You have more patience than I do. I would have said something. I, too, can't stand that "style" of parenting (If you can call it that.

Thank God my parents raised me right. I say yes ma'am and no ma'am.

In my line of work, I have to call all sorts of people and I'm polite. Every once in a while, the party I'm speaking to will say, "Sounds like someone got out of the Army."

My response is always the same: "No, ma'am. My parents raised me right."

Which raises the question: If they comment like that to me, what are they subjected to by others?

I assume the smile was an apology.

Let me offer a thought.

Perhaps the parents suffer from ADOS... and they don't notice the bratticus behavior's obnoxiousness because they hear it so often (kids are like that). They effectively hyperfocus it out of existence. Then they wave some friendly smiles around as they leave because, gosh darn it, they're friendly people.

I'm not saying this is good, or an excuse, but there are days I just can't notice a blizzard, so a screaming kid has no chance. That's the best explanation my brain can come up with anyway.

If they come back, then I'm probably right.

Situations like that make me wish that humans occasionally ate their young.

Dealing with constant noise like dogs barking, cats meowing, or children crying really rattles me and sets my nerves on edge.

*would occasionally eat

Never understood parents who sit and continue conversations while the kid is screaming. I could ignore my kids sounds while home with nobody around to be bothered but in a public place I was always hypersensitive to any nuisance my kids could potentially cause. There's no excuse to sit there ignoring the screaming.

Kristin,

One parenting technique is to ignore your kid when they are engaging in bad behavior and praise good behavior. The idea is that the kid is feeding off of any attention whether good or bad. If they don't get attention with the bad behavior it goes away. Like all parenting crap, it has to be done consistently.

I used a somewhat *similar* technique when my girls were small, not in a restaurant, but in a Walmart. It only took once or twice and they never threw another tantrum. It went sort of like this:

Kidling "I want that."
Me "Sorry Baby, not happening."
Kidling "generic whining"
Me "I said no. That means 'NO'. You aren't going to get me to change my mind by being obnoxious."
Kidling "tantrum mode, throws self on floor, kicking and screaming"
At this point, I look around to see if anyone nearby is going to be ultra-sensitive to the noise, like someone old/frail/obviously flinching, if I don't see anyone like that I'd take 2 steps away from the kidling and pretend to not pay attention for about 30 seconds. Then I'd glance over and ask "Are you done yet?" if not, return to not paying attention. It took maybe 2 or 3 repeats for them to get the hint that the tantrum was not getting them what they wanted, and after the 3rd "Are you done?" they would sniffle and whimper and shuffle over to me and press up against me looking for a hug, which I would give them.

After the hug I would ask them what they had learned, and when they said "No means No." they would get an even bigger hug. I would also point out that 'maybe' didn't always mean no, unless they nagged me,(nagging was an automatic "no") and so the best way to get something they wanted was to ask nicely, and if I said "maybe" to wait patiently for me to make up my mind. At 5 yrs old, they had no problem grasping the concept.

Total elapsed time for this was somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 min. If it had taken any longer, we would have made the trip outside "Where there are no witnesses ;) " . Forgive an old lady her spotty memory, my kids are 19 and 29, so I may have left out a detail or two. True story tho, I never had to do this more than once or twice for either of them. Of course, I raised two exceptionally bright young ladies, who knew that I held high expectations for their behavior, and that there were consequences if they failed to meet those expectations.

@Kat: It seems that *every* kid, somewhere around the age of two, tries this on for size: "If I throw a tantrum in a public place, maybe I'll get what I want." The only way past this is through: having the guts to not give in.

It drives me crazy to see parents who do give in, because I see the results when I work with the kids in my free time (sports). Some kids expect to always get their way, expect to get away with misbehaving, and cannot deal with any sort of discipline ("Enough! Go sit on the bench!"). We get these kids at the age of 6 or 8, and it's already too late. The kids are disruptive, and sooner or later wind up leaving because they just can't discipline themselves to behave for a single hour of sport. Some of them are really nice kids, it's a shame...

Zombie, I'm aware of that technique, but I don't agree that it should be done in a place where people are sitting and socializing. Packing the kid up and leaving is the polite and respectful thing to do. I'd be more accepting of that in a grocery store because moms do have to shop and we're not there to socialize, but not in a coffee shop where people are meeting friends or browsing reading material. Its just rude.

There are times where you have to eat out for whatever reason, maybe you had some huge errand to do and need to eat, maybe you're coordinating with other people, whatever.

So here are things I feel are helpful:

* Booths. The kid can sit between two adults and be in a confined space where they can move around a bit without tripping waiters.
* Crayons and paper or other portable distractions.
* Those little squeeze-it packs of fruits and veggies, or other small travel foods.
* If you don't have food with you, ask for bread right away. (Sorry Amy).
* OFF HOURS. Lunch at 11 or 2. Dinner at 5 or 6. There will be less people.
* If its nice out, take out. Get your coffee/meal/whatever and go eat it in a park if it is possible. Why make your life more hell than you need to.
* If your toddler is really antsy have one of you go outside and run around while waiting for food.
* Better yet, if you can't do take-out, go to an Indian buffet or something where you don't need to wait to be served.

To sum it up:
Make sure your kid has food and a distraction, go when there aren't too many people, and make your sitting around and waiting time as short as possible.

Until I decided my kids were civilized enough for polite company, our eating out experiences were few and far between, and generally restricted to fast food places with kiddy areas that they could play in while the adults ate.

We are all born uncivilized barbarians, it's up to the parents to beat civilization into our thick skulls. If this is not accomplished, for the most part, by age 3, the results are sanctimonious, self-centered di*k weeds like the Chick-Fil-A rant-tard.

Being a parent is hard work, if you aren't ready to give up some of the perks of single life, don't have kids.

One way to stop tantrums in stores is to say "where is YOUR money?"

And then: "Do you want to work for money for the next time we come here?"

Or some variation of that. The point is that while of course kids shouldn't be allowed to eat ice cream every day, even when it IS their money, a rule that says "the only time I buy you something is when you DON'T ask for it" is a great way to hold back a kid's consumerism and growing greed.

Oh, and while this is probably just an excuse on parents' part to be rude, one explanation they often give for not taking the kid out of a restaurant is "that would be giving in to the kid's tantrum and teaching him/her to be manipulative."

Given that no hungry child wants to be taken outdoors and away from the food, I don't get it. Seems to me that a toddler who's just screaming out of pure crankiness is probably too young to understand the idea of manipulation, anyway.

And I suspect the smile was a bid for sympathy.

> it's time to take little Kaylie or Phonejack
> or whomever outside

Amy Alkon, Amy Alkon