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Anyone else read this? It's pretty sad that poor parenting is so common now a days that we are rewarding good parenting. I completely understand kids will be kids and throw tantrums at I inopportune times but there's a right way and a wrong way to deal with it. Quite frankly the majority of bad behaving kids in the restaurant I see are a direct result of parents having this attitude of 'this isn't my house to clean up I'll let them run, yell and make a big a mess as they want'.

At what age and where do you think it's appropriate to take kids out to eat?

We have been taking our daughter who is now 9 out to eat since she was born. There was a period of time where took a break from taking her because she would throw a fit. We never would take her to expensive "date" night places. Not even now that she is almost 10 and behaves better than some adults. I think most chain restaurants are fine to take kids to.

We started taking my daughter out to eat when she was still in a baby carrier. We would put the carrier on top of the table so she could see what was going on, we fed her bites off of our plates. She learned buy watching us how she should behave in a restaurant. We never had any major problems with her behavior, if she started to act up all that it took was either a couple of words or a look.We never went to any place "expensive" because we could not afford it, but we took her wherever we went out to eat. As far as where is appropriate, I think that depends a lot on the child. What is appropriate for my child may not be for yours.

Betty that's the attitude I wish more parents had. Every parent should know what is an ok environment for their own child! I see people try and have a two hour dinner with a 2 year old. Well duh, a 2 year old cannot sit still for that long and should not be expected to! I see parents struggle with their kids the entire meal and wonder why on earth they came out or why they don't just ask for a box and take their meal to go? I see infants in carriers cry off and on for over an hour and wonder why you want to take an infant out to dinner? I've seen people video tape their kids banging utensils on the stemware thinking it's amusing and cute. I've seen parents give their kids 5 sodas in an hour to bribe them into behaving for the duration so they can stay longer and socialize. I just don't understand!

Eating out was always special for us, we could not afford a baby sitter so our daughter had to come with us. She usually got milk to drink, but when she got soda it might have been two at the most. It really ticks me off when parents feed their kids soda and other sweets and act surprised when they misbehave. It also makes me really angry when they let them go crazy and act amused.I do not understand either!

We also took our son out to eat from an early age but as the others have said, not to a fancy place until he was in middle school when we knew he could handle it. Kids do need opportunities to learn how to act but not at the expense of other patrons in the restaurant. He learned how to behave at fast food and family restaurants and we moved up from there. Drives me crazy when parents let their kids run wild at Round Table or McDonalds.

Erika it just seems like anything goes these days. I think sometimes people let their kids behave like that at a restaurant because they let them behave like that all the time and A. Don't realize it's not okay in a restaurant or any other place or B. Just don't care that they or their children are bothering people.  At some point it became socially acceptable to not care about how you and your actions affect other people. Which is just unfortunate.....

So true those are some of the learning places. My daughter was expected to behave during meals at home and pretty much knew that was expected when we went out to eat also. She had to eat real food before dessert, if we had dessert.She also made her Halloween candy last for a long time because we did not buy very many sweets.