Audio By Carbonatix
First off, let’s understand that this is not about hating kids. Surely and sadly the world does have its miscreants who loathe the little ones. But this is not a defense of such benighted and tragic intolerance.
What this is about, in part, is an adult love of dining out, of good food and celebration and romance and entertainment and stimulating conversation and restoration. Restaurants are surely among the chief pleasures and necessary balms of our crisis-centered civilization and, dammit, parents should recognize and honor the role that restaurants play in the lives of other adults.
No, this is not about hating kids; it’s about hating parents.
That’s not all parents, of course, especially not those respectable realists who appreciate that the unexpected lurks in any nestling nourishment situation and who simply learn to make peace with keeping their immature fledglings at home. Such parents are the ones most likely eventually to pass on a sense of social responsibility to their children, who will make fine restaurant customers when it is their turn. The more insensitive type of parent comes in at least three flavors. In ascending order of offensiveness these may be characterized as “the simp,” “the bully” and “the space cadet.” If you dine out with any regularity, you’ve met and developed an abhorrence of all three.
You can recognize the simp by the constant whining use of the word “please,” as in “puhlleaze don’t spill that scalding soup in Mommy’s lap” and “puhlleaze don’t stick that fork in your eye” and in the especially futile generic imploration to “puhlleaze behave.” These parents are vaguely sympathetic because you can tell that they are at least genuinely self-conscious about the commotion their kid is causing and wish it could be otherwise. The real problem here is that the kid senses the weak desperation in the parent’s feeble attempt at control and doesn’t give a flying foccacia for the consequences of misbehavior, making for an incredibly grating situation for anyone within earshot.
The bully is, ironically, often hidden within the simp who finally just snaps, although there are some parents who seem to get off on beating up on their kids in public for no apparent reason at all. When one of these asses is in a restaurant, you half-expect to have your meal interrupted by the sound of forty pounds of human being crashing through a plate-glass window. I can’t speak for all other adults, but I find that when I have a sudden and overwhelming desire to kill a complete stranger, it ruins my appetite.
While it’s hard to forgive the bully, at least there is some indication of a psychological matrix involving pain and guilt, as well as some connection between stimulus and response. This is not the case with the space cadet, who seems to be totally without a clue when it comes to the offensiveness of an offspring’s behavior. Often fueling the obliviousness here is the space cadet parent’s galling belief that a badly behaved little brat is somehow manifesting gifted (genetically transmitted, of course).
So here’s little Billy doing an entire auditory recapitulation of the Battle of Britain, from air-raid siren through dogfight to triumphant reception for the RAF to babbling political epilogue. Stare with acid eyes at the parent of such a child and he may actually smile back at you, conspiratorially, like “Isn’t the kid great?” Talk about wanting to kill.
At the root of all this evil is a horribly inappropriate sense of place. Because these parents are surrounded by family and are engaged in the commonplace household activity of eating, they develop the absolutely erroneous impression that they are in some sort of surrogate home. I know this will come as a shock to these people, but RESTAURANTS ARE PUBLIC PLACES.
Simple decency demands that as soon as your children start to trash the communal environment, it’s time to haul them away. I know this is an embarrassment and an inconvenience and an expense, but the roomful of people whose dinners you are disturbing are not, especially at restaurant prices, required to bear the frustrations of raising your family. Besides, why would you want to send your child the signal that grown-up society is going to tolerate every sort of crappy personal outburst without ever slapping it down?
If you have no pity for strangers who are childless, can’t you muster compassion for those who are sitting in this nice restaurant without their own kids? Folks who have scrimped and planned for a romantic night out without being forced to put up with the same routine they get every night at their home dinner table? At their core, restaurants may be about fun, but they are also about etiquette and manners and courtesy and civility. These are square concepts, I know, but how do we get along peacefully in the world without them? Is everything to be permitted?
Naturally, the restaurants themselves do bear some of the responsibility in this regard. Most of all they need to send out a clear message, a la McDonald’s and Disneyland and the average Sonoran neighborhood joint, as to whether children are encouraged as customers. Then, having established a policy, there must be operational follow-through.
A kids’ menu alone does not cut it. Children need instant stimulation and gratification, and most cannot read the damn menu. Immediate service, including personal recognition, provision of booster seating and the quick presentation of something to eat or play with can head off a heap of trouble before it begins.
If trouble comes anyway, restaurateurs must not shirk the responsibility of managing the mayhem. Yes, it may cost you a customer if you criticize his precious little darlings. Do it with a little forthrightness and charm, though, and you may be surprised to discover a lot of sincere respect and valuable support from the other citizens in your domain.
And as for those parents who reject all this, who insist that they cannot make it without restaurants, that their time is too committed to be bothering with groceries and home-cooked meals . . . well, I have only two words for you: Take-out and delivery.
