Eating out
No, for once this isn't something metaphorical but something which irks me no end.

This can be the only explaination for the sort of behaviour that really ought to be outlawed, or at the very least have some kind of segregation enforced by restaurants and pubs; namely that new parents seem to inhabit a strange world where they're utterly convinced their new offspring aren't just the centre of their world, but everyone else's too.

A good many times I've been put right off my meal because someone two tables away insists on putting their small child right in my line of sight and loudly encouraging it while said child smears itself in ketchup and semi-masticated goo. Occasionally, you will be rewarded with twin rivulets of snot oozing down the cupid's bow and into the bratfink's mushed up facepack too, just to push your gross-out threshold to the very limit.

I'm adult enough to know that you can't lock the feckers in a cupboard while you go and eat out, but surely parents ought to consult the great gods of common sense once in a while?

It seems not, for I might be openly gipping on my roasted vegetable lasagne while said cooing parents find it utterly amazing how little Tarquin will happy sit there with a face covered in mucus and mushy peas and that they absolutely must share this wonderous sight with everyone else in the room too.

Okay, some places advertise themselves as "Child Friendly", which is a signal to me that it'll be an orgy of porridge and phlegm and thus I'll avoid at all costs. However, some folk feel it's their god given right to inflict the spectacle on everyone else.

Not only that, but having a small spoiled child screeching at a pitch that resonates right between your ears should be considered an offence too. A couple of years back I was in a restaurant which definitely wasn't of the child friendly type and had to endure the plaintive scream of a little Damien which objected to being made to eat roast potato. His siblings were charging all over the show like a pair of high performance banshees, ensuring that everyone else's peace was disturbed, meanwhile the parents looked on with what can only be described as the tiniest hint of gorm.

One can only assume that there must be a correlation between this type of behaviour and the urge to buy a massive, land yacht of a Toyota Wankah 4x4 which will never even see a B road in it's life.

Time to ensure that people must be made to gain a license before they're allowed to breed.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Mon 14 Apr 2008, 15:04, 8 replies)

Keep that up sunshine
and I shall reveal to all the b3tans what you were up to on Saturday at lunchtime.....






Heeheeheee!
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Mon 14 Apr 2008, 15:07, closed)

Tell Us! Tell Us!
gone on, you know you want to.
(Bazongaloid, Mon 14 Apr 2008, 15:08, closed)

Mwahahahahahaha!
*Evil laugh accompanied by evilly arched eyebrows*
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Mon 14 Apr 2008, 15:09, closed)

I'm a parent
and I'm with you on this one. We tend to eat at "family friendly" places with the kids, and avoid them when out alone. If I've parked my kids with a babysitter, I don't want someone else's charging around like a Tasmanian devil on speed.

I'm also slightly OCD about table manners, so don't tolerate that "wearing more than they ate" look.
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Mon 14 Apr 2008, 15:10, closed)

I have no issue with
letting people know that their children are rude and repulsive if the sprog is acting out in a restaurant, for the simple reason that when my kids were little if they acted out in a restaurant they were immediately removed to the car. I spent a fair number of meals having to sit on the back bumper out of the kids' sight while they shrieked their little lungs out until they got it back under control- at which point I would bring them back in. And at no time did I ever take them out while they were in the stage of eating everything with grubby little fingers, and if their nose was running I cleaned it immediately as I got grossed out by it as well.

So if I can make them behave and can take steps when they don't, other parents had damned well better be able to manage it too. And if they give me any crap about it, I give them the above rant in a quiet and civilized voice, with the disapproving Dad Glare. Makes 'em shut up pretty fast...

And for the record, my kids now love going to restaurants and have similarly dim views of misbehaving kids. They're glad I taught them manners.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Mon 14 Apr 2008, 15:24, closed)

agreed
in a past life when i was step daddy. I was very self conscious about or 1 year old playing up and screaming the place down in a restaurant. But sometimes the buggers just dont want to eat... despite starving them for 24 hours before hand to make sure that they do eat.

Simple solution really. Park car next to window. Have table next to window. Throw rowdy kids into car and keep an eye on the now "silent" kids. Everyone else eats in peace :)

And no before you call child protection I have never done either of these!
(Miggyman, Mon 14 Apr 2008, 16:36, closed)

Aaggh Flashbacks
When No 1 Son was a mere baby, he was an angel. He'd either sleep peacefully or charm the socks off the female members of staff by being generally blonde, blue-eyed and cute.

Wind the tape forward to the terrible twos (which are still going on and he's four next week). Not so much naughty as gets bored easily. If you can guarantee that could be in, fed and out within 45 minutes, no problem.

Waiting in pleasureable anticipation while discussing current affairs, prize-winning rose varieties and stamp collections is not what two year old hyperactive (not medically, just errrm extremely active) boys do.

Longer than that and he turns into demon-spawn. Hence a really nice curry having to be scraped into Daddy's gob in a nanosecond before taking him out to the car, while everyone else had a nice leisurely meal. I wouldn't have minded, but we were the only ones in the place.

And hurriedly-bolted curries tend to affect one's tummy, so much so that I nearly gassed him into a coma while sat in the carpark.Peace through superior arse-power.

However, we're now on the 'no nice restaurants' rule until he's bigger. Not just to spare other people, but also to control my blood pressure.

Uncontrolled spawn wrecking the joint in a blur of snot while their slack-jawed parents do shag all makes me want to draw an un-necessarily large firearm and go postal.

Hint, folks.

Doing nothing until finally cooing 'Tarquin, don't!' if middle class, or screaming 'Tyson-Rambo facking stoppit ya little kahnt' if a wearer of Lizzie Duke hoop ear-rings, after an hour of complete inaction may get you suddenly shot by the bloke at the next table.
(osok Rebel without a clue, Mon 14 Apr 2008, 17:31, closed)

In the true spirit of b3ta I'll tell everyone PJM's little secret....
Saturday lunchtime found him sitting in Pizza Express with a 15 month old baby on his lap (belonging to his best friend). PJM was happily feeding him ice cream while the smother of grannies cooed at the blond haired angel. There was ice cream on the floor, on the table and on PJM - he was like a pig in the proverbial.

So don't believe all he says....he loves small folk but like most of us can't abide the badly behaved.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Tue 15 Apr 2008, 10:35, closed)