child who needs their brain stimulating, and needs to be occupied. There is fuck-all wrong with letting a child have a piece of tech for an hour or two several times a week. FFS!

Kids are flipping hard work some days (even the 'good' ones,) and if you have been looking after them/entertaining them during the day, there's absolutely nothing wrong with popping a tablet in their hand for an hour The really sneery condescending smug judgmental posters on here, looking down their nose at people giving children the tablet to look at or play with for an hour or two are really grinding my gears!

Get over yourselves. You're so judgmental. Don't try and make out that you're a better parent because you allegedly don't do it/didn't do it Just pack it in!

When me and DH wanted a break from our kids now and again. when they were little (as most parents deserve - and need,) we'd let them play a video game. I suppose we're absolutely fucking appalling parents as well, are we? I wonder why our nearly 30 y.o. DDs are intelligent, funny, clever, hard-working, law abiding, post graduates in £50,000+ a year jobs then?! With their own home and successful careers?!

Give me strength! This fucking place sometimes! 🙄 I don't know anyone else in real life who is all pearl clutchy and judgy over someone giving a child an ipad to entertain them for a bit!

I’m not an endorser of iPads particularly, but this post is actually making me feel quite defensive of them - mostly because I think the prejudice is knee-jerk and not substantiated.

The truth when I was growing up ( 80’s) is that there also wasn’t the same restaurant/ cafe culture in this country as there is now. Families didn’t eat out as much, there were more adult-only dinner parties in homes, ( or inter-family home meals where all the children played away from the table after dessert.)“Fancy” restaurants tended to be more adult-only spaces and family restaurants were places where sheets with noughts and crosses and that join-the-dots-to-make-squares game were handed out in handfuls while staff pressed onto us those traffic light 🚦 drinks as distraction the minute we were seated ( weren’t they awesome!) that have way too much food colouring for parents to consider now. So children have always struggled ( or just not been included full stop). In my grandparents’ day they actually ate in the nursery even in the home except for Sunday lunch. Children not being immaculate dinner guests is no new phenomenon.

What is new is our tendency to not have as much childcare and to take them with us more as a family to increasingly upmarket places as we embrace dining as a whole range of cuisines that slot somewhere between the options of Spaghetti House or eveningwear at The Dorchester that were more or less the kinds of options out grandparents had when eating out. I think it’s wonderful to take children out to eat to places more challenging than Nando’s or Pizza Exoress. Ours have infinitely more developed palates than I did at that age. Ours will try shellfish, truffle, olive - and really enjoy it. But if and when they need a bit of assistance when small, what harm is a bit of iPad time when it reinforces the message that they can’t cause disruption to other diners? It’s all part of a bigger picture of infiltrating them into adult dining far sooner than other generations did. We have been fortunate in having foodie dc ( and the one who isn’t is quiet); but I’m not about to judge parents for keeping their children quiet when introducing them to dining out.

'On the occasions people went for meals post 1980s, people would stick their kids in the bloody playbarn/play area of the pub or restaurant. Giving a kid a tablet to play with is not much different. It's occupying a really energetic child who needs their brain stimulating, and needs to be occupied. There is fuck-all wrong with letting a child have a piece of tech for an hour or two several times a week. FFS!'

It is completely different. Letting them play in a play area, fine. The clue is in the title. Play area. When they sit at the table to eat then parents should teach social skills. These are very simply to engage with those you are eating with. If your dp was bored would you be happy with him scrolling on his phone? No. Because it is bad mannered. As I say go to a drive thru if you cba to teach your dc this very basic stuff.

If you are sat in a restaurant with your kids clued to their phones or tablets everyone around you is judging your very lazy parenting and your bad mannered kids.

Very well said.

I'm projecting? You are implying that anyone who allows their child to use a device is not being brought up properly.
Ipads were also around 10 years ago.

I can assume that your children had this adaptability at 4 years old to sit quietly on demand. However, not all children are the same. I think the difference is that most people didn't take their children out. It's not a common occurrence for us (covid stopped us being able to 'train' our babies in this environment and cost of living), so you are right - it's a very different world to 10 years ago.

The thing is, you have absolutely no idea about anyone's circumstances. I honestly doubt you would be this judgemental to me in real life

If you are sat in a restaurant with your kids clued to their phones or tablets everyone around you is judging your very lazy parenting and your bad mannered kids.

You may be, but most people have interesting enough company to occupy our minds- we don’t waste time worrying about what other people are up to at their tables.

I'm 45.
My parents owned a chain of upmarket restaurants when I was growing up, we ate out nearly every night. In posh places.

We had Gameboys on silent at the table in the restaurant during dinner (uncle got them from china, we must have been 8 or 9?) before that we had little electronic games, or pencils and paper.

I'm am personally more likely to judge the person sniffing their disapproval than the parent with the iPad.

I don't have a very good job, but brother is head of data analysis at a very well known company and earns a small fortune. My mum still fondly talks about fostering his love of electronics at a small age.

If you don't give your kids screen time these days I think you're giving them a huge disadvantage.its as necessary as reading, writing and arithmetic now.

Just googled, we got them when they came out, I was 10, brother was 7.

If you don't give your kids screen time these days I think you're giving them a huge disadvantage.its as necessary as reading, writing and arithmetic now.

There is a massive difference in structured screen time and the endless, ridiculous YouTube videos and games that so many young children are addicted to nowadays.

Quite. And I try hard not to judge. Including the use of “are sat” in a judgy post…

Very well put!!!
Without meaning to be all Barbie movie about this, you can't flipping win! Judged if they're making noise, judged if they're entertained (but not the way someone else would do it)....

Like the difference between comics and literature?

I think it's all valid and all learning.

If the kids going to learn, they're going to learn. If they're not they're not.