Taking children to 'grown up' events?

If you're going to be precious about swearing then you shouldn't take your child. If you do take them then you have to make clear it's OK I guess.

I'm talking about babies really - by the time they're toddlers it's more complicated in lots of ways. I couldn't have left C for the first 5 months so if people wanted to see me or I wanted to go out she had to come.

Sometimes you really cant win whatever you do.

On the one hand, people moan about the UK, and wish it was more like Europe, in that we could take our children out in the evenings and it not be a big deal. Children would be welcome wherever they are.

Then on the other hand, you see threads like this with people moaning about children being in a restaurant at 9pm? Whats the big deal? Maybe they were on holiday? Maybe they had had a long day and needed something to eat before going home? I dont see the problem as long as they arent affecting you.

We used to take my daughter out to dinner etc when she was a baby, she would sleep in her pushchair and not really be any bother. Now we have 2, we dont generally take them out in the evenings, but if it was a special occasion and I really couldnt get a babysitter then I might take them and leave early, before they got too tired.

We went to a friends house a while ago for dinner. He told us to get there for 4ish so we presumed we could take the children and it was a BBQ so just assumed it was a relaxed affair. Well, we were wrong. It was a proper sit down dinner, he hadnt catered for the children and I ended up getting my daughter a macdonalds. I felt really bad about that, I wish I hadnt taken them. Had I known what type of evening it was, I wouldnt have gone. It was embarrasing having the children there and I made my excuses and left straight after dinner.

I too can see nothing wrong with children in restaurants in the evening. I think I am perhaps too laid back, though. My daughter is 10 and whilst there are some events I would prefer not to take her to, I am completely sure that she would know how to behave in any situation because she has never been hidden away after dark or sheltered from people who may have had 1 too many etc. Obviously if it was a raucous, shouty, fighty affair then I would prefer her not to be there, but I haven't really been to any raucous, shouty, fighty affairs myself recently. ?

I can't really imagine taking a 10 year old boy to a girlie night in, though- must've been boring for him for a start and can also understand the atmosphere changing with him being there. I haven't read the hotel thread so can't comment on that one.

Magicool, the difference as i see it is that in "europe", kids are acgtually INVOLVED with meals at home and in restaurants from a young age, and tend to know how to behave, whereas in the UK, i see all the time parents who shove them on a table of only kids, and of course, they get bored quickly and run around. it seems to be a completely differnt dynamic. i ve been in restaurants in france late at night when there have been 10-15 kids at different tables with parents and friends, and theyre all involved, and no tantrums. i appreciate that this is anecdotal, and is my experience only, but here, having kids around at meals in restaurants totally changes the who evening because they dont seem to be involed as "mini adults", they seem to be treated like children, and pandered to accordingly.

several years ago we were invited to a NYE party at some friends. we assumed it was for adults. it turned out there were multiple children there - it was crap, simply because the parents of said children kept disappearing off, then the kids would come up and interrupt, the whole thing wasnt relaxing at all. but then i guess thats what happens when some people think its ok to stick 8 kids in one room with a dvd playing and leave them to it. it doesnt work.

nor can i, as long as they are involved in the meal, and not just left to run around. if theyre engaged and kept interested it can be good fun.

Completely agree. Nothing worse than children left to their own devices whilst mum and dad live it up.

when i see that the problem seems to be that they will come for attention, and have a real whine, which then means that mum or dad or both will engage with the child briefly, and then they ll go away again. this takes mum and dads attention from the conversation, and hence you get irritating interruptions and people then not being involved, and then they get snotty with the kids. the kids go away again, only to come back again 10 minutes later. and so it goes on. far better to have them seated and part of the conversation. i ve seen this work brilliantly here, but its really rare to see it. the worst one is when the parents just put all the kids on their own table - a recipe for total disaster in my experience. and dont get me started on "childrens menus"

Oh my, don't go there with the children's menus. Seiously, wtf? whilst you, as an adult, amy choose something tasty and, should you wish, healthy and not processed, your child, who is still developing, may only have the remains of a battery chicken shaped into a dinosaur or some unidentifiable white "fish" rendered as a whale. Okaaaaaaaaay then. I can't help nodding along with you on the "interracting with your children at the dinner table" comments, too. If you're going to leave them on their own table or thrust a lame colouring page and some broken crayons in front of them and shush them every time they speak, you may as well leave them at home IMO.

