Did this ever happen with your own kids when they were toddlers.
Kid: “I want that.”
Parent: “What do you want? Apple (point) or banana (point)?”
Kid: “Apple.”
Kid:" I want the ball."
Parent:“Do you want the blue ball (holding it) or the red ball (holding it)?”
Kid: “Red.”
I will take a toddler engrossed in their parent’s electronics over a screaming toddler throwing macaroni and cheese at me in a restaurant any day. I don’t care if their brain is turning into pudding; I just want a decently quiet meal.
(no, I didn’t do this to my kids. We just didn’t eat out until they could behave)
I think there is an option in between the 2 extremes but that takes regular parental involvement. Kids are trainable. 
^^You would think 
I’ll take ALL your two year olds and we will engage in a marathon of communication loops ALL weekend - and I’ll do it for FREE!
I ran in to the local thai restaurant around 8pm the other night for a quick dinner. A family was there with a SCREAMING child. Older than toddler. The father …well, at least he was doing something, even if it was tickling him and getting him to scream with laughter instead of screaming with exhaustion. Hubby and I just said, the cry is obviously an exhausted kid cry. They finally gave him a cell phone to turn him into a zombie and we were able to eat in peace. I remember back in the good old days of my kids when they were expected to behave in public, or we just didn’t go (or stay)
^ I wish you had made that offer 18 years ago, abasket
"They finally gave him a cell phone to turn him into a zombie "
And that’s why we never gave our cell phone to dd, not even once, until she got older and we gave one for her own.
" kids when they were expected to behave in public, or we just didn’t go (or stay)"
Or kid didn’t behave when we were already out, and couldn’t control it, we would immediately leave.
@abasket, I’ll come help. I love 2 year olds and never understood the “terrible 2s” reference.
I think playtime with @abasket might be worth the $1000 a week.
Haha - you are TOO kind!!!
abasket, you need to start your own playtime consulting services!
I am so jealous of all you people who could always snatch up your misbehaving child and leave a restaurant or other public place immediately.
Did you all have only one child? Or did you drag hungry siblings who were behaving appropriately away from their food so that you could take the misbehaving child home?
Were you always able to limit yourselves to one errand a day? Did you never need to stop at McDonald’s on a busy day, between trips to the shoe store, the dentist, and the supermarket?
Did all your family members live in the same town? Did you never need to stop for lunch in the middle of the five-hour drive to Grandpa’s house?
For the first six or seven years during which I was raising my children, at least one of them was screaming or crying most of the time. Sometimes both of them. But we still had to eat, and sometimes we had to eat away from home because it wasn’t convenient or possible to go home.
I would have loved to have electronics to distract my kids with. Technology is wonderful.
I remember going out to dinner with the entire family shortly after my third was born. The two oldest were just turned 4 and not quite 3 and we were at a very fancy restaurant with my parents and mother in law. I went to the bathroom to nurse the baby and when I got back, the other 2 kids were playing quietly under the table. When I peeked under to see what they were doing, it turned out they were picking GUM from the bottom of the table and daring each other to eat it! I nearly killed my husband whose response was “Well, at least they’re quiet!”
As the mother of 5, I am fairly tolerant of screaming babies and toddlers, though I cringed whenever mine acted out. I have less tolerance for tantruming pre-schoolers, because I think that they are capable of understanding basic social skills. However, I have several friends whose children look perfectly normal but are autistic and so I never judge. It’s easy after a bit to see which children have genuine issues and which are not being tended to. I learned very early on to feed my kids (up to about age 6) a snack before we went out to dinner at any real restaurant. I’d rather take home a doggie bag than cope with a hungry, hungry child who just doesn’t want to wait for food. They behaved better when they weren’t starving. Frankly, at 17 through 26, they still do.
We took kids out to eat when they were only few months old. When one misbehaved, one of us would take her out. Both of the kids loved to go out to eat, having to be taken out of the dining room was always a big punishment. If it was going to be a big event (like going out to a very nice restaurant), I would ask if they would prefer to stay home or come with us. They knew it meant they had to behave if they wanted to come or else we would get a sitter.
When they were little, if we were going out to dinner it would be between 6-8 (before their bed time). We rarely kept them up beyond their bed time. There were only a few times for some birthday parties or weddings when they had to stay up. I made sure they took naps or had quiet time in the afternoon before the event.
Right or wrong, I planned our life around the girls’ schedule. We didn’t take them out during their nap/sleep time. One of us usually stayed home with them.
It’s very difficult for me to relate to getting so worked up about other parents choices for spending their money or raising their kids, especially without ever walking in their shoes. We lived in student housing in Manhattan with 2 small kids. I could not find any affordable childcare in the city, neither preschool, nor a nanny, and not for lack of trying, so we had to use one in the outer borough. Some days kids spent up to 2 hours sitting in traffic in a hot noisy school bus. And that pre-K ( including a private bus) were not cheap either by any means. Luckily, we moved several years later, but I still cannot forgive myself. If I could afford a “boot camp” at that time, I would use it in a split second.
As a working mom who raised 2 young kids in NYC, if someone were to ask me where I would spend my tax money, it would be to provide affordable childcare. I paid what I had to in order to give my kids what they needed.
You have my complete sympathy for child care and lack of options. And my utmost respect to place your children in the hands of a good, caring, quality caregiver, understanding that it needed to be at a tremendous cost.
This is a week boot camp - not daily routine child care.