The main problem with this particular article is that it assumes kids are going to have a melt-down and pitch a tantrum at a restaurant.
But good behavior when out of the house is something kids can (and should) be trained in, whether it's restaurants, movies, or whatever. And that training can (and should) take place from an early age. A lot of melt-down behavior happens, from what I see, because kids discover it works. Yes, I know that all kids are different. And certainly there are some with medical / profound behavioral conditions that up the ante. But I think those are the exception rather than the rule, and that it is possible to train good behavior so that you don't feel like you're faced with just eating at home, just going to (gag) Chuck E. Cheese, or dealing with a biological jar of nitro-glycerine.
(I would extend this idea to the "what kids will eat" idea, too. I think parents today make a lot of assumptions about kids' palates, and assume that only cheesy mac and chicken nuggets will do. While tastes can vary, even week to week, a broader menu selection is also something that can be trained through exposure — at home, for starters.)
Lastly, parents need to be ready and willing to exit, stage left, with the young'un if a melt-down does actually happen. But that doesn't mean the whole expedition has to go home. I spent (as did Margie) a few prolonged periods outside the movie theater / restaurant / store with a yowling Katherine. We were not happy when it happened, but we also didn't let it signal the end of everyone's night out (or even assume that we weren't going to be able to go back in once the sound effects quieted down).
There are some good pieces of advice in the article — dining early, not dawdling, making sure you have some snacks and distractions, etc. But assuming that 3-year-olds, or 6-year-olds, cannot be taken to a restaurant without something awful happening.
How To Dine Out with Small Children (Without Losing Your Mind)
Your blissfully child-free friends looked upon you with pity when you told them that you were expecting. “I guess you won’t be going out to dinner anymore, huh,” was a popular phrase that was echoed o…
This article feels eerily alien to a french like me. Behaviour and table manners are not a grace that fall from the sky. We raise our kids since a really early age to have meal times, eat whatever is in the dish, and certainly don't eat sweets between and at meal times. Added bonus, children taught like that are much less likely to develop eating disorders or be overweight later in life.
My son is still a bit too young to eat out with us, not because he can't keep his temper in check (he's 18 months old), but simply because he still lacks enough fine motor skill to handle properly a spoon without making a bit of a mess. So we have him eat before, and we keep him entertained whenever we stay a bit around the table. But I expect that in a year's time, circa 2 and a half, he'll be able to fully join us.
Exactly. If you don't teach your kids table manners, and eating what they are served, then, yes, it makes sense that they will behave atrociously at restaurants and demand crappy cheese pizza and pitch a fit if they don't get it. And, yes, it makes me wonder what meal times are like at home for those families.