Nick, I always read the childrens menu in restaurants (judging the restaurant accordingly) and they have definitely improved recently. Shaped processed food has been shunned in favour of (often organic) mini meals. In an ideal world all children would eat smaller portions of adult meals but in reality, I do think restaurants need sausage and mash type options to cater for children.

I had a single mum and spent an awful lot of time in adult company, perhaps too much at times. I did stay with grandparents for adult only events but went to lots of social things from an early age, it was the only way my mum could go. If it was at someone's house, I'd often get to sit and watch tv in another room or I would take stuff to amuse myself.

I've always eaten out in restaurants but the big thing is I never misbehaved, I wouldn't have dared! I shunned childrens menus very early on, always managing to polish off adult meals (what happened there? ?). I used to go to a local restaurant a lot and I was allowed to move from the table to walk around the outside of the building (it was an old inn) to make room for pudding ? but that was it, the rest of the time I was expected to sit and behave properly. If I have children, I will be very keen to instill this from an early age.

I was away with my mum last month and the behaviour of all the children at dinner was impeccable, I was amazed and we often said how beautifully behaved the children were. I was really heartened to see children (who were still chatting away making normal noise btw, not acting like unpersonalised mutes) of all ages who could eat with their families in restaurants. It was a world away from the kids you see in many places. I remember being mortified at my godchildren being left to their own devices aged 2 and 4 in Beefeater, completely unsupervised.

i dont agree - i dont see any need for different meals from those which adults eat, just smaller portions. i was talking about this recently with a french friend, and he said he s constntly horrified by the fact that childrens menus so rarely encompass the main menu, but are things exactly like sausage and mash or usually anything with chips.

i took a client for lunch last year to a really nice restaurant, and a family was sitting close to us in the reception bit whilst we looked at the menu. there was no kids menu at all, and the woman asked for fish fingers and chips for the (about 9 year old) child. the maitre d dealt with it very well, but explained that chips were not available, but they could do a smaller portion of anything at all on the menu. the woman got all huffy with him and it was eventually decided that the child would have grilled fish, with peas, and some mash. when he walked away, after bending over backwards to accomodate her, she muttered to her H "what kind of restaurant doesnt serve fish fingers and chips?" and my client loudly said "one with a michelin star" ?

I agree with NickJ's comment totally. This is how we were bought up & I intend bringing my 2 up.

Both My sister & I were bought up going to restaurants with our Parents & attending fuctions as part of my Dad's company. Dad worked in Oil Insurance so we used to be in the company of very wealthy people & middle eastern diplomats, & can say that I do remember my Parents being complimented on how we behaved.

We have a 5yr old & 18 mth old & we both enjoy sharing our lives with them , in that I mean letting them experience what we enjoy. Isabel is 5 in 2 days & she reguarly comes to concerts, theatre with us. In our kitchen we have an island & that is the hub of our family life, I can be one side getting dinner ready, Isabel drawing, fred, just making mess & MrJMP on the computer, but we are all chatting & interacting . One thing we don't do (& maybe i'm mean here) is drawing at the table in restaurants, I prefer to pass time getting them to butter bread or eat olives, it's not play time it eating time.

I love the fact that Isabel can choose a dinner & say, no I don't want fish/beef or whatever today & has the confidence to ask if she can have extra mushrooms & I believe with social confidence & correct manners it will benefit her in her adult life & more so within her career

we have had 14 years of the honeymoon period & now we are raising a family, in years to come we can have time alone, if the kids choose not to be part of it.

I agree, I would love all children to eat adult food but in reality, the often don't. You only have to read posts on BT about how children who are offered every organic meal under the sun, lovingly home cooked and simply won't eat it. If you want children in restaurants who behave well, you need to start off rectifying that with meals they will eat without fuss. Who wants tantrums in restaurants because they are trying to be forced fed something they just won't eat. It's either the path of least resistance until we sort out getting children into restaurants or putting up with whingy hungry children /no children in restaurants.

Btw, my sausage and mash example is something I would expect in a pub or somewhere selling british food. In an Italian I would expect pizzas an pasta, rice dishes in a Chinese etc. I think the turkey dinasaur type childrens menu rants of yore are now void as places (other than perhaps harvestor) simply don't serve it.

At 9, I would expect children to be eating from the main menu as I think many childrens menus only go up to about 8 years old.

