Top 10 Reasons Eating Out with Kids is Hardly Worth the Effort
You know it’s going to be insane. You know this because time and past experiences have told you so, yet you still do it. You decide you’re hungry. You have kids, so you take them along. Sigh.
Here’s ten reasons that it’s hardly worth the effort:
1. The bag of tricks. Actually this pretty much accompanies you anywhere you take children with the exception of parks, birthday parties, or the zoo. What I mean is, anytime you have to take your kid somewhere that is not strictly a function geared towards the entertainment of children then you have to pack a bag of tricks.
For the non-parents reading this post, a bag of tricks is a bag you pack full of toys, games, drinks, snacks, and other similar items to keep a cranky or bored child from turning into a screaming mess. As a parent you have to have one anytime you leave the house. You also have to change out the contents frequently to keep it exciting.
Every time you go to a sit-down restaurant you have to bring along your bag of tricks. It’s a life-saving bag of goodies, but it hardly seems worth all the packing some days. Seriously. Make dinner reservations for 30 minutes later than when you plan on leaving. You’ll need the extra time to fill up your magic bag of entertainment.
2. Highchairs. Have you ever used a restaurant highchair for your baby? If the answer is “yes” then I probably don’t even have to continue. You know what I’m talking about.
Disgusting. Years worth of masticated food, contributed by numerous children, collected in tiny crevices, and cemented into place by germ-soaked rags used in vain attempts to clean them between their tiny patrons.
Also, do the lap belts work in any of these restaurant highchairs?! I basically end up tying the greasy straps together to tether my toddler in place so she doesn’t do a dive onto the tile floor head first.
3. Indecision. Kids are indecisive. That goes without saying. Factor in the multiple child-friendly choices on the kid’s menu and you’re in for a challenge. One tiny block of print holds such golden treasures as chicken nuggets, grilled cheese, hotdog, and macaroni and cheese. Sometimes it even says spaghetti!
Basically they take your child’s most favorite foods of all time and offer them all at once. Then a stranger stands over your child with a pen and paper and tells them to pick just one. It’s like asking them to pick between Christmas and their birthday which day they would rather see happen tomorrow.
And it doesn’t matter anyway. Whatever they eventually decide as their desired entree will change when it arrives in front of them. After one bite of hotdog they will announce that they really wanted macaroni and cheese instead.
4. Kid cups. Oh the evils of restaurant kid cups. Restaurant kid cups = false sense of security. End of story. You forget for a moment, because of the small size or cute, cartoon character design, that these cups are not kid friendly at all. You forget that you would never, ever use this cup for your child at home.
You are lulled into a false sense of security by the restaurant kid cup, and you forget momentarily that it’s a cup with an easily removable lid. You forget it’s a cup that is super flimsy. You forget that straws slice through styrofoam like a knife through butter.
You remember these things when you end up with a monsoon spill on the table that there’s never enough napkins to contain, or if you’re really lucky, a lap or seat full of spilled, sticky liquid.
5. Salad bar. So personally I love a restaurant with a salad bar, and it used to be a deciding factor for me in where to go to eat. Now, not so much.
Salad bars are like beacons to an autonomous preschooler. Even if they don’t like salad per se, they beg to visit the salad bar. They need a bowl filled with cheese, eggs, little pieces of ham, and those tiny corn cob looking things. They desire this cornucopia to be smothered with ranch dressing and topped with croutons (that they likely will not eat because they’re “too crunchy.”)
They want to fill the bowl themselves. They don’t respect nor understand the sneeze guard purposes. And it’s no problem to them to touch an item with their hand out of curiosity. Subsequently, their soupy, salad dressing concoction goes untouched once it reaches the table.
6. Crumbs. Am I the only parent that feels guilt-ridden by the catastrophe my children leave behind under the table?! You always come back from that salad bar trip with about 56 packs of crackers. Over half of those saltines find their final resting place under the highchair or ground into the carpet under the older kid’s feet.
