Make Your Kid Stop Crying

There have been a lot of stories recently about restaurants, supermarkets, movie theaters, airlines, and other private businesses banning or discouraging the presence of children.

Without question, people who sneer at you when you roll through the park with four kids instead of the permissible 1.5, supermarket cashiers who won't make eye contact with you even though your kids are behaving perfectly well, the waitresses who give you crappy service before your kids even have a chance to prove that they're going to be the nightmare you think they're going to be...these are selfish people who live life only for what they can get out of it.

And that is certainly the motivation for most of this: children aren't really fully human, and are ruining the fun the real humans are trying to have.

That being said, this factor cannot be ignored. There are lots of really really really badly behaved kids out there.

Wait a second...those are the kids of the selfish people! They should never have slipped up and had kids...thankfully the birthrate of rude suburban white people is way below replacement levels. Phew!

A perfect example of what I'm speaking of is this post, where I found the picture posted above. The post is made more poignant by the fact that it's about autistic children. I'm not going to comment on autism or the raising of autistic children, but I can comment on a couple of things said by the woman who wrote the post.

Brenda Armes, the owner, says that “she got tired of hearing customers complain about screaming kids.” “We‘re not saying your child can‘t have fun. We‘re not saying your child can‘t be here.” She says that if your child is acting up, a restaurant worker will ask you to take the child outside.

This is a family restaurant, but not a family friendly restaurant. It is also not an Autism Friendly restaurant. I am offended that a restaurant like this would have this policy. I visit Carolina Beach several times a year. I have eaten at this restaurant. Luckily, they did not have this policy during our visits.

This restaurant is discriminating against families with babies. This restaurant is discriminating against families with young children.

That's simply not the case. Later in her post, the author asks how often the reader has been to a restaurant and behaved like a "perfect angel"? I can honestly answer, nearly always. And if my children were misbehaving to the point of interfering with others enjoying their meal, I would take the kid(s) oustside...possibly even leave. In fact, when we have infants, we sometimes do.

I have four kids, ages seven to two. And I'm not telling you we're the perfect parents, or that you should do things the way we do things. But if you can't sail into a casual restaurant with the confidence that your kids aren't going to freak out or misbehave, that's on you. Figure it out.

The idea that you should be able to live your life exactly as you did before you had kids, to go to all the same places whenever you want to, is ridiculous. I mentioned that when we have infants, we have been known to leave a place early. Mostly this means that we change our habits when we have a baby; on the other hand, we make sure they're ready to go out and behave well early on. You and your children should always be well-mannered; don't put your kids in situations they can't handle, and be prepared to cut your own fun short if your children have been overtried. That's part of the deal.

There's a great FoxNews video at the bottom of the autism post. From it we can garner that a woman with an autistic child compared herself to Rosa Parks, that the owner of the restaurant seems to have an abrasive personality, and that talking heads are actually capable of some incisive commentary (at the end of the segment).

I do often feel that parents with obnoxious loud kids are ruining things for the rest of us. But that's part of the terrain we have to deal with. A couple of years back we went to a Cuban restaurant that had just opened. We went early, around five, and were seated all the way in the back, even though we were the only customers in the place. That annoyed me a little, but wasn't really a big deal. We ordered and enjoyed our meal. The kids behaved just fine. The service was good. At the end of the meal, as I perused the menu for future reference, I saw a note at the bottom of the back of the menu: children under such-and-such an age not allowed. No other qualifications, no exceptions for parental accompaniment, no definition of inappropriate behavior. The only real problem I had with this was that it was completely unreasonable for the town and district it was located in; we live in a kid-heavy, few-fancy-restaurants area. I thought it was bad business; I even did my part to make sure it turned out to be bad business: even though I love Cuban food, I never ever go in there. But I'm not going to bad-mouth them, unless it's to say that $10 is too much for a Cuban sandwich. There's a reason restaurants that aren't Texas Roadhouse or Friday's or a local greasy spoon diner cringe when they see kids come in: there are lots of obnoxious kids out there, making life hard on the staff and all the other customers.

Here's the first step: can you get your kids to behave at your own dinner table?

P.S. You can send your rants about what a mean person I am here, or you can simply post a comment below. I especially hope to get messages about how my children must be sad, uncool, browbeaten little darklings who walk around with frownies on their faces. And it's true. We're a sad, unhappy little family of brown-haired trolls.