I think this is more of a city vs. suburbs issue. In large cities, where it is more common to go out to eat as part of a regular meal rather than as a special occasion, you're likely to see more babies and children at restaurants of all levels. We saw it quite a lot in San Francisco, and it is even more prevalent here in Chicago. We went to a fairly bar-like steak house on Sunday, and our daughter was one of numerous children in the restaurant.

And it's not that we don't enjoy having a night out without our daughter. We occasionally go out for very fancy meals, when we get a sitter, or, better yet, go to a movie and then out to a bar afterward. (And I wouldn't think of bringing our 20 month old into a movie).

She goes to day care full time now, which is more time away than school will be. I suspect we will have even less time to prepare meals at home when she is home more often, so we will likely keep up the same pace.

I've pondered what would happen if I did that sometime.

I never said children should disappear from public.

Nor do I hold children to adult standards of manners.

But I do think that children should be restricted from any particular venue until they are capable of behaving in a manner appropriate to that venue. Standards of behavior, i.e. manners, vary from place to place. Manner appropriate to a Chilis or Applebees are not necessarily appropriate to a fine dining establishment; likewise, manners appropriate to Chuck-E-Cheese or Dave and Busters are not necessarily appropriate to Chilis or Applebees.

Every type of venue has it's own type of appropriate manners. Until your kids are capable of behaving appropriately to a place, don't take them to that place. As they grow and their manners improve, you can take them to more places.

"Gee," you might be thinking, "That seems really unfair to ME!" Well, tough - being a parent means making sacrifices, and one of those sacrifices is eating in child-appropriate places until your kids develop manners appropriate to better places.

However, I have never confronted a parent who was too dense to know this and brought a disruptive kid to a restaurant, because they are universally too self-centered to understand the concept of "venue-appropriate behavior" in the first place and will simply get angry and confrontational when called on their selfish decision to foist their kids venue-inappropriate behavior on strangers.

So much for the thread not devolving into the usual personal attacks.

I'm not feeding my daughter the garbage they serve at Applebee's, Chilis, or Chuck-E-Cheese. She eats what we eat, and we don't eat that. I think people who live in urban areas, as opposed to places where one might actually eat at a place like Applebee's, have a different view on what constitutes a "fine dining establishment." We went to a nice steakhouse on Sunday night, and we were one of many families with children in the place.

We do tend to avoid taking her out on Friday and Saturday nights, though, and those nights tend to be the nights when suburban people come into town for a night away from their own kids. Maybe that's the happy medium.

Here's a good example of a restaurant where one should not bring a baby or toddler:

http://www.suntimes.com/24934994-761...estaurant.html

I think there are very few places that I would not bring my daughter, but Alinea is one of them. Every parent needs to have an exit strategy if behavior starts to break down. For us, that usually means going early and ordering one course rather than three, and making sure one of us is prepared to bail with our daughter if she starts creating a problem. That doesn't work at a multi-hour experience like Alinea.

My kids were raised both in LA and Paris/France. I have never taken them out to fine dining in any of those places or other cities that we would be at. Reasons:

1- Such restaurants are for adult enjoyment. There are many people who save to go and have a nice quiet adult dinner, I would't want to disappoint them by have my "very well mannered" kids there.

2-Kids IMO should know that there are adult times and family times. And need to differentiate them. They can't go anywhere, there are places that they can't go to.

3-Setting limits now helps when they grow up.

4-Table manner should not only be at restaurants but should be everywhere even at home or chuck cheese.

But everyone raises their kids differently, and I won't be seeing your kids since I don't go eat at an early hour.

the problem with public spaces is that the public are there.

Well said.

I agree with all four of your points. I think the difficulty in all of this is determining what "fine dining" is. You won't be seeing my daughter at anything I consider to be "fine dining," but you might see her at a very nice neighborhood place, or even a regional destination. The problem I keep encountering in these threads is that there appears to be a few folks who think anything better than Applebee's / Chuck-E-Cheese is "fine dining" and should be free of children. I disagree with that, and think there are only a few "fine dining" restaurants in any given city (I can think of maybe 10 in the entire SF Bay Area, and I know of at least two here in Chicago, though I suspect there are more). The "fine dining" places I'm thinking of all tend to have long, multi-course meals that cost a lot and a generally quiet dining room.

This is a mess. For Alinea you buy tickets in advance and they have a strict no cancellation policy. According to reports the couple wasn't planning to take the child, but their sitter cancelled at the last moment.

So - rock vs. hard place - bring the kid or lose HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of dollars. I sympathize with both sides, the couple was stuck and if the restaurant starts to allow people to cancel selectively they have no place to stop. Anyone could call and say, my sitter cancelled - how are they going to prove it?

There is a secondary market for Alinea reservations, but not likely at the last possible moment.

Yeah, the very inflexible policies at Alinea, Next and the other places that have gone to ticketing put people in very difficult positions from time to time. Still, it's analogous to having your sitter cancel when you have opera tickets - and I can't imagine that this couple would have tried to bring their kid if that had happened.

I would like to hear them come forward and say, "We called Alinea and begged them to reschedule our reservation or we would have to bring our 8 month old with us and they wouldn't budge."

Can't imagine the restaurant would have tweeted the issue if they were given a chance to rectify this ahead of time.

A parent should have taken the child out until calmed down. If the parents didn't do that, the manager should have told them to do it.

Forget the term fine dining for a moment. Dining establishments are not divided into "crap" and "fine dining"; there are many subtle levels between the two.

Whatever others might be saying, what I'm saying is not that kids should be prohibited from all restaurants. What I'm saying is that parents should not bring kids to any particular restaurant until their kid is sufficiently schooled in table manners to behave appropriately to that venue. And - the big and - if the kid does act up, make noise, or misbehave, the parent has the responsibility to take the kid out of the restaurant. Yes, even at the cost of ruining their own meal. Yes, even if it's a nonrefundable uber-trendy $250 upscale place.

In fact, if it's a nonrefundable uber-trendy $250 upscale place, I think it's even MORE incumbant on the parents to remove the kid from the restaurant, because if the kid misbehaves, he's ruining the experience for all of those others who paid $250 for their meals.

If your kid is capable of behaving properly in the restaurants you patronize, then I would have absolutely no problem sitting at the next table. And I have, plenty of times.


Rock vs hard place, indeed.

I find it unbellievable that one sitter cancelling at the last minute makes it absolutely impossible for a couple to find child care for a couple of hours so they can enjoy a nice meal without disturbing others. Maybe this couple is in dire straights - perhaps they're new to Chicago and have no friends, no family, and no support system of any kind upon which to call for emergency child care. If so, they should have lost the $500 they paid for the meal and stayed home.

But I doubt that's the case. I think they just shrugged it off and brought the baby with them, not thinking about how they might be affecting other diners' experiences at their own $250 meals. And when the baby cried, I'm sure the mother said, "Well, what am I supposed to do, LEAVE?"

The answer to that question, of course, is yes.

I have never complained to management about a fellow diner; if I'm being disturbed beyond my limits, I simply pack up and leave. But at such an expensive, upscale place, if someone were to bring in a baby that continuously cried, yer darn tootin' I'd be complaining to the manager and demanding that they do something about it - just as I would if there were a drunken and disruptive adult in the restaurant.