to not want to take DS (3) out to a chinese resurant in the evening

[topsi]

My inlaws regularly book resturants for the family on special occasions and even Boxing day lunch. It's all very nice and very generous of them. They love the fact that they are out with their GS.
I hate it. DS is very active and after sitting at the table for about 10 minutes is off running round the resurant. It is impossible for me to enjoy a meal out when I am constantly having to keep an eye on DS. My father in law is great and does a fair ammount of running round after DS, but DH is a bit laid back and tends only to help out if promted.
I find it embarassing and hate the fact we are probably annoying other people. They also pick very inapropriate (?sp) resturants such as tiny French bistro places in London.
It has been FIL birthday recently and another meal out in iminemt.
AIBU to stay at home with DS while the others go out?
what are your views?

It doesn't have to be the same exactly to be a fair comparison. Do tell how a child can sit still in a classroom for several hours a day and be completely unable to sit still in a restaurant?
Is it perhaps because the teacher will not allow the child to run around a classroom and has higher standards for behaviour than the parent who says its just not possible to make him sit still?

By coldtits Mon 15-Feb-10 12:24:17
If you have never seen a child who cannot physically sit still, you have no experience of my child, chippinin, and therefore your opinion on my child's inability to sit still isn't really valid. I repeat - my oldest child cannot sit still despite extensive training. Nobody else can make him sit still either.

Ladyintheradiator - that comment makes the classroom comment quite valid.

How exactly am I being rude?

The teacher had him assessed and he was diagnosed with ADHD and Autism.

But that really isn't relevant, and here is why. He is nearly 7, and has just been dignosed this year. When he was three, I had not an inkling that something was 'wrong' and to make him sit still the way ds2 will sit still, I would have had to physically beat him unconscious. I didn't know about the ADHD, I didn't know about the Autism. NOBODY did. He was just the child that couldn't sit still. To all eyes, he looked like he'd never seen a table and chairs in his life, and to some extent still does.

Knowing the diagnosis doesn't change his behavior. He has always behaved that way. He probably, despite the best interventions, always will.

When he was three, all the training I did was entirely pointless. I might as well have tried to teach a cat to type. he cannot sit still, and once I accepted that(6 months ago), and stopped trying to discipline, 'tone', persuade and 'consequence' it into him, life got easier. Now, if he is fidgeting too much, we simply leave.

They are in a classroom day in day out, same people same surroundings.

No chance am i sitting in a restaurant all day with my DC so it isn't something new and interesting.

Oh and what 3 year old is expected to sit quietly at school all day

Ha Ha Ha on the "take colouring stuff" with you. Dh and I commented yesterday as our 5.3 yr old ds drew at the table in a restaurant while we ate "It only took 5 years for him to do it"

DS just ate the crayons and pencils and then threw them down until hiw was over 4 years old!. Even then he would do one or two lines and be finished. I gave up bringing stuff out with us as ds just wasn't interested.

My niece and nephew were fine in restaurants really from a very young age. Ds just wasn't

The teacher cannot make him sit still. The head teacher cannot make him sit still. The consultant psychiatrist who assessed him had a quick try (using a method I've never seen before - she told him very simply "That desk is mine. You may touch the train set.") - and she did not manage to make him sit still.

Some children cannot sit still.

"Carpet time" in reception is never longer than 10 minutes long, as teachers know that small children sometimes struggle to sit still. I do not want to gobble my food in 10 minutes!

Ds struggled to sit still at that age when we were at home. When I read him bedtime stories, he would literally climb all over me while I was reading. He loved the books but he couldn't sit still I tried for months but he just couldn't. At the dinner table at homw was very similar.

He is occasionally the same nowadays but thankfully he seems to be growing out of it. 5 year olds rock!

Some children with additional needs cannot sit still.
hardly fair to extend that to all children.

So don't take colouring. Take cars, books, games, puzzles, i-pods. Talk to them and include them in the family meal. Don't you sit down and have dinner with them at home? You don't have to be in a restaurant everyday to understand how to sit down for dinner, do it at home.
How on earth do any of your children eat if they can't put their arse on a chair?

One of the hard things I find is that the more we avoid taking our children to places where it feels difficult the less tolerant the places are of small children, and the less children know how to behave in places like this.

it is a loose loose,

However, Overall, I can totally see the OP dilema, I would spend more time taking the child without GP there.

Coldtits - of course the dx re ADHD/Autism is relevant and I am suprised that you would think otherwise.

Do you not agree this is why you have been able to 'tone', 'persuade', 'consequence' your youngest child, whereas you couldn't with your eldest child?

[Sorry to hear your eldest DS has this DX, it does make for a much more difficult life for all of you ]

Runnybottom. I thought we were generally discussing 3 years olds here. Not many teachers I know can get them to sit still for hours at a time either.

I know people always quote Mediterranean children but frankly in my many outings of late night eating in Italy I've seen some pretty awful behaviour exhibited by tired fractious children.

Italians are just more tolerant of what we would call bad behaviour in children. Children aren't expected to sit down at a very young age (under around 5-6 years olsd). It is expected that they will walk around and probably make a noise.

Noisy (young) children are tolerated mainly because the general culture (and lack of babysitting options outside family) means Italinas take childen with them pretty much everywhere (regardless of how interesting or appropriate it is to the child).

The adults live with the ensuing bad behaviour because they a high threshold for general noise and confusion (having grown up with it) so a few noisy children don't stand out too much and they can tune them out quite easily.

My 2 year old is perfectly capable of sitting down for a meal at home. BUT it is a familiar environment that doesn't require exploring. He is not required to sit down until the meal is ready. At least part of the meal (usually all) is something he is familiar with and enjoys eating, served with his usual easy-to-use cutlery. We have one course only- no starter or pudding. It takes us all about 20 minutes to eat, with about 5 minutes of chatting before we leave the table.

