For an article for Time Out Kids, a writer is looking for parents to share their experiences and opinions. Let it loose.
What are the main challenges? How do you prepare your kids, what are the
rules while dining and what do you do when misbehaving starts? Do you tend to go out early or to certain kinds of restaurants?Are you sick of kid-friendly places and long for fine dining? Do you find waitstaff
generally helpful with small requests like bottle warming? I can be reached at nckear at gmail.com.Thanks!
Nicole Caccavo Kear
Park Slope has a number of good child friendly restaurants. I like to go out with my kids (1 and 4) when i don’t feel like cooking and cleaning (I don’t get the psycho babble of why parents go out. I just like the convernience and my kids have a blast. My experiences have mostly been positive with accommodating staff and easy going fellow diners (I guess I’ve never crossed paths with Peter!). Best to go on the early side, you get served faster and the crowd is more family friendly. Of course you have to be respectful of your fellow diners, but that goes two ways. My top choices are La Villa, Stone Park, La Taqueria and Hunan Delight. See you out to eat!
Dear Peter Loffredo:
Thank you.
love,
The Rest of the World
My husband and I were thrilled to discover Two Boots many years ago. Good food, you can actually have a decent drink and no one sneers if a sippy cup is knocked over. It was a great place to teach our son how to eat in a restaurant. It allowed him to get up if he was antsy, but we used it to our advantage. We were never going to go to some Chucky Cheese joint that is basically an entertainment hall with bad food. Two Boots allowed us to get him trained early so that when we traveled – or even if we wanted to go somewhere nice in town – we were able to eat at a nice restaurant without fear and our son was able to enjoy “fancy” restaurants and learn about good food. This year, at 17, he took his girlfriend to “the most perfect meal” at Belleville on Valentines Day. He’s learned how to order, tip properly (a great math tool, by the way) and generally conduct himself like a gentleman. Dining lessons pay off in many ways.
That said, we did this once our son was big enough to adequately cope with a dining experience, even at a kid friendly restaurant. No stroller, no changing diapers at the restaurant (eeew!) we “toughed it out” at home until we felt we were all ready.
by the way, we still go back to Two Boots on occasion as a family. It holds great memories for all of us and, damn, those ribs and fried chicken – yum!
Well as a father of a three year old toddler here’s my take on it. Children aren’t good in restaurants. That’s because restuarants have a very set code of social behaviour (Wait to be seated. Sit. Wait to order. Order. Wait for food. That’s a lot of waiting for a small boy/girl). But as Peter said really we go to restuarants for ourselves not our kids. We go to still feel like adults who aren’t giving up on everything we once held dear and precious about the luxurious commodity known as free time; remember free time? So there are some rules we abide by to make the situation bearable for all. First: choose somewhere kid friendly. They do exist. (top marks to Dizzy’s free crayons and the marvellous Two Boots whose pizza guy gives out free dough to curious young viewers, the man is a hero, give him a payrise) – We do this because it’s not right to let your small child ruin everyone in your neighbourhood’s weekend. Second go armed with toys and books. Kids need distractions. Thirdly get a table by the window for the same reason. Fourth go early -yes it’ll be half empty, just get used to it, you’ve got the whole place to yourself and you still don’t need to do the washing up, it’s almost a win/win. And remember no strollers, change diapers before you leave the house. Of course much the same rules apply if you’re an adult.
Naturally my wife has just read this and declared me a hypocrite. Oh well, good intentions, eh?
Hi Nicole – I am a resident of Park Slope, a current father of two (ages 7 and 11), and I’ve already been quoted in Time Out NY before in an article by Lynn Harris on why people hate Park Slope. I am a psychotherapist by profession and have worked with many families around parenting issues, and written extensively about them on my blog (http://fullpermissionliving.blogspot.com/) and on Louise Crawford’s blog (http://onlytheblogknowsbrooklyn.com/).
Basically, I think “kid-friendly dining” is an oxymoron most of the time, especially if we’re talking about kids under 10 years old, certainly if we’re talking about pre-schol age children. Most restaurants are not equipped to handle a child’s needs to move around and make noise, nor are they really prepared to make the kind of food young children can tolerate ingesting. And SUV-sized stroller and dirty diapers, etc? Please!
The problem, of course, is not with the restaurants, but with the parents. Desperate for some time out of the home base and to take a break from cooking and cleaning up, parents understandably want the restaurant experience. And really, they are at some level secretly and guiltily craving an ADULT experience at that. That’s why babysitting is such a crucial profession for the emotional and mental health and well-being of parents and children. Unfortunately, so many of the current generation of parents are riddled with symbiotic and narcissistic disturbances that they cannot bear to separate from their kids, even for a few hours, or acknowledge that their kids are, in fact, KIDS! So overly identified with their children are these parents that they imagine they are giving themselves a corrective experience by indulging the whims of their little ones without boundaries or regard for the feelings or sovereignty of others around them.
My two children have been to restaurants only on rare occasions, and they don’t particularly enjoy it or desire it as an experience. The love eating at home, and they love my cooking. I, on the other hand, love dining out with my wife, while my kids greaty enjoy the adventure of having the babysitter experience. What could be more harmonious than that?
Kid-friendly dining? Yes, but only in my dining room.
Sincerely.
Peter Loffredo