Restaurant issues

Just a note to brag about a kid. We went to a cool caribbean restaurant the other day.

A family of three came in. Two PARENTS and a girl, around three. She was not speaking, so she may have been only two.

They sat at a booth directly across from the bar and right behind us. I never heard a sound out of the child, not even when she was jostled into a booster seat. I glanced at her after a while to see if she was even still there. She was, taking tiny, TINY little bites off a stalk of....broccolli. Yep, raw broccolli. She ate all the way around it (think Tom Hanks with the baby corn in Big) and then ate the stalk in one bite. Absolutely adorable!

Ok, I found a child that is beyond tolerable. An asset to this planet even.

Hooray! I knew it was possible for kids to behave in restaurants!!!!

I usually compliment parents of well-behaved kids when I'm in restaurants. (The parents are usually stunned, and I usually only have to do this once every six months.)

I've started getting really rowdy lately when I'm in restaurants, though. When kids are misbehaving, I start loudly shushing them after their dumbass parents' halfhearted attempts. Don't these assholes know that shushing your kids doesn't WORK???? I also started saying, "Quiet," the last time I was at a franchise restaurant.

The parents of the child you referred to should be giving parenting classes to all the clueless breeders out there.

If only.

Sounds like my sister's 5 year-old. Even at 2, she could sit in a restaurant and eat quietly. Adult food, even! Not chicken fingers and french fries.

I'm not sure why breeders can't teach their brats to behave like that. Somehow I doubt my niece is a special case.

Nope, your niece isn't a special case. Kids often rise (or sink) to whatever expectations their parents set.

I have friends whose two kids ate the same food their parents did...they would occasionally try to get something different, because what kid wouldn't. But they never really expected "kiddie food". They sometimes had chips and such, but if mom or dad said healthy snack only, these kids automatically headed for the fruit bowl on the counter or the veggie drawer of the fridge, no whining. Their parents also removed them from restaurants and grocery stores if they misbehaved. They grocery shopped together, with one of them as the designated child wrangler. If one kid acted up, whoever was "on duty" would give them one chance to get it together then and there...if that didn't happen, the kid was carted off to the car for the remainder of the shopping trip.

No surprise that as these kids are hitting their late teens, they're articulate and responsible. Not perfect, but pretty decent.