Monday, February 18, 2013

Discounts for Well Behaved Kids?




From out friends at 9&10 News, a local news station in Northern Michigan, which this Gypsy calls home, a question that is bond to stir up the best kind of parenting drama:

Our Fox Topix question today...Do you think restaurants should give a discount for well behaved children? One restaurant in Seattle, Wash. thinks so, they've been giving it to a few patrons who had well behaved kids.
Here is the link to their Facebook page where you can chime in on the discussion:
https://www.facebook.com/9and10News

This MG's opinion would be "Depends on the Day!" Most of the time my children are well behaved but we have had meltdowns in public just like everyone else. The difference may be in how little they occur. And my husband and I firmly believe that zero tolerance, even if it results in inconvenience to us, the adults, is the best way to deal with a situation like this. I have left cart fulls of grocery sitting in the middle of the store because I told a child that unless they straitened up, we were going to leave. My husband has stood outside a car in the parking lot while a 6 year old threw a tantrum on the inside. We have left restaurants before the food has hit the table, with one parent putting the bratty-acting kids in the car while the other asks for everything to be boxed up. Does this suck? Yes! Is it very frustrating and inconvenient and feel like the grown ups are getting punished for the kids behavior? Of course!
But let me tell you, each kid did not want to go home and the lesson that you must behave a certain way to be able to be out with the rest of humanity was made crystal clear. We only had to leave one restaurant, one grocery store, with each kid before they were "cured" of this kind of mis-behavior. Now I get compliments on how well behaved my kids are.
Hopefully this will shine a light on the under-lying issue: No one wants to listen to your screaming, fit-throwing kids! Not even other mothers that have been there before. I expect kids to melt down, what I don't expect is for you to sit there letting them destroy other people's experiences. If your child is incapable of behaving in public at that moment, you need to remove them, end of story....

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