Meh, I would have gone there before I had kids. Like it or not, you still have to try and live life once you have kids

I'm betting someone from the 101st Crotch Dropling Brigade will post at 3 am on how kids are the greatest thing to happen an it's wrong to take this approach. This will come after someone refused to go to sleep and is crying how they want water and a hug RIGHT NOW!

Hero and followup tag MIXED TOGETHER.

Give the people what they want, and they'll go there.

Just like if cities had left the no smoking laws alone and left it to the clubs and bars to decide whether they wanted to go no smoking or not.

FTFA: An email that was sent to loyal customers earlier this year said, "Beginning July 16, 2011, McDain's Restaurant will no longer admit children under six years of age. We feel that McDain's is not a place for young children. Their volume can't be controlled and many, many times, they have disturbed other customers."

While it cost him some customers who are parents of young children, Vuick said he gained more visitors who empathized with his reasoning at the time: "I think it's the height of being impolite and selfish, and therefore, I instituted a policy."

Glory Hallelujah and Amen!

I'm old enough to remember when parents didn't take their babies and small children to non-fast-food eating establishments. There were these people -- called babysitters -- who would take care of the little darlings while their parents went out to eat.

The concept of a "family restaurant" has seriously deteriorated over the years. Parents seem to take the attitude of "If you [the other patrons] just ignore my kids, they'll stop misbehaving," subjecting the rest of the patrons to the noise and antics of their errant offspring. Occasionally, I've seen parents get testy because of glances from other people when their children start acting up. It seems as a society that we've forgotten the concept of teaching our children that they need to behave when they're out in public.

I was eating in a restaurant the other day, thinking that they should take a cue from churches and put in crying rooms. If you want to bring your brats, fine -- but you're all going to sit together in the crying room, away from the folks who want to actually enjoy a pleasant dining experience without being entertained by your little snowflakes.

If I ever get up to that part of PA, I'll make a point to patronize Mr.Vuick's establishment. I fully support his policy and I am glad it has paid off for him.

Flint Ironstag: An airline next?

We're getting closer to that. Malaysia Airlines bans children from first-class cabin (new window)

kids are the greatest thing to happen and it's wrong to take this approach.

Business is up 20% after banning the little screamin' demons? Color me shocked.

log_jammin: kids are the greatest thing to happen and it's wrong to take this approach.

I like the crying room idea, but I got one better. Put the kids to work at the dish washing station. The kids get a valuable lesson in the pride of hard work, and help pay for their parents tab, and the rest of the restaurant doesn't have to put up with them.

On a more serious note, the problem isn't young kids, the problem is the parents. It used to be that parents actually controlled their kids when out in public, and felt embarrassed when their kids caused trouble for a stranger or disrupted things. If the kids couldn't be controlled, the parents would apologize and leave, and next time parents went out the kids would stay with the sitter.

We've now got a generation of parents that refuses to discipline their kids, and seems to feel if they have to put up with their kids shiat, so should everyone else. I don't know the number of times I've seen a kid in a public place being a nuisance, then when the parents tell the kid to knock it off, the kid refuses, and the parents just shrug their shoulders and proceed to ignore the kid. "Gee, I told him to quit running around kicking strangers in the shin, but he's still doing it. What more do you expect from me."

Honestly, I don't know which is worst, the ones that tell the kids to behave, and then give up when the kids don't, or those who don't even make the one token gesture.

ShawnDoc: I like the crying room idea, but I got one better. Put the kids to work at the dish washing station. The kids get a valuable lesson in the pride of hard work, and help pay for their parents tab, and the rest of the restaurant doesn't have to put up with them.

Plus you can't even hear them if you hold their heads underwater.

About 6 years ago, a bakery/coffee shop near me, due to uncontrolled, screaming children (in a space with tin ceilings, no less), put a sign on their door stating that "children of all ages have to BEHAVE and use their INDOOR VOICES" Did that ever cause a backlash, including a boycott. But I loved what the owner said (from an article in the NYTimes):

[The owner] said the protesting parents were "former cheerleaders and beauty queens" who "have a very strong sense of entitlement." In an open letter he handed out at the bakery, he warned of an "epidemic" of antisocial behavior.

"Part of parenting skills is teaching kids they behave differently in a restaurant than they do on the playground," he said in an interview. "If you send out positive energy, positive energy returns to you. If you send out energy that says I'm the only one that matters, it's going to be a pretty chaotic world."

and good for them, they're still in business.

violentsalvation: Hero and followup tag MIXED TOGETHER.

No shiat.

I'd pay double at a restaurant or a movie theater that required occupants to be over 21 years of age to enter. I am 100% serious.

wee
I'd pay double at a restaurant or a movie theater that required occupants to be over 21 years of age to enter. I am 100% serious.

I'd pay double what I'm paying now for a section like that on TF.

wee: violentsalvation: Hero and followup tag MIXED TOGETHER.

No shiat.

I'd pay double at a restaurant or a movie theater that required occupants to be over 21 years of age to enter. I am 100% serious.

When I lived in Huntsville, there was a theater that had showing that were adult only. Not adult movies, but you had to be an adult to go, they served beer and actual food, that kind of thing.

wee: I'd pay double at a restaurant or a movie theater that required occupants to be over 21 years of age to enter. I am 100% serious.

up the age to 30 and I'm with you.

As a waiter at a "casual fine dining" Italian restaurant, I could not agree more. So many times I have been talking wine and specials with an all-adult table when a 9-month-old baby in a car carrier starts screaming. Sometimes the parents swoop the kid out of the restaurant, sometimes they ignore them.

Some parents bring 2-3 year olds out late on a Friday and stay to drink with their 20-something also-parents friends while the kids yell bloody murder.

One party of 18 that I had, 10 were kids at one's 8-year birthday party while 8 were the parents, who all proceeded to get hammered. They let the kids have a cake fight.

And on and on...

/One mother ordered a mac and cheese for her 4 year old, then literally emptied the bowl onto the tabletop and let the kid eat it with his hands from his booster seat.

//One time a father came into the waitstand after his family was seated and grabbed a champagne bucket to take back to his table. In case his three-yer-old boy puked because, and I quote, "We've been in the car for a long time and he gets carsick". Dude, go straight to the hotel, put your kid to bed, and order room service.

SuperTramp: I'd pay double what I'm paying now for a section like that on TF.

Yeah, since TFD went tits up it's been pretty useless.

GAT_00: When I lived in Huntsville, there was a theater that had showing that were adult only. Not adult movies, but you had to be an adult to go, they served beer and actual food, that kind of thing.

There was a place like that near the place we moved to, but sadly it closed right when moved here. Something about the complex it was in being sold and new owners gouging for more rent. I heard it was doing really well though.

log_jammin: up the age to 30 and I'm with you.

Sounds like we have a quorum...

Alexia Ikyu: Monaco theater in Bridgestreet.

Yup. I miss that city.

thelordofcheese: log_jammin: wee: I'd pay double at a restaurant or a movie theater that required occupants to be over 21 years of age to enter. I am 100% serious.

up the age to 30 and I'm with you.

And limit the age to 57.

they've already eliminated themselves with the early bird special.

phrawgh: Wow. A little noise when we eat, so what? We all owe it to the human race to help parents raise their kids. They are the future. I really does take a village.

There are hundreds of restaurants, plenty of them are more than happy to have you and your little brats. If I'm taking my wife out for a nice dinner, I don't want to hear your little bastards yelling and crying, or running around like idiots.

Yup, it takes a village, but there are parts of any village where little kids aren't allowed to go.