To think she could have sat in a normal chair?

[Theskyitwasmaroon]

I drove to see a friend today, about 100 miles away. I took my DD who is 9 months, she eats solids now and at home sits up with us in a highchair.

We specifically got invited for lunch that my friend made.

My friend has a DD who is 3.5, they have a Tripp trapp so I didn’t take a highchair with me as I thought she could use their highchair.

However when it came to eating, my friend insisted her DD sit in the Tripp trapp? This meant my DD had to sit in her car seat on the floor. I had to then feed her lunch on my lap. Her DD asked to sit on the normal chairs and my friend insisted she must sit in the highchair (it was on the highchair setting still, the same setting we use for DD).

AIBU to think this is quite rude? It made my lunch uncomfortable as DD hates her car seat and likes to sit up. I felt a bit bad for excluding her. Surely one time sitting at a dining chair wouldn’t hurt?

We used to take this one on holidays https://amzn.eu/d/eCSpoq9

Highly recommend it.

We used Trip Trap chairs from the children were 0-12 years. They could have used them longer if we had wanted. A grown up can sit on it if the chair is adjusted to it.

It's not a special chair. At all.
It's a chair which can be used from baby and adjusted as the grow up.
In Scandinavian it's a very common chair for families. It's Norwegian design I think.

I doubt a 3 year old fits into the baby seat

if she didn’t notice you were uncomfortable and a bit struggling then it’s rude she didn’t ask if you were ok, with daughter in your lap and would you like to switch and have the trap. Is she a robot or something, no empathy. No way I would not notice a friend being uncomfortable with a situation and I’d ask. Yes she’s rude.

No, as that's what having a 9 month old is like. At that age I didnt expect to have a peaceful civilised lunch with focus on adults. To make my life easier I used a portable booster chair but that still didn't give me the expectation I could focus on eating properly myself, more that my DC could eat properly. Maybe next time don't take the children

OP has literally said numerous times it's still in the first, highchair setup. Not the later stages for toddlers/older kids. So no one is not understanding/ignorant of the Trip Trapp, the seat was still in the baby setup. We have one and it hasn't been in the baby setup for a long time for our 2yo!

A lot of rude people on here it seems. When you have a guest over, then you make sure they are comfortable. If you're inviting a 9mo baby for lunch it's not exactly a revelation that they will need somewhere to eat it 🤷‍♀️ and I don't expect people to pitch up to mine with a highchair. If I couldn't accommodate I would say at time of invitation, but otherwise I would make sure the baby had whatever they needed as my DC are capable of sitting on a big chair or something outside of their usual for a lunchtime when we have visitors.

Well no. Which is why when out we took a seat for the baby.

Trip Trap is pretty much a normal chair adjusted to a 12 yo. A grown up can sit on it.

No they don’t OP 😂 people on here just want to disagree with you

I had twins so no one ever had a chair to accommodate us! Bumbo chairs were a game changer for me. Easily thrown into the car boot and light enough too. Otherwise there was one in the car seat and the other propped up somewhere or they just took turns. They often just sat on the floor to be honest on a towel or mat or on my knee.

It's not a big deal OP. I'd just forget about it. I do find it odd the high chair setting is still on though, that's really bad for a 3yr old who should be learning to sit properly. Its especially mad as they already have the perfect chair that they simply need to adjust, I'd have some understanding if they needed to invest in something new.

A lot of kids aren’t big enough for a normal chair until about age 6, but it depends on the size of the kid and height of the table.

We’ve got a Bumbo chair actually but DD can easily get out of it so it’s a bit obsolete now. She either pulls the tray off or climbs out.

My 3yo would have a full on tantrum if I tried to put him in a high chair. I’m struggling to keep my 18 month old in his for goodness sake. I wouldn’t have expected to use their high chair but ultimately, it’s weird she didn’t think about you using it instead once she saw your little one in the car seat on the floor.