I don't think I would take my children to michelin starred restaurants that didn't specically cater for children in some way (and I mean things like half portions of less rich dishes, not just specific meals for children) as the food is often very grown up. I remember being in the Witchery and three children at the next table picking at their food, it was just too rich and grown up for them. It's such a waste of food and money.

Mrsm, your comment "it seemed..too grown up for them". dont you think therein lies the issue at the bottom of it all? do a number of parents think that? i ve seen kids in france participating in clam festivals, eating oysters, duck, mussels, tripe and other offal - all kinds of things. i hate the "british" attitude to food, and all things "different". surely kids learn from their parents? i ll never forget being at our house a few years ago with some friends round and offering an olive to their 4 year old. she reached out to take it and her mother said "YOU WONT LIKE THAT" and she immediately withdrew her hand. i found that terribly sad. i dont see any reason why kids from say, 5 upwards cant eat in nice restaurants with their parents and participate in all the food. lets face it, thai kids eat spicy food, indian kids too, chinese etc etc. its seems to be only the british* (and maybe americans*) who seem to want to feed their children bland tasting food without a hint of adenture.

*stereotyping of course, but i see it all the time

Perhaps some parents do think that but that night, it was very rich and IMO non child friendly food (I struggled to choose something and I eat most things) which children in this country aren't used to, which makes it a waste of food and money. If they were used to it, they would have eaten it. We aren't in france and don't usually give our children tripe and oysters. It would be lovely if we could though. Again Indian children are used to spicy food, british children aren't. I do think we need to start somewhere and hopefully all children will be eating a wider range of food in time.

Any children of mine will definitely be given all types of food (although perhaps not tripe ?) and encouraged to eat it. I know so many children who love things like olives so thankfully not everyone is like your friend! At Heathcoates in the summer, the children at the next table had a bowl of olives as their starter (their choice) and their mother had to take them away as they had eaten too many. ? I will need to just pretend to eat olives to get my children to eat them as I can't stand the bloody things. (It stems from my first ever olive, which I had mistaken for a grape ?)

Nick I do find it surprising that all the baby rearing books suggest that babies and children like bland foods. It's absolutely not my experience. C generally has whatever we're having as long as it's not too salty, with the addition of some pre-prepared baby food for convenience. As she grows older I plan that it'll continue that way. That includes spicy food, which she loves and everything else we eat.

Oddly several of my friends find that they have to ration their children on olives. They love them. Must be the salt ?

That said, I do think there are some children that don't eat. Although sometimes it's about what the parents do, that's not always the case by a long shot. Some kids just don't get it. But that still doesn't mean they can't learn to act properly in restaurants.

Meant to add that I haven't let C have sushi or scallops yet but that's just because I'm not willing to share ?

?

When I first started doing the menu for the pub, we didn't have a children's menu and simply advertised that we'd do smaller portions of adult food. All we got were requests for chicken nuggets and plain pasta. It was nauseating. Now, our best-selling children's dish is called a Dippy Platter (not twee at all, no) and includes chicken goujons, chips, onion rings, cucumber and raw carrot, all with dips. Guess what comes back on the plates...

On a similar note, we went on holiday to Wales recently with our one year-old daughter and thirteen year-old niece. We mostly ate in dismal pubs as there were not many child-friendly restaurants in our area. The one year-old stuck her nose up at all the pub shite and we had to bring packed lunches for her; hummus on seeded bread and melon ?. When we finally found - joy of joys - a restaurant that served decent, fresh food, niece got in a huff and declared that she wouldn't be eating (her parents will take her McDonalds five times on a weekend, to give you a bit of background).

It is so sad that some British children aren't more involved with food. I love cooking (what she will eat!) with my niece, I can't wait to cook with C and I especially enjoy the times when we are all round the table together. Even after the whinging from niece and H about me switching the television off...

but theres the issue surely? "children in this country arent used to". if and when we have kids, they ll be eating everything from every country and wont be given pre-conceptions about it. they ll eat what we eat. i just think that if millions of asian kids can and do eat spicy food, then so should kids here. thai food for example can be super super healthy, and delicious. we cook it all the time, and any brats we have will eat it or starve ?

I agree completley on a personal level but I also acknowlege that it's not always that easy and people who dislike both childrens menus and noisy children in restaurants plus also would like more children in restaurants need to decide what they would rather have first as all three won't happen at once, despite what happens in France or anywhere else! They can get used to it but might need to make noise in the mean time, it won't happen overnight. Parents are a bit damned if they do in the meantime.

