...to expect kids to behave in cafes/restaurants?

Thanks for the support, folks. Have any of us got the guts to stand up and be counted and make a kind but helpful comment to the mums in question???? Too scared, I guess. Today in our local Costa, child screaming its head off repeatedly, getting more and more wound-up for half an hour-plus, while mums chatted away oblivious. Lots of "cats bottom" faces from surrounding customers, but none of us had the courage to say "Either COMFORT your child or take him outside to calm down."

Natalie - I, like many others, wish that I had the guts to stand up and be counted. However, the type of mum who remains "oblivious" to their attention-seeking child would, [I imagine] be there in a trice to rant and rave and possibly hit me around the face with a bunch of wet kippers should I dare to so!

ditto supernana

twizzle...I've missed you...

ditto supernana

I've just seen a thread headed 'idle chit-chit' - perhaps we should go there for some idle chit-chatting.

twizzle where is the "idle chit-chat" thread...I cannot locate it...

I think it's in the 'chat' forum

Re children's behaviour in restaurants and so on... I agree wholeheartedly with the general comments, and so would my daughters and sons-in-law, who expect good behaviour from their own children.

But, just as a suggestion... Last year we took our three eldest grandchildren (ages 7; 4 and 3) to a hotel for a few days. They were lined up and given a little talk about how they should behave in the hotel restaurant, and they did behave themselves.

But at the end of one meal, a couple of elderly (well, whitehaired) ladies sitting at a nearby table came over to us and complimented us on having such well behaved children. They commented that it was quite unusual.

The children were happy to be praised, and their granddad and I felt over the moon.

Perhaps, as with child care, praise for chldren's good behaviour from strangers might be more encouraging than complaints for their bad behaviour?

Jangran* It's true that children respond well to a pat on the back for good behaviour. "Well done" and "I'm proud of you" [when deserved] helps to boost their developing self-esteem. Well done you.

Jangran, Your grandchildren have adhered to the standards of behaviour which is expected of them, and impressed upon them by their parents, which, in turn, they will then pass on to their own children. You must be so proud of them, and rightly so.

I am sure that you will agree that it is sad that good behaviour is now regarded as the exception, rather than the rule.

I am never shocked by bad behaviour in shops and cafes because my noisy, extrovert children were absolutely dreadful. Any environment was an adventure playground; they couldn't keep still; they engaged everyone in conversation; they lay on the ground and "shot" other customers with imaginary guns and rode up the outside of escalators; they rolled around any floor wrestling. People commented as if I had given them express permission to misbehave when, actually, I tried everything to shut the little b****rs up without offering them another challenge to defeat.

I never disapprove. Other people's children - however vile - never eat their way into my brain and bring on madness like my own did and sometimes still do. There are biddable kids, defiant kids, endlessly creative in naughtiness kids, sneaky kids, funny kids and we should tolerate them all because they mainly inherit their parents' genetic predispositions. There's a limit to our ability to mould them, thank God. I always tell myself, anyway, that the woman with the pain in neck offspring has probably been making do with too little sleep for years and she might punch me if I look down my nose at her. My fiends grew into model citizens though not boring, intolerant model citizens!

Yes, I can see Myfanwy's point. But one thing that has impressed me with modern methods of bringing up children is the idea of concentrating on and rewarding their good behaviour and punishing bad behaviour by ignoring them.

"Ignoring them" doesn't necessarily mean letting rip, though. It often means removing them from a situation where they are making a nuisance of themselves.

There was a danger of that the other day when my husband and I had a meal in a restaurant with my daughter; her husband and her two boys. The younger boy, at the end of the meal was showing signs of making a pain of himself, so I offered to take both boys home immediately - an offer that was so gratefully accepted by my daughter that she insisted on paying for our meal!

Result - boys removed from potentially difficult situation, happy parents allowed to get on with the remainder of their meal in peace, and happy grandparents, enabled to enjoy a few extra minutes of their grandchildren's company. Win-win situation.

And yes, Twizzle. I am proud of them - so proud that "proud" seems hardly the right word!

My husband is ex military, and had no trouble getting our two to behave for us. He didn't use fear or smacking: he had simply perfected that 'look' that brings children up short when they are getting too noisy or naughty in the wrong environment. My own method was to quietly lay down the law, face to face, at the child's level.

However, if I knew they were over boisterous and noisy and wild I would simply not have taken them anywhere they could have annoyed the people around us. I don't think it is fair to do that to strangers.