A couple of weeks ago The Wall Street Journal published a story with advice from New York chef Daniel Eddy on how to have a mutually successful experience with a young child in an upscale restaurant. The newspaper obviously thinks that being a chef qualifies one as an expert on the subject. It seems to me, however, that a waitperson would have the better perspective.
Eddy's first advice in the article titled "How to Take Your Kids Out to Eat and Actually Enjoy the Experience" is to time the outing so that it coincides with the child's usual mealtime. That seems like good common sense. Then, he says, prepare the child for the experience so as to "build some excitement."
Speaking as one who travels for a living and eats many evening meals in nice restaurants, I do not appreciate having an excited child, much less parents who are trying to help a child have an exciting experience, sitting within fork-throwing distance of me. Nice restaurants are not for having exciting experiences. They are for having calm, and perhaps even stimulating (but not exciting) conversation, over a well-prepared meal, equally well-served.
To summarize the full extent of Eddy's advice, a parent-child restaurant experience should be 100 percent child-focused. Parents should even prepare for the possibility the child will become restless by bringing along toys and books -- new toys and books, mind you -- so the child will be excited by them.
I am reminded of the time my wife and I were seated next to a family of four in an upscale restaurant in San Francisco. The two young children became restless, so the parents pulled out a portable DVD player. My wife and I ate the rest of our meal to the accompaniment of the soundtrack from a popular animated film.
Then there was the time in Hawaii when two young and restless children were allowed to stand on their chairs and serenade the rest of the patrons. And the time in Atlanta when two restless children began skating through a restaurant on wheelie shoes while their parents sat at the table, oblivious.
Eddy is like too many parents these days. His over-focus on his child renders him oblivious to the comfort level of others. The mere fact that a child might become restless in a restaurant is reason enough to leave the child at home with a sitter. And if one cannot obtain a sitter, then call the restaurant and cancel. Or go to Chuck E. Cheese's where, according to its website, "a kid can be a kid!"
Eddy obviously does not understand that the very parent who brings things with which to entertain a young child in an upscale restaurant is the very parent who should not have brought the child in the first place. He does not understand because he is such a parent.
My eminently commonsensical advice? First, children should not go to nice restaurants until they have learned proper table manners. The place to teach such manners is at home. My wife and I insisted upon proper at-home table manners because, as we told our kids from early on, "You are in training to eat in nice restaurants and other people's homes."
Second, the restaurant experience should not be child-focused. Rather, children in restaurants should be, for the most part, observers and students. That is their place in the world, after all.
Last, the purpose of taking a child to a nice restaurant should not be -- as Eddy suggests -- to help the child have fun but to help the child learn how to properly act in a restaurant.
John Rosemond is a family psychologist and the author of several books on rearing children. Write to him at The Leadership Parenting Institute, 1391-A E. Garrison Blvd., Gastonia, N.C. 28054; or see his website at
rosemond.com
Family on 07/27/2016