OT: What Do You Think of This Resturants "Well Behaved Child" Policy?
Restaurant Gives Parents Discount for 'Well-Behaved Kids' & Sets Dangerous Precedent
As
any parent knows, eating out in a restaurant with children can be a bit
of a dicey game. Sometimes your kids are angels, and other times you
just want to crawl under the table ... if it wasn't such a horrific mess
from all the food they'd thrown down there. But what if your bill
depended on how well-behaved your children were?
A Reddit user recently posted a picture of a receipt from an Italian restaurant in Washington named Sogno Di Vino with a title "If only all restaurants did this for people with kids ..." On it there was a $4 discount for "well-behaved kids". A sweet gesture, and I bet those parents were pretty proud.
But the whole thing makes me kind of nervous.
Can you imagine if you were charged more for those times when your children aren't quite so good (as plenty of commenters suggested should be standard)? Or if the next time you didn't get a discount?
Eating out with children is already filled with plenty of pressure for parents. Every raised voice, every dropped spoon can make a mom feel like all eyes in the joint are searing into her. And yes, sometimes children are out of control and should be removed from a restaurant. No one deserves for their meal to be interrupted by kids gone wild, but there also needs to be a certain amount of tolerance for families dining out without parents feeling like they're being judged even more. Most children just aren't going to be seen and not heard, and as long as mom and dad are making sure they're not heard too loudly, they deserve a little bit of a break. Having a random waitress decide what "well-behaved" is could be all sorts of problematic. I also can't imagine that restaurants really want to get into a battle over the bill with "those" parents who always deny their precious little ones ever do anything wrong.
Would it be nice to be rewarded when the planets align and you all make it through dinner delightfully? Absolutely. But I'm not sure it's worth the price you'd pay for the days when your kids act more ... like kids.
Would you welcome a policy in which your restaurant bill was adjusted according to your children's behavior?
I would not eat at a restaurant that had that as a policy.
I'm sort of torn on the issue. I would love to see a discount like that, but my kids are usually well behaved when we go out. If they wern't well behaved we wouldn't have gone in the frist place. But people who have rude, loud and unruly kids should maybe get a surcharge....that may be the incentive that they need.
I apologized a week ago to a waitress for the mess my 4 yo made. She took one look under the table and said that was nothing and she had seen worse. We had 6 adults and 4 kids. The kids all took a booth by themselve and we took up 2 more with that many adults. My 4 yo had shredded a napkin under the table. It just needed a quick swipe with the vacuum, but I offered to clean it up for her. I felt bad b/c my DD almost never does this kind of stuff. I don't kno what she was thinking.
I don't think any owner should feel it necessary to need an incentive like this. Parents need to be parents and teach their kids how to behave.
Quoting kirbymom:Where's the discount?
As far as I can see, they added it back in PLUS added a .64 cent charge as well.
My kids know to behave well just because they know they won't get to eat out for NOT behaving. So that little incentive really isn't an incentive at all. jmho
I think this kinda thing would make me nervous. I stay stressed when we eat out as it is with 4 kids 3 of which have autism. Just about every noise they make above a whisper seems to attract attention even when they are behaving due to thier stimming behaviors. and that is as long as nothing happens to trigger a meltdown that would require removal from the enviroment both for them and other guests. So all a policy like this would do is ensure I never went anywhere period out of fear of having to pay extra possibly for things that mine can't control and most are very intolerent of.
I think this is not something I would appreciate, even if I was the one given the "Well behaved Child discount". To me this is plain out Judgmental! Still, I completely understand the issue of noisy kids and wanting a calm and relaxing dinner out. I have went out with out my children and asked to be seated away from the noisy children in the restaurant. My advice to any Restaurant is to just make a point to seat family's with children on one side and Adults with out on the other. I guess it's like having a Smoking and Non-Smoking area. Why not a Children and Non-Children area ;)
Keri ~ A Homeschooling Mom who is a Student too! ~> A College Student that is ! ;')
Yes, I think it's fine. If they are giving a discount for something it doesn't mean that if you don't get the discount they actually add money onto the bill. OK, here's my example...It's not like if you're not a senior citizen you get 15% added to you bill, you just dont' get it taken off. So you end up paying full price instead of getting money off. I don't see any problem with it, it's an incentive, a nice bonus, an acknowledgement that the restaurant appreciates well-behaved kids. People, including parents, need to get over the "I'm feeling judged" thing. Every parent knows that sometimes your kid is having an off-day or is just going through something, and if you seriously feel unfairly judged by your kid's behavior then stay home. The other option is to take your kid out, do the best you can, and if you get the discount then great, and if you don't oh well. If you went to any other restaurant you'd be paying full price whether your kid behaved or not anyway so you're not losing anything. Time to get a grip.
I have a personal "zero tolerance" policy for my children when we're at a restaurant. They've been eating at very nice restaurants - the kind people don't normally bring their children to - since they were toddlers. I had one woman in Venice sneer at my kids once. They hadn't done anything wrong, they weren't making any noise, she was just offended that there were children there at all.
I don't think a well-behaved child policy would have influenced us one way or the other. In fact, it sounds a lot more like a restaurant we would avoid because it sounds like a gathering place for people whose children are NOT well-behaved!
Sometimes kids are noisy. Sometimes it's because they're not being parented and sometimes it's because of something out of everyone's control. It happens. What's important is how it's handled by the parents, not by whether you're going to get a $4 discount.
Exiting public school
- Cafe MichelleP
on Feb. 4, 2013 at 10:58 AM