It’s time to ban young children from restaurants
Let's save parents from themselves
When you have small children just getting them out of the door can be traumatic. Finding and applying each shoe can be enough to provoke a tantrum – and not just in the parent. And no, they can’t bring their Power Rangers swords, because we are going out to lunch and everyone knows that plastic swords and restaurants don’t mix.
Eventually you will arrive at the restaurant, although it will 20 minutes later than the booking. As you push the buggy inside, the establishment falls quiet like the Slaughtered Lamb in An American Werewolf in London. There’s a scrape of chairs – a pause – then the chatter resumes. But in that moment everyone is thinking the same thing: please don’t sit next to us.
You are led to a table by a waitress who feels like a goddess – she has the power to make or break the mealtime of all she surveys. At the table, usually in the darkest, remotest and most joyless corner of the restaurant, the fun begins – coats are discarded; the buggy is folded away or pushed aside to be a tripping hazard; a high chair is wedged in against the back of a diner behind, performing an impromptu Heimlich manoeuvre on them and doubtlessly spilling a drink all over them, too.
If your fidgeting children haven’t already upset the water jug, then this is the moment. The next victim will be a glass of wine – smashed to smithereens as soon as it arrives by a flying menu card that the kids can’t read but can fight over. The waitress immediately disappears to get a dustpan and brush and large roll of blue paper to mop up the mess.
Once the destroying stops, the complaining begins. ‘I’m bored,’ one will yelp before administering a sadistic Chinese burn to the other. The youngest will then erupt in agony – tears springing from his eyes as you attempt to decide between the fillet steak or the leg of lamb and whether that should be dauphinoise potatoes or twice-cooked chips.
Then the waitress returns and begins cleaning away the wine and broken glass – only to cut herself. She races away clutching her arm as if she’s been set upon by dogs. You, meanwhile, still have no glass of wine, even though its nearly 2 p.m. on a Sunday and God alone knows you’ve earned it. Eventually, the table is cleared of hazardous shards, and you’ve all avoided having to take anyone – granny included – to A&E. Forty-five minutes after arriving you are finally presented with a glass of wine by the waitress whose hand is now swathed in blue plastic tape and supported by sling.
You order, a process that resembles a nutritional interrogation and requires several returns to the kitchen to establish the antecedents of certain ingredients, down to molecular level. All the while the children refuse to settle. One moment you snatch the cutlery away from Child A just before he impales himself with it; the next you are removing the salt cellar from Child B just as he draws a face on the table with its contents. By the time you’ve ordered everything on the table is piled in a heap at one end out of reach of Child B, who is bawling ‘Pepppppper!’ at the top of his voice.
When the whimpering fades, you make an attempt at conversation with your spouse – only to be interrupted by another Chinese burn. But it’s when you see your eldest prancing across the restaurant waving two napkins like a Morris dancer, with no shoes on, that you throw in the towel.
You hand your phones to the children and you become those people. It’s for the best, you remind yourself, as you offer your offspring up to the gods of Samsung and Apple in exchange for peace, digital Danegeld. As they sit their agog, their little brains melting quietly, the disapproving looks and sideways glances begin. But what do you care? Pah! You say ‘cheers’, clink glasses and remark about what a nice time everyone’s having.
The children’s food arrives – organic chicken nuggets, priced to the point of pain – and you butcher it into tiny non-choking pieces because even though the blighters can open jars with their teeth you constantly worry that a waffle or a cumbersome strawberry will be the end of them. Then, wonder upon wonder, your fillet steak arrives with pepper sauce and sides; the children are eating, too – albeit with their hands – and you take up your knife and fork. At last. It might not look like it, but right now, you are Napoleon after Borodino…
Suddenly there’s a tug at your arm: ‘Daddy. I need a poo.’ By the time you return your steak is cold, the pepper sauce is congealed and funnily enough – after padding about playing ‘I Spy’ in a poorly ventilated disabled loo, your appetite has been eviscerated.
You get through pudding, coffee, and then coats are fought back on. Once the staff have gratefully closed the door behind you, you remember that this is exactly what happened last time. And it’s a sign. You shouldn’t do it. You should stop trying to take your small children to restaurants. Small children and restaurants go together about as well as potassium and air. They hate each other. And everyone else in the room hates them too. The problem is that we forget this and we delude ourselves with a fantasy that it’s feasible. But it isn’t. It’s folly.
So we should save parents from themselves. Like denying cigarettes to the under-21s, we should ban all children – say, under the age of eight or nine – from restaurants (with exceptions for the likes of McDonald’s, or Nando’s). While this isn’t for the benefit of child-haters, they will be overjoyed, and – who knows – even the restaurants themselves might profit since having fewer tiny brutes ruining it for everyone else might allow others to enjoy themselves more.
Yes, a ban sounds a bit 1970s, but the truth is that young families have a better time at home: the toys are there, the environment is kid-proofed and you know what’s in the food you’re serving. Plus, for the amount of money you have to part with in a restaurant these days you can probably buy a rib of beef the size of a Mondeo – and what’s not to like about that?
Finally, you also have the television on at home. And as every parent knows, when it comes to pleasing young children, Peppa Pig is far more important than Michelin stars.
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