Children run rampant

Most restaurants, in a bid to get more people to frequent them, have play areas for children. This keeps children, who mostly have short attention spans and oodles of energy, busy while the parents sit at the table waiting for the food to arrive.
This is fine and can work well, but it more often than not leads to children disrupting the dining experience of the other patrons.
When I visited a restaurant in a mall in Brakpan over the weekend with my husband and 17-month-old baby girl, we saw the down-side of these child-friendly places.
Firstly, two brothers almost broke down the door leading to the play equipment outside. When their father dragged them back to their table, another boy took up station at the door – opening and closing it frequently to let in the frigid wind.
As our table, which was the only available table when we got there, was right by the door, it made things unpleasant for us. I’m sure the other people sitting close to the door didn’t enjoy the cold wind blowing on them either.
Eventually, having had enough, my husband loudly asked our waiter if the door could be locked (which it then was) seeing as the boy’s parents, who had sat in their booth chatting and hardly spared their son a glance, weren’t looking after their son.
Unsurprisingly, this did not sit well with the father who came over later to rant and rave at ‘people like us’.
You see, they visit these child-friendly restaurants so that their little boy can play on the equipment. And he didn’t appreciate my husband implying that they aren’t looking after their child.
While they were sitting nice and toasty warm in a corner, not being bothered by the wind being let in by their child, who were we to complain?
Where are the days when your parents gave you a hiding, in front of the whole restaurant, when you were being naughty?
Often this could be doing something as simple as talking too loudly and not listening when your parents told you to talk softer. I can just imagine the hiding I would have gotten if I had been playing with the door!
If you started to squirm, you were told to sit still as you were taught from a very young age to sit at the table and behave.
Going with your parents to a restaurant was family time – which meant the family, as a unit, sat together talking nonsense. The children didn’t head in one direction while the older siblings and parents sat playing on their cellphones!
We enjoyed the experience, despite the lack of games and jungle gyms, despite the lack of cellphones and big screen TVs showing some sport no one was interested in watching anyway.
The whole point of going out together was to spend time together.
These days, when I look at families sitting in restaurants, I see the children head towards the children’s play area where, in some restaurants, they have staff to entertain and look after the children while the parents sit and chat, often completely unaware of what their children are doing.
They don’t seem bothered if their child is naughty (it’s the staff’s problem) and they only step in when their child does something that embarrasses them – like knocking over a tray full of drinks while they run up and down the aisles.
If they want their children to do what they want, why don’t they just order a take-away and let them do what they want at home where they can’t bother anyone except their parents.
Or, the better option, teach your children manners and etiquette before unleashing them on the public.