Give her some credit:

"expect them to follow standard restaurant etiquette"

"do not, however, misunderstand this tip to mean that the staff is responsible for entertaining or babysitting your child"

Maybe her kid shouldn't be along everywhere ("attachment parenting"?). However, if she means what she says above, then she isn't too evil...

Anyone find it odd that there was not one single post disagreeing with her on her site?

Well, your kid doesn't know the difference between the 5 star restaurant and Chuck-E-Cheese. If you want to give them freedom sacrifice your desire to have a dinner at a nice restaurant. Don't ruin my dinner because your unruly brood gets in the way of you have a nice dinner. You had the kids but I get to suffer the consequences. Thanks.

If a kid has good manners and is ready to eat in a good restaurant, then go for it. 5 seems a bit young, though.

My mom used a fancy restaurant as a bribe to teach me good table manners. It was The Pillar House (now defunct) in Massachusetts. Ties were required for men. She spent a long time grooming my table manners and when they were deemed good enough, I got to go. It was awesome... the type of place where they bring you sorbet to cleanse your palate between courses, and all the ladies were given a rose at the end.

I must of been about 8 or so when my manners were deemed good enough, though. Not 5. And I didn't wander around the restaurant, I enjoyed my meal. It was amazingly cool.

"If your child wants to engage in a conversation with bartender or ask the restaurant owner a question, let him."

Because, what bartender or owner WOULDN'T want to talk to a kid while at work, right? That's why they entered such kid-friendly professions.

There's at least one post disagreeing with her on her site, now, since I posted it.

There are two now. I just posted this:

I agree wth farrar, and I've blogged about your post, too.

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/09/13/itll_mean_a_lot.html

A fine restaurant is not one big experimentation factory for your children.

This is another example of how overindulged America children are, taught that their every word or deed is a little pearl from age one.

I find it weird that almost all your commenters agree with everything you say, save for somebody who thought "pimply" was uncalled for. At least a few people on my site always find something to disagree with on a post. Do you always have yes-men (ladies, really, I guess) on yours?

Oh, how precious. *eyeroll*

I'm with momof4. The wait staff is not there to entertain your child. How entitled of her to think so.

With that attitude, I suspect that kid's not the absolute joy she makes him out to be. The words "attachment parenting" were a big red flag there.

Silly Amy, no one goes by that definition of attachment parenting. It now means, "My child is a special snowflake and it is perfectly okay for him to "express himself" however he chooses because we certainly don't want to "stifle his creativity".

In English, this means, "My kid can do whatever he wants and if you try and tell him no, God help you."

I don't know much about attachment parenting, but it certainly doesn't sound much like "put your marriage first."

What's wrong with that old way?

In one of Miss Manners' books, she suggested using reverse psychology to get kids to behave. "Take you with me? How silly. You'd have to sit and be quiet all the time. You're still a baby who can't do that. You'll just have to stay home and watch TV. Toodle-oo."

Amy I typically agree with you but I think that the excerpts you posted are misleading and unfair to that blogger's entire message. She clearly wasn't advocating allowing her kid to run around like a bull in a china shop or play hopscotch behind the bar. I also think that some of the commenters had good points on American children/manners vice European children/manners. Just because there are a lot of parents that raise brats doesn't mean all parents raise brats.

I'm on the fence on this one. She's not advocating letting her child rule the restaurant. She's saying that she's not freaking out if while being served her child asks a question. She did make a point of saying the staff is not there to entertain. The expectation is out there for her child that there is certain behavior in a restaurant so give a little credit. I never once heard her defend a child running around creating mayhem. My parents had five kids and they always took us to nice restaurants and we always behaved. It was expected. And I'll never forget the looks when as kids we were allowed to order lobster and prime rib, which we ate. It wasn't a child menu with chicken fingers and mac and cheese. We learned how to eat and were expected to behave. I would like to believe that's what this person meant.

Even if her child is extremely well behaved and not bothering anyone in the restaurant, I still think this lady is nuts. As I've posted before, my older grade school kids have still never been taken to a "nice" restaurant. I'm sure they would behave just fine, but when I go to a nice restaurant, it is for my and my husband's enjoyment. Having to monitor and entertain my kids the whole time would ruin the experience for me completely. Plus, they would be bored silly and probably hate the food.

It's all about behavior. Children shouldn't be barred from fine-dining experiences just because they are children. If they can speak without screaming, have good table manners, can stay seated and are polite, there's no problem. I just hope she's prepared to walk out of that restaurant if her kid's manners aren't up to par.

I do appreciate this: "Let your child enjoy a sip of wine. One sip won’t hurt anybody, and it will help to, overtime, remove the alcohol’s mystique and replace it with hard-won appreciation."

Getting over our mortal terror of alcohol would be nice.

Before our son was 'dining out' he had to master 'dining in.'

Every couple of months we would do the fancy dress, fine china, multiple utensils deal, but in out own home. I hired a 'waiter' (usually a friends teen that wanted experience or $$ and was willing to play along). It was still cheaper than a meal out and a babysitter.

I think he was about age 12 before I would feel comfortable taking him to a fancy restaurant. You know, the kind of place that demands men wear ties and jackets.

