Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the award-winning Brooklyn Paper:

Diaper Diva was fit to be tied. During a beach vacation in Long Island last week, Smartmom and Diaper Diva stopped for lunch at the Clam Bar on the Montauk Highway. Smartmom noticed it first: there was a note on the menu blackboard and in the menu as well that said: It is a condition of service at the Clam Bar that all children must stay in their seats.

Frankly, it made sense to Smartmom. The Clam Bar is an outdoor restaurant with umbrella tables and a bar just off the Montauk Highway. There is no fence or any kind of partition between it and the highway.

Smartmom figured that the stipulation had something to do with the restaurant’s insurance policy and the fear that a car might come barreling into the dining area.

Ducky, Diaper Diva’s 3-year-old sat in her seat while the sisters ordered a delicious array of lunch specialties — lobster salad served in a fresh tomato, grilled shrimp on greens, fish and chips, and clam chowder — but while they waited for their food, Ducky got down from her seat and happily played on the ground near the table.

When Diaper Diva went to get something from the car, a young waitress came to the table and told Smartmom: “You better move your baby. The owner is here and he’ll have to throw you out…” Nice.

Smartmom told the waitress that her sister was on her way and she would put Ducky back on the chair.

“Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous? I’m sure there are fights here every day. Ducky wasn’t doing anything noisy or dangerous she was just sitting a few feet from the table playing with pebbles,” Diaper Diva told Smartmom.

Then Diaper Diva pointed at some other children who were walking around.

“What about them? Maybe they should be kicked out!”

Truth be told, Smartmom thought DD was going a little overboard. But she did have a point. When a waitress came by two more times to tell Diaper Diva to move Ducky, an argument ensued.

“It’s totally ridiculous. You have no right to tell me that my child has to sit in a chair,” Diaper Diva told her.

“It says so in the menu,” the waitress said.

“So what are you going to do?” Diaper Diva countered.

“We’ll have to throw you out.”

Diaper Diva was incredulous. While she ranted, Smartmom noticed that waitresses brought bowls of water for patron’s dogs. But they seemed to have very little tolerance for kids. The note on the menu was the first time Smartmom has ever encountered such a request at a restaurant. If the Clam Bar owners are doing it for safety reasons, why don’t they say so in a nice way? (Then again, what if they’re doing it just to be child unfriendly?)

Diaper Diva hasn’t heard the end of it since the whole imbroglio ended up on a popular Brooklyn blog.

Now she’s really fit to be tied. Especially after Au Contraire, a Park Slope psychotherapist sent this missive her way, via the blog.

“Dear Diaper Diva, You may believe that it’s OK for your little future narcissist to grow up believing that wherever she goes, whatever she does, the world will be glad to serve her, but in so doing, you are not, in the truest sense of parenting, serving her. One of the most difficult and essential parts of growing up in a social world is learning that your impulses and desires must respectfully dovetail with those of others, including those living in the adult world. Little children generally don’t eat clams — a bit much for their digestion — so why was Ducky there?”

Smartmom’s friend and blogger, Seeing Green, offered this elegant response to the psychotherapist:

“It’s not the letter of the rule, it’s the spirit that should count. For a restaurant to ask politely that children be in seats is reasonable, but it seems that the Clam Bar was way overreacting. As for Au Contraire, get a grip on yourself, man! What a ridiculous statement to make — ‘Why was Ducky there?’ Maybe because they’re on a family vacation? Perhaps something you missed out on growing up? And also eating clams when you were a toddler?”

But it was this response from a former waitress at the Clam Bar that really put the whole matter into perspective:

“I worked at the Clam Bar on and off for 14 years. I never once had a safety problem with a dog owner. They understand that although the restaurant is outside that does not make it a dog park.

“I did however have countless problems with parents allowing their children to roam the dining area and parking lots unattended as if the restaurant were a day-care center or a public park. The staff takes the majority of the burns and falls to avoid an out-of-control child, but there were many times I swerved and burned patrons (and a few children). Let me tell you, chowder is hot, but steamer broth is some thing else entirely.”

While on vacation, Diaper Diva had to learn the hard way that she wasn’t in Park Slope anymore. Clearly, few restaurants are as child tolerant as Park Slope’s beloved Two Boots (although Lunch, also on Montauk Highway, is remarkably child-friendly).

But parents, like children, have to learn new rules wherever they go. It’s all part of growing up and learning to exist in the complicated, scary world outside of Park Slope.