The above just doesn't apply in most restaurants. Being able to sit down for a meal at home is nothing like being able to sit through a 2-3 course meal in a restaurant- especially if you think of all the waiting to order and in between courses.

How on earth do any of your children eat if they can't put their arse on a chair?

IME Children eat and are done with their food far quicker than adults, let alone the waits that don't exist at home.

No waiting in between courses at home

No other people round that are eating far more interesting things etc etc.

It isn't rocket science, however if you will insist on thinking that if your children do it everyone elses should be able to or the parents are crap, then good luck to you.

It's insulting to suggest that children who behave well in restaurants are "Tarquins" who are slow and need a cattle prod....sounds like your protesting too much to me.

It's about behaving appropriately to the situation - my two boys (note: boys) camping behave differently to tea at a nice hotel.

And i do think that going to child only type places is not beneficial in the long run. Children's clubs at the back of churches for example means that the children who attend church every Sunday were ironically less well behaved at a recent wedding i went to.

chippinIn, it absolutely is why my youngest will sit, etc - I have been able to make him.

I'm not explaining myself well at all.

When ds1 was 3, nobody knew he had autism and ADHD. he was simply an extremely naughty little boy who ran around in circles, twirling, jumping, swinging off strangers legs. He had never been taught to be have because I had not been able to teach him to behave. to an extent, when it comes to physical stillness, ds1 was ineducable. (although 'thank you' was one of his first words)

But NOBODY knows their 3 year old has ADHD. ANd telling people that you should be able to control and discipline it out of them will make many parents (as it did myself) either overpunish their 3 year old, or give up seeing people.

My child has ADHD and Autism but he is still a child, he still fits under the umbrella of 'some children'. At 3, he was still 'some children'.

Crow - It is just as insulting to say that if your child doesn't sit it's because you are a crap parent!

All children are different, and god help the smuggery McSmugs here is they ever have a child who is immune to their perfect parenting.

If I had read this thread two years ago, I may have decided that as all children can sit down and behave with the right parenting, I was not being firm enough. And I may have got even stricter with my already overdisciplined child. Purely because he cannot sit ^still.

It also depends on the time of day. When DS was 3 we would never have dreamt of taking him out in the evening. We often went out for a meal as a family (with grandparents) but it was always for lunch rather than dinner.

I encourage my DC to perform a dance/mime/improvisation routine to entertain other diners.

They love it.

coldtits - do you think it is also possible, that if you had read this thread 2 years ago, you might have thought 'most 3 year olds can be expected to sit nicely for a meal, but no matter what I do, mine wont' and maybe asked your Doctor, nursery, school etc to help you see if there was a reason for it? (As you/the school did later on?).

I really do feel for you & can understand to a certain extent what you have been through (are going through), but only in so much as I have a cousin with Asp and friends with various SN children, but don't myself.

However, I don't think it is good to encourage all parents to allow a 3 year old to run riot on the off chance that they do have some, as yet, undiagnosed SN.

No, I'd have thought I was doing it wrong. everyone else thought I must be doing it wrong.

it's not dealing with the behavior that's the hard part, it's other people's 6attitude^ to the behavior that's the hard part. I really don't want to have to explain about Ds's diagnoses to everyone but unless I do, people start with "You should try one two three magic" "you should try supernanny " (who wouldn't touch us with a bargepole) "you should smack his arse" "you should punish him more/less/differently"

And as this thread has demonstrated, people often simply don't believe that you have tried everything you can. They genuinely think that if Ds1 was theirs, he would be sitting, on his bottom, chatting nicely and using his fork. People can control their mouths but often canot control their eyebrows

So I'm sticking with some children cannot sit still, because at 3, all you have is their previous behavior to judge their future behavior. And I think you have to trust their parents to know what their child's limits are.

How long is it since you hve last been out somewhere with him? Dd2 was a nightmare when we took her to a Chinese restaurant about 6 months ago and we haven't dared go since. It was hell, I ended up walking out after paying for a meal I did not eat and DH and I didn't speak to each other for days afterwards. She would not sit still, she would not stop screaming, she threw food about the place, she crawled under tables.....

We decided to brave the same place again yesterday after dd1 said she wanted to go. Dd2 is almost three now, so we sat her down and explained fully what was expceted off her i.e, sit quietly, eat your meal, no running, no screaming, no throwing things. We told her what would happen if she misbehaved (I was going to take her home, DH was staying with dd1) and what would happen if she was good (she would get ice cream and we would go to the park on the way home).

We 'practised restaruants' in our dining room at breakfast time .

She was an angel compared to last time, despite claiming to need the loo at least ten times. This was just so she could walk past the fish bubble lamp.

coldtits - loving "That desk is mine. You may touch the train set."

bumblingbovine - very interesting to hear your experiences of Italian culture in restaurants. Had long suspected this.

OP - I would say its important to remember your needs and sanity in all of this. Life is made of compromises, yes, and we should make the effort for our loved ones. But you shouldn't forget or neglect your own needs either, which is easy to do IME.

Coldtits - my cousin, who has ASP, was big for his age, at 4 he looked about 6. We had to take him everywhere in a buggy as physically he was just too much to handle if he 'went off on one'. He also didn't understand that it's just not done to lift up a stangers skirt... nor did he understand when the ice cream shop was shut - it was all a nightmare and yes, he looked like a very normal, very naughty, child and we looked like very incompetent people who had a 6 year old still in a buggy - nightmare! I swear some peoples eyebrows almost landed on the moon!!