My kiddo was told he could come out to the adult restaurants when he could demonstrate he could behave appropriately for the entire meal. This did not include getting up and wandering around.

Sometimes he still chooses to stay home and eat a frozen pizza rather than dress up and go out.

"Let your child enjoy a sip of wine. One sip won’t hurt anybody, and it will help to, overtime, remove the alcohol’s mystique and replace it with hard-won appreciation."

Absolutely. Of course, in today's society, some nitwit will probably report you...

Attachment parenting? So I have to ask...am I the only mother out here that looks forward to date night, alone with my husband in a nice restaurant where we can slowly savor food, wine, and conversation? I know that I'm probably a perpetual nominee for the Joan Crawford Mother of the Year Award, but seriously? You are so enamoured of this small person that you can't leave him/her with a sitter for 3 hours? I love my boys to death and I devote a large part of my life to them, but I need the mental break, and fancy restaurants are usually an oasis of quiet. Boo to this lady and others who think their kids deserve the white glove treatment simply because they exist.

UW Girl - no, you sure are not the only one! Everything I have ever read about attachment parenting sounded horrible to me. If I really believed that it was the only way to raise kids, I would not have had any.

I'm currently reading "Baby Talk" by William Sears, and the first chapter starts off with a big push for AP. I'm not sure I'll make it all the way through, but I DID pay $9.99 for it.

Around here "date night" is when the boy goes away for a sleepover at his grandparent's house.

Hubby and I stay in rather than go out. Suits me perfectly.

Amy- I love your campaign & think/hope you are comment-tolerant enough not to mind my forthrightness here:

Attachment parenting doesn't make your kids ruder, bad parenting does. Attachment is just a parental choice about what to train, when. I did it, & always made sure my kids' manners were impeccable. The only time people complained was when they were butting in to say the kid "should" be eating/ sleeping/ spending time outside the family at age X (which was none of their freaking business).

Anyway, the kids are still impeccably well behaved according to all sources (eg. the airline pilots who seek me out to compliment their manners after they fly alone), and I would definitely do the same attachment stuff again. As far as restaurants, I did take them when they were little, and it was a hell of a lot of work, and not particularly worth the effort. Wandering off alone? With people walking round with trays of food not expecting small people? Um, no. If you take your kids out, you keep a close eye on them and make sure they're safe and not causing problems.

Talking to strangers? Oh what the hell, the barstaff can always just ignore them to serve the customers, can't they? For goodness sake. Ten years olds talk to strangers too. So do dumb 30 year olds. Barstaff are used to handling irritating people! If someone can find an actual restaurant worker who genuinely hates talking to kids, I'll change my mind on this, sure.

Anyway, parents of all methods can be doozies. I've seen lazy full-on "discipline" methods (read: dump them on the childminder/ grandparents/ occasional passer-by as soon and as much as possible) and lazy full-on "attachment" methods (sit around nursing for five years playing computer games & ignoring the havoc. Vile.)

But my corner is attachment parenting, so it bugs me when people write off this entire way of doing things which was absolutely brilliant for me & my kids, as it happens (but thanks, people everywhere, anyway, for your concerns.) Nowhere but parenting do people feel so entitled to trash other people's personal lives in ways that have nothing to do with anyone else. So, if nobody ever tells me again how long I should have nursed my own kids/ where they ought to have slept when small, I promise to end my worldwide campaign to ban ugly people I don't like from having sex with their partners. Otherwise, no deal.

I was a bartender, and I can assure you I would not have appreciated kids wandering over and chatting. Hello, the only more adult job I could have chosen would have been stripping.

I'm grown now (that was college) and have 4 of my own, and STILL don't particularly like talking to other people's kids in any non-official capacity. I get enough of that, thanks.

I am all for your ability to choose AP if it works for you, sans comments, as long as you are all willing to admit some people don't care to be around kids while dining/working out/ drinking/gardening/shopping etc, and act accordingly. (which means, no taking your kids with you to adults-only wedding receptions, and bragging about it, like one airhead commenter at the original blog)

And I say this a someone who thinks Amy is quite off her rocker with regards to kids, frequently.

I'll bet her kids are monsters. One of mine was, and we simply didn't go out to eat with her. (My husband's a chef. We know every one in the food world.)

Kids can learn good manners at home, and once in a while, try them out at a nice place.

But Jenny's whole tone strikes me as highly unlikely. I doubt that she's dragging those kids to Nobu.

She lives in the middle of a forest--Crested Butte Colorado. How often is she going out for dinner?

I had to puzzle over the idea of admitting some people don't like to be around kids- is it possible for anyone actually to expect everyone to love their kids? Then I remembered this is America! My kids were little in England, where nobody even dreams that everyone might love them! Bad behaviour among kids is still very much rife though, for different reasons- aggressive parents, who think everyone else can go to hell if they don't like it, and with feral older kids, parents at home while kids roam the streets & parks.

With the chatting & wandering it surely totally depends on where you are. Manners are a lot about the environment, what other people there are doing and what they want. Only in the USA have I ever seen people blast their way through a room as if the setting was irrelevant to their own wonderfulness. This confidence has virtues, but sensitivity to others is not one of them. But wandering about where food is being carried and nobody expects a person one foot tall is generally unsafe!