Many parents would like to take their children to a restaurant, but are afraid that tantrums, bad behaviour and bad manners will ruin a nice evening out.
There are two kinds of manners: the formal kind, and the ones that are related to other people’s feelings. Both are important, but while your child will learn both over time, it’s unrealistic to expect very young children to pay much attention to formality.
There are two kinds of manners: the formal kind, and the ones that are related to other people’s feelings. Both are important, but while your child will learn both over time, it’s unrealistic to expect very young children to pay much attention to formality.
Your first course of action should be to choose a location that is child friendly. Too formal a venue will require your child to sit still, and be quiet, for long periods of time, and depending on your child’s developmental age, that might be asking too much.
Explain what you are going to be doing, and how you expect your child to behave, before you arrive at your chosen restaurant. Tell him or her that there will be yummy food, but that he or she will need to sit still for a while, and stay relatively quiet, so that the other people enjoying their meals can also have a good time.
Make sure that you are consistent. Stick to the rules you’ve set, and don’t let your child get away with things that you don’t like just because you are in public.
Last, but not least, understand that good manners take time to form. That means that you need to be focusing on manners at home too, all the time. Expecting your child to suddenly learn manners when you eat out is not realistic, if he or she does not have the same set of rules at home!