You say 'no they don't' @Pippinsdiary
but a 2 second Amazon look at a portable high chair has 3,500 reviews on just one of them, so presumably very many people do

Next time, bring an old vest with you for a quick DIY high chair:

https://www.tiktok.com/@ljflommom/video/7221550349444779307

When I’ve been to visit before we’ve sometimes eaten off our laps or just casually picked at bits and pieces so I expected a similar setup and not a proper sit down lunch tbh. Regardless it wouldn’t have crossed my mind to take my own high chair! I suppose if my friend wasn’t willing to offer hers I expected that meant she was going to have a more casual lunch. She kept saying how she couldn’t wait to see me and DD.

Eating out anywhere is generally not a relaxing experience with a baby, chair or not. Sorry OP, you have a baby now, those days of easy, relaxing dinners with friends are gone for a bit.

I think it’s unreasonable to assume your child can use another child’s seat. I always bring a portable booster when going to someone’s house. There are all sorts of reasons (child’s possessiveness of chair, messy eater and fabric dining chairs, parent not wanting to set a precedent) that may not be relevant in this specific case but are reasons I don’t make assumptions.

At the same time, I think your friend wasn’t being a good host when she saw you struggling and having come without a portable chair. That is also unreasonable.

you ask, or take a suitable seat for your child,

I always used to take a strap-on booster seat to friends houses if we were eating there...

OP, I think you may be missing the main lesson of this incident.

There are a million and one potential reasons why the 3½ year old was in the high chair, and then why her Mum didn't offer the high chair to you. Those possible reasons range from rudeness and poor parenting, through mechanical/logistical issues of adjusting the chair, to some special need (balance, phobia, whatever) that you know nothing about and your friend doesn't want to discuss.

But it really, really doesn't matter at all whether the reasons why your DD didn't get to use the high chair are "good" or "bad". You had an uncomfortable time because you didn't check, when you could have done in a few seconds. If you had done so, you would have had a lovely time with your friend.

Even if you were in the right here, there is no point in trying to prove that, whether you choose to do it in an internal discussion with yourself, or by talking to your partner, or by presenting a case here and hoping that MNers will agree with you (which, inevitably, some won't).

There is an opportunity here for you to choose to think in a different way about what happened, and to realise that you can handle (and often prevent!) these situations differently in future. By asking in advance, you would have saved yourself the hassle of feeding your DD in awkward circumstances, and also avoided getting into a conflict — even if it was unspoken — with your friend, again whether she is actually rude and a bad parent, or dealing with some kind of problem with her DD.

Situations like this will come up hundreds of times in your future life, both with and without your DD (although of course a child always introduces extra randomness). Realising that you can prevent many of them from happening in the first place with just that one extra check or call or question will make your life so much calmer and happier. 🙏

When I took mine anywhere like that at the same age, husband and I used to sit him on our laps to eat, never thought about special chairs. We had high chair at home of course.

Thanks for that patronising reply. Next time there will be a thread started because ‘every time my friend comes over she wants to ask 100s of questions about what she needs to bring, etc etc’.

My DC use tripp trapps at home well into school age, but obviously configured for their size and age (I think the baby set is supposed to come off at 36 months?). I admittedly always go crazy with toddlers/pre-school age in adult-sized chairs during meals because they end up all over the place and are so much more of a struggle than a 9 month old on a lap. The 3 year old asking not to sit in the high chair and mum saying no you need to sit there for lunch just sounds like it was probably their standard pre-meal conversation, and there's a good chance mum was just not wanting to make an exception and then have going back to routine at the next meal be an even bigger struggle.

So if we didn't have a spare high chair and had a 9 month old guest I'd probably offer to take turns holding the baby so the parent could eat and visit, and I'd also have a safe place for floor-play nearby so the baby didn't need to be confined to a car seat or a lap when they weren't eating. But then I come from a big family and passing around babies at gatherings so mothers could eat was a norm I had picked up by 13 or so, and I can see where others wouldn't think to automatically offer that. And a spare chair next to mum for the car seat to be set on if the baby was going back into it seems like an obvious thing to offer up.

All in all this sounds like not the most proactive, intuitive hosting. But I'm a little puzzled by you seeming to have fairly strong feelings about it but not asking for anything - for your friend to hold your baby for a bit so you could take turns eating, for a chair to set the car seat on, to use the high chair at some point, especially after the 3 year old seemed to be winding up their meal, etc.

God I don't know how we managed with our kids being fed on our knees!