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Kiddie Meals Redefined
The Travel Critic · May 24, 1999

Marvin Doyle is ready to put the kibosh on kids in restaurants.

That's because the ad executive from Peoria, Ill., like countless other travelers, has had one too many run-ins with bad bambinos while dining out. Once at an Italian restaurant, a child seated in the next booth coughed into his pizza. Another time, a crawling baby almost tripped a waitress who was carrying a tray of hot meals.

But perhaps the worst was the game of pickup baseball he witnessed recently on a road trip. "An infant in its high chair was throwing everything Mom put on the tray," he says. "Green beans, peas, mashed potatoes were going well beyond their area. One man resorted to covering his coffee with his hand. A woman at another table caught several bits in her hair - she did not realize it until the next time she brushed her hair."

Some states have banned smoking in restaurants. What's next - kids? These days, that could mean keeping out a lot of families.

According to the National Restaurant Association, more people than ever are dining out with their kids. The growth is especially dramatic at casual restaurants, where orders by parties with children were up 7 percent in 1997.

The surge in family dining hasn't been a particularly positive experience for everyone. Take the experience of reader Lenora Kenwolf. On a recent trip to Phoenix, she found herself sitting next to a party with three "unruly children."

"The older two children were bad enough with their screaming and extremely loud talking, but the 3-year-old was unbearable," she recalls. "She ran around our table in circles, screaming at the top of her lungs while wearing a diaper which was so dirty that it was starting to sag."

The toddler "slapped the back of our legs, pinched us and attempted to take food off of our plates. She then ran into the kitchen and behind the bar where a very busy bartender yelled at her in Chinese. The staff of the restaurant kept chasing her out of the kitchen until the manager came out and spoke to the parents," Kenwolf says.

I wondered what contrarian sociologist Jerry Clavner had to say on the issue of kids in restaurants. Clavner, you'll remember, likened kids on planes to Chihuahuas with diarrhea in a previous column.

"When I go into a restaurant and the hostess or maitre d asks me whether I want smoking or non-smoking, I ask for the no children section," he told me. "I am not a curmudgeon, but I do believe that there is a time and place for everything, and quality restaurants in the evening are neither the time and place for children."

Marya Charles Alexander, editor of the newsletter "Solo Dining Savvy" agrees that kids should stay out of some restaurants.

But then again, so should some parents. "Some parents don't take the time nor have the interest to educate their kids in the niceties and pleasures of dining out," she says. "They fail to start small and with the basics-instructing kids in sitting reasonably still, keeping food reasonably on their plates and keeping hands and voices reasonably to themselves."

So what's the solution? Send the rowdy juveniles to the basement? Punish their parents by blacklisting them?

I tend to side with National Restaurant Association spokeswoman Karen Kraushaar, who points out that "there's no data out there that suggests the presence of children in restaurants is hazardous to your health."

And I concur with folks like UCLA psychiatrist Mark Goulston, author of Get Out of Your Own Way: Overcoming Self-Defeating Behavior and an expert on this subject in his own right (he has three children). He thinks it's up to patrons to plan ahead in case they encounter bad kids in a restaurant.

"Anticipate the cost of a someone else's child ruining your meal," he says. In addition to the common-sense steps, such as asking for another table or talking to the parents, he suggests that diners carry "little trinkets, toys or candies" with them to entice children to pipe down. "You'll win over the parent and the kid," he says.

For the rest of us, there's always takeout.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator and author of A Bridge to Nowhere: A Year in the Florida Keys. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.