The Kiddie Table

It takes a big pair of balls to go out to eat with a three year old and a baby. 

Dining out is supposed to be a relaxing experience. You sit at a table, and someone waits on you, brings you your food, your water, your alcohol. You are to relax, to enjoy your meal as much as you enjoy someone else preparing it and cleaning it up. It is a break from you having to do it all.

When you have young children, you don’t get to relax in public any more than you would at home. If anything, it’s easier at home because your kids are contained, and if they act out in an unpredictable manner, you can, in theory, discipline them without the judging eyes of strangers. In public, your parenting fails are on display for all the world to see.

I am writing this for EL, with whom I just had lunch. It was the six of us, me and my two teenage girls, and her and her two baby boys. I can relate to how difficult it is for her to dine out, but then again, I can’t.

My girls were always girls, in the sense that they didn’t throw themselves around the room and carry on and make rolls and forks into weapons. That’s not to say that they weren’t ever difficult at restaurants, because they were, plenty, just in a different way.  E, my fourteen year old, was never that hard in a restaurant. She wasn’t picky and was easily entertained with paper and crayons, even now, so she doesn’t count.

My twelve year old, S, was a different story. She was never much into rules as a young child, so etiquette like sitting calmly in a chair wasn’t high on her priority list. I remember taking her out to a nice restaurant for brunch once. I had to order her a bowl of shredded cheese since she refused to eat anything else that day. She got maybe three shreds in her mouth before she decided she was full, and then she peed on the chair.

My sister, LM, didn’t have it any easier. Her youngest was what I call a lobber. If he didn’t like what was on his plate, he didn’t just leave it there, he would throw it, generally at my sister, his mother. Broccoli, cheese, bread crusts. It was like tossing a salad without the tongs or the bowl.  I don’t blame him for not listening to his mom. It’s hard to take anyone seriously who has florets in her hair.

Many moons ago, my husband and I lived in Arizona, and his sister came to visit with her children who were four and two at the time. We spent the night in Flagstaff, and ate at the shitty restaurant adjacent to the hotel. I recall her nervously sipping her beer while her two children glued their French fries to the wall with their ketchup. I encouraged her to just sit quietly and drink. It wasn’t like we were ever going to eat there again, so who cared if they did a little remodel on the restaurant walls?

My friend MJS doesn’t even attempt dining out anymore. She can’t handle the stress.  No dining experience is worth trying to contain her two and a half year old, the one with no patience or volume control. He likes to ride his bike around the dining room at home. Who knows what he would do at a place with table cloths.

Today, my daughters and I met EL and her two boys at a local Indian buffet. We were seated in one of those round corner booths, with a high chair placed in the opening for her ten month old. He was the best behaved, really, as long as he had an orange slice to gum and then drop on the floor. He waved backwards at the other restaurant patrons and sucked his orange slices, stopping only to burp up an ounce or two of orange pulpy spit up before filling back up with more orange. His entire collar was covered in orange. He looked like someone had tried to juice him. He was quiet and lovely as long as you didn’t look too closely.

Her three year old, on the other hand, was ready to test some limits. EL had lovingly selected a variety of child friendly foods off the buffet. He had already declared he wanted pasta, the one thing not available, but he had chicken and rice and oranges and potatoes and salad and yogurt for dipping and what more could he possibly want?

What he wanted was to shove handfuls of rice in his mouth, scoot across the booth next to S, my twelve year old whom he adores, and spit the contents of his pie hole all over her. He did it gleefully, with smiling eyes. It was more an act of giving than of evil. EL would grab his arm and pull her close to him, calmly explaining that he shouldn’t spit, and she would take him out to the car. And then he would shriek, and lie on the bench, and she would let go out his arm and he would sit up and fill his mouth with rice and off again he would go, the spit cycle starting again.

When he realized he was pushing too hard, he would lie down face first on the booth seat, seemingly in defeat, so that EL would think it was okay to try to eat her food again. Then he would kick his feet into S, who by the time lunch was over was sitting on my lap because there was no more room for scooting over.

A few times, Z wouldn’t spit his rice. He would just get right in S’s face and open his mouth. She said quietly to him, “I don’t like see food.” He was too young to get it.

He also expressed interest in what the folks at the next booth were doing. Nothing is quite as relaxing as a meal time stare down with someone else’s kid.

At one point, EL put her head on the table in defeat. The baby grabbed a handful of her hair and coated it in his orangey love.

Z picked up his glass, HIS GLASS!!  filled to the top with water, which he precariously bobbed and swayed near S as he attempted to take a sip. We all held our collective breath waiting for him to dump it on S or the table, thus ending the meal. That three year old had amazing control of his glass. Not a drop was spilled.

My heart wept for her. I could go out whenever I wanted to eat. My kids misbehaving at the table involves not putting away their cell phones. We fight over where to go. Sometimes my teen, E, will decide to order a side salad to spite us. Glasses are upright, as are chairs. We sit, we eat, we leave. We sometimes love it and sometimes not. Sometimes the service is fantastic and sometimes it ruins the whole meal. I don’t have to mentally prepare myself for the meal. It doesn’t require advanced planning and even bringing my own pre meal food. No one has to hose down the booth when we are through, or burn the table linens or scrub the floors.  We can go out for lunch, and then go out again for dinner if we feel like it.

So, EL, don’t stop trying. One day, it will be easier to eat out, but if you stop going out, you won’t know when that is. Don’t worry about what other people think. Yes, they are judging you, but no, you don’t have to care what they think. If everyone is safe and fed, then what else matters? There are enough restaurants in our town that you could eat out at least once a week and not repeat for a good year. By the time you go back, they won’t remember you. Someone else’s kids will have scarred them much, much worse. You might not be relaxed but you didn’t have to cook or clean, and if you are lucky, you can have a drink with your meal. In fact, make it a double.