Thank You for ruining our dinner with your screaming kid.
A mom posted a note she received from fellow diners: “Thank you for ruining our dinner with your screaming kid. Sincerely, the table behind you.” The restaurant apologized to her, asked the other diners to leave, and actually paid for her table’s meal. This whole situation was wrong and the mom should have been the one apologizing.
Here’s the rundown: Mom says the 10 month old loves to “yell.” “He will yell when I tell him no, when he’s super excited and happy or just for no reason at all,” Leach wrote on a Facebook post to KTVB. “I’m doing my best to teach him indoor voice and to not yell back at me when telling him no etc, But he is only 10 (almost 11 months) and LEARNING.”
The two older ladies at the table behind them were not on board with this learning experience and just wanted to have dinner without a screaming child, no matter how happy he was. Instead of asking to be moved or leaving, they wrote a note to Mom.
Mom went to try and talk to the ladies. The ladies said their grandchildren would never behave like that. (Obviously, nobody has bad grandchildren.) Mom told the manager on the ladies, the manager asked the ladies to leave. The restaurant had this to say:
“We’re in the hospitality business. We want all our guests to have a great experience,” said Travis Doster, a spokesman for Texas Roadhouse. “We were voted one of the loudest restaurants by Consumer Reports. We are proud to be loud. If you want to hear clinking wine glasses and clinking forks, then this probably isn’t the place for you.”
Loud is one thing, screaming baby is another completely different thing. Children have stages and a screaming stage is not the time to take them out to a restaurant. It is about respect. As parents we have to remember that our kids aren’t the only people in the world. Our kids need to learn how to act in public. At 10 months old my son did not want to be confined to a high chair and he would regularly pitch a fit if we tried having dinner out. Guess what, we ordered take out and ate at home because we didn’t want to be annoyances to other people. When he was old enough to act right in public we ate out again.
The two older ladies were also wrong. Why not ask to be moved? They could have told the manager and I’m pretty sure they would be the ones getting a comped meal. Why not ask to be seated in an area with no children? Some restaurants I’ve been to don’t seat families with children in the bar area, so I intentionally ask to sit there. Yes, even though I have children and love children and understand they all go through phases, I don’t want them yelling through my dinner. One of the biggest things I dislike is when I”m in a restaurant and the kid in the seat behind me starts jumping up and down or throwing things over the seat or trying to talk to me. Sometimes I can deal with it, but other times I’m just trying to enjoy my dinner with my husband or friends and don’t want a baby interrupting. It doesn’t mean I’m a bad or intolerant person. It just means I like time away from kids.
This situation seems to have been blown out of proportion. The parents need to be respectful, the two women who complained didn’t need to confront the mom, the restaurant shouldn’t have given anybody a free dinner. What would you have done in this situation as the mom, the diners, or the restaurant?
This happened to my husband and I at Red Lobster. We did move, but honestly the screaming baby could be heard throughout the restaurant. All of the diners were uncomfortable (you could tell). The manger would not ask the parents to leave or quiet their child, so we left. When our kids were young we ate out a lot. If they misbehaved, one of us would take them outside or to the car, while the other settled up and got to go boxes. It’s part of the bargain. They learned to behave, and we kept the peace.
This happened to my husband and I at Red Lobster. We did move, but honestly the screaming baby could be heard throughout the restaurant. All of the diners were uncomfortable (you could tell). The manger would not ask the parents to leave or quiet their child, so we left. When our kids were young we ate out a lot. If they misbehaved, one of us would take them outside or to the car, while the other settled up and got to go boxes. It’s part of the bargain. They learned to behave, and we kept the peace.
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