I take my daughter to good restaurants. There aren't children's menus in the restaurants, I either ask for a smaller plate of something on the menu or ask them to cook it without the salt if I know it's something they'll put salt on. My only prolem is her salt intAKE. She loves olives.

There are some occasions where I feel it's not appropriate for her to attend. We usually go to a restaurant for a girly night so my h babysits.

Unfotunately we have missed out on a few special events because they really weren't child friendly due to not having a baby sitter.

I really want my daughter and any other kids I might have to grow up knowing how to behave and being able to adapt in different situations.

I went to so many things when I was little . Obviously if children were welcome!

I don't think it's true that British kids aren't used to different foods etc. I think it depends on the Brit doesn't it? Like anywhere.

When ex and I went to Arzak, it was fab to see families leaving after their umpteen-course meal carrying their sleeping kids ? No idea how they worked it in terms of cost, but presumably the children ate a few courses, and stopped when they'd had enough/passed out. When we went to the Fat Duck there wasn't a child in sight. Says it all about the cultural difference, really.

We were brought up, as were all my nieces and nephews, to go out for dinner from a very young age, eat what off the normal menu, eat properly (including chopsticks) and behave - end of. I shudder to think of the talking-to we'd have got from Mum had that not been the case. But going out was an event, something to look forward to and get excited about, and dress up for, and we knew that us misbehaving would just spoil the evening for everyone.

Anyway, I agree with Hazel et al on the OP.

Last time we went there were two highly precocious and irritating children - the kind that are like small adults in children's bodies, who say things like "well, Mater, it's not as good as the foie gras at Joël Robuchon" ?

? Oh god, you get kids like that at the butcher in Clapham. "Excuse me, how long is your grouse hung?" ? I'd have been tempted to dunk them in the liquid nitrogen.

Janner was saying that when she went to visit a friend who has a 4 year old son they decided to get takeaway so asked son what he'd like. "Oh, Japanese please mummy - I'll have my usual" ?

Waaaahh! Seriously, I worry about children like that. It must take all the fun out of growing up.

I think some children are just born old. Sometimes C looks at me with a withering look and practically rolls her eyes at my stupidity. I hate to think what she'll be like in her teens ?

Her favourite food is hummus, by the way. I don't think I had hummus til I was in my 20s ?

I can remember being at lots of parties, dinner and drinking type, with my parents when I was quite young. My dad had a panel van and there was a matress in the back for my sister and I to sleep on on the way home (no car seats or seat belts back then).

We would eat out around twice a month, usually a counter meal in a pub, but often in proper restaurants. There were no children's menus, just entree sized portions of adult meals.

It breaks my heart that my 18 month old daughter will eat a chicken mcnugget but won't eat lovingly prepared home cooked food.

I ordered her a children's bento box yesterday though, and she wouldn't touch the rice mixed with ketchup they put in it. She had the rice with the toasted sesame seeds from the adult version, instead. And she loves edamame. There's hope for her yet, I guess. ?

As I child I did go to some grown up parties with my parents although it was only when there was no babysitter to be had or the hosts had children too. We also had to stay well out of the way of the grown ups too.

Oddly enough I had a girly night in with two friends yesterday, it was very adhoc and one friend (who is single) couldn;t get a babysitter. Her almost 5 year old daughter came with her and was tucked up in bed (on the sofa) as soon as she arrived and went straight to sleep. Worked brilliantly but certainly wouldn't work with a 10 year old (or even my nearly 5 year old).

I do take my boy to restaurants. I am a cheapskate though so I'm taking him to Cafe ROuge with our Tesco vouchers on friday. He will usually eat off the childrens menu but is also happy with a half portion of something from the adult menu. He does like fishfingers and nuggets (most kids do) but he prefers steak (cooked rare of course) or any meat. He's a carnivore I think. His attention span is OK but not fantastic. I'm trying anyway.

I vividly remember going to see some postman pat stage show (so i was 4? my brother a baby) and we then went to a really posh chinese restaurant. the waiters absolutely refused to let me have chopsticks so my dad gave me his. we never misbehaved in restaurants as both mum and dad had perfected "the look"

any children we have will be able to eat anything we have, from thai to sushi. on the OP I don't think young children at say a hen do would be a great idea, though i can completely see why a baby would go virtually everywhere. also since the smoking ban i'd be happier to take children to more places.