Tag Archives: rude

Demand for “no kids allowed” restaurants high and growing

Over the past few years, a couple of restaurants in the United States banned kids on their premises. Recently, a sushi restaurant in Virginia joined them. The growing trend is a response to the outrageously rude behavior of so many children in restaurants and to their parents’ lack of consideration for other patrons.

Have you ever had your restaurant outing ruined by obnoxious kids running wild and screaming their lungs off? I bet you have. Extremely rude kids’ behavior is so common in kid-obsessed America that I am pretty sure everybody experienced it.

There are three problems in this regard:

  • discourteous parents fail to teach their kids respect for other people and to enforce the said respect while in public;
  • restaurants fail to show their respect to the customers and allow wild kids on their premises to make the experience miserable for everyone instead of removing the violators immediately;
  • polite people offended by kids’ behavior way too often are afraid to demand respect, thus, contribute to the unacceptable behavior by not requiring it to be ended.

It is nice to know that there are alternatives for these polite diners, parents or not, that do not wish to be exposed to kids’ rudeness. Although growing in numbers, these places are still very scarce and not all people have them nearby or within a reasonable distance. The success of the existing ones shows though that the demand is significant and gives hope for more of them to be established.

However, this so needed alternative encounters opposition and even aggression from those who love to ruin other peoples’ entertainment by letting their ill-mannered kids run wild and yell. Some parents make a fool of themselves by claiming discrimination. This kind of claim is ridiculous because the ban is instituted due to extreme rudeness, a kind of behavior that is easily changeable by proper teaching and disciplining process, not due to some inherent characteristics of a child. Too many parents keep forgetting that children are not rude by nature, they are rude when their parents fail to teach them proper behavior.

Also, these entitled parents forget that for each adult only restaurant there are thousands of venues that not only allow to bring kids, but also welcome all kinds of their unacceptably rude behavior. Moreover, a restaurant is an entertainment establishment. It is not an emergency room visit that might be necessary and life saving. Nobody ever died of lack of entertainment, and people who do not respect other customers should not be welcome at any entertainment venues.

The good news is that a large number of the online commenters, many of whom are parents of multiple children, applaud the decision of the restaurants going kid-free. However, it is deplorable that kids’ behavior is so bad that they have to be banned. The more rude kids are, the more demand there is for banning them.

How do other nations deal with the problem?

First of all, there is not much of a problem and no need to solve it because both children and parents are in vast majority polite. Having been to many restaurants in multiple countries I have not seen this level of rudeness anywhere else.

Once, in a casual place in Warsaw, I saw a child walk away from the table. Used to American standards, I wanted to cancel and leave because I expected more rude behavior to follow, but my friend stopped me. A few seconds later, the father grabbed the kid by the ear and made it sit down. It remained seated and respectfully quiet for the next two hours until they left.

Another time, in a restaurant in Bissau, I witnessed removal of a drooling, squealing kid. It was very efficient: the waiter approached the couple (both of them foreign; Guineans are very respectful and would not have to be removed) and whispered a few words; 30 seconds later the woman was outside with the kid and the man was finishing his meal hurriedly.

Things seem to be changing in kid-obsessed America, although for a more significant change to happen, polite diners cannot remain as shy as they are at the moment. They should express their requests for a respectful environment free from rude kids, be it by email or letters, be it in person. The best way to be heard is to vote with your money: whenever a rude child is ruining your experience, cancel and leave, informing the owner or manager about the reason. Do not let the kid-worshiping society manipulate you into guilt that you are doing something wrong. You are not. Being respected is your basic right and you should expressly and strictly voice your requirement for the said respect in all situations.

Take an example of the Africans

I could not be more impressed by the politeness and respect of the children in sub-Saharan Africa. From Nigeria, to Mozambique, to Angola, to Togo, I have never seen a single example of a rude behavior by a kid. There is no outrageous, senseless screaming, no uncoordinated, wild bouncing off the walls, no talking back. The kids always obey the adults, they always respect the adults, and especially the elderly, they are quiet and still when appropriate, yet they have lots of fun in the proper time and place and seem very happy.

What is the secret? What do their parents do differently to achieve this exemplary outcome? What could Americans learn from their African counterparts? I see a couple of major differences.

  1. No African adult would ever worship and obey a kid. Children are very important to the family and to the society, but they must know their place in the hierarchy.
  2. Children do not get away with any offense or mischief they are caught doing. They are consistently brought to order and disciplined by an adult or an older kid.
  3. It does take a village. Children are part of the society and with the parent absent, any member of the society brings them to order. The parents never get aggressive about that. To the contrary, they are grateful that someone else did their job when they could not do it in person.
  4. Kids work and I do not mean the child labor that is known as forbidden and undesired exploitation. I mean chores, long forgotten in kid-obsessed America. Doing housework teaches them respect for other people, for work and how to be a responsible adults in the future.
  5. Adults do not invent any fads of “parenting styles” changing every now and then. They do not read any “how to” manuals telling them that worshiping and spoiling the kid is the best. Some African farmers barely can even read. They learn how to raise kids by simply living in the society, around other people, around younger kids, watching, participating and naturally assuming their social roles.

I often hear Americans say that people in Africa should use birth control, and categorize all Africans as a group with the dismissive and contemptuous label of “poor”. I think this opinion is very unfair considering the level of knowledge (or rather lack thereof) an average American has about the continent. Instead, Americans should seriously take an example of the Africans for one simple reason: people in sub-Saharan Africa get impressive results worth following. It is not an outmoded or conservative way of raising kids as some Americans claim. It is realistic, practical and effective and should become a trend for everyone.