I usually end up feeling like 20% gratuity isn’t adequate to cover the damages, and leave a tip that rivals the bill’s total. Or I find myself on all fours prior to leaving, scraping up crumbs before we go. My husband has even been known to ask our server for a broom.
7. Table etiquette. I’m sorry, say again? Table what? This is a foreign term among children. You can teach them “elbows off the table” all you want at home, but when confronted with the excitement of dining out, children lose all prior instruction.
They crawl under tables, stand on seats, sing, scream, and cry incessantly. They take two bites of that coveted kid’s meal and decide, “I’m done!” Then they pester you for the remainder of the meal. There’s multiple requests for bathroom trips, and repetitive pleas of “can you hold me?”
You just want to eat something, and use may even let them out of their seats in your desire to finish your entree. Hence, running kids in restaurant. I feel like I owe everyone an apology. My selfish desire to eat a hot meal caused my judgement to lapse.
8. Seeing someone you know. The degree to which your crew misbehaves or how loud the meltdowns become are completely relative to how many people you will see that you know. If your kids are angels, you won’t see anyone, but if they’re similar to a Paranormal Activity movie then you will see every person you have ever known.
You won’t really care what people think about your parenting skills, but as they continue to stare, you kind of will. You can’t help it.
9. Crayons. So, I love the little packs of crayons. I really do. It’s a great diversional tactic on the part of the establishment. And even though my three year old tries to color the table, and the baby tries to eat them, I still think they’re a bonus. Until we leave that is.
Even if I tell my kids to leave them, and I think they do, those little crayons follow me home. I find them in a diaper if I’m lucky, but usually I find them here.
10. Leftovers. Leftovers are usually a good thing to me, but typically with restaurant leftovers it’s not so much. My kids have taken two bites out of their meals, and I’ve given up being able to finish mine. The kids are on their last leg, and mass exodus is required before the other patrons put together a lynch mob. You ask for a to-go box, or two, but it’s just never as good reheated, is it?
Our to-go boxes have a few typical destinies. Either I get them home and realize there’s no way they’ll fit in the fridge, so they get tossed. Or, they never make their way out of the car. We discover them at a later date, which is interesting to say the least.
Sometimes they don’t even get out of the parking lot.
The thing is, even with all the odds stacked against you, even knowing the night will likely end in disaster, you still proceed. You still end up dining out with kids. The allure of not cooking, and more importantly, no dishes, is just too tempting.
So, I promise, if I see you out with your kids, I won’t stare. And if you happen to work in the restaurant industry… I am so sorry.
Cindel spears says
Ha. This is so true!!! I can definitely relate 🙂
brieann.rn@gmail.com says
I’ll bet you can!
Sherry Evans says
So funny and very true. A few weeks ago my husband and I took 1 granddaughter to a well known eating establishment with country cooking. So we ordered our breakfast and got an extra plate and milk for her. She was 15 months when his happened. So after the food arrived for some reason they were slow this day, which is never the case, we started feeling her plate slowly and we were thinking wow this is fun within 2 or so minutes her plate goes upside down and immediately we started trying to quite her and feed her. I looked under the table within 10 minutes total it looked like the entire table was turned upside down and everyone was watching. Both of our plates were barely touched we quickly got her out of the high chair that was as you said nasty before we put her in it and had to tie her in. Took forever to pull her out lost a shoe in the process while poppa was paying. He did go back and get it. Later he told me he gave the cleaning guy an extra tip when he went to retrieve the shoe as I was putting my granddaughter in the car. So I can’t imagine going back don’t have any desire. But I bet in a few more months even less I will forget and we will return once again to amuse the entire restaurant .
brieann.rn@gmail.com says
That sounds like a relaxing, leisurely meal out. Haha. I’m just glad you got the shoe. Those things have a way of getting sucked into black holes. And yes, you’ll do this again soon!