Parents deliberately winding up children

Chestnut

Children should be taught there is a time and a place for being noisy or energetic, and public places is not one of them. When surrounded by other people they should be kept calm and encouraged to sit quietly. Restaurants, public transport, waiting rooms etc. When they are in their garden or the park or at home they can make as much noise as they like.
Sadly this doesn't happen.

Not according to many on here! Children should rarely be heard in their own garden. Others want quiet!

It seems there is no where for children to be children. They should all just be mini adults.

GrannyGravy13

VintageJazz if it bothered you that much you could have said something to the front of house manager earlier, you could have asked to be seated somewhere else, but no you sat still for twenty minutes until someone else intervened.

In one post you talk about tolerance, in another you say we should have intervened immediately.
Despite me saying we were about to have a quiet word with staff when someone else told him to pipe down, you accuse us of waiting for someone else to sort the problem.

Well, not sure what to say.

This thread surely shouldn't be on AIBU if disagreement is not acceptable

IMO waiting for 20 minutes to see if things would quiet down shows your level of tolerance Vintagejazz.

There's nothing snobby about not disturbing other diners with excessive noise, just good manners and manners that children need to be set by example.

I suppose people are more child focused now.
Who's to say what's right or wrong?

VioletSky

GrannyGravy I have 5 too, 2 adults but no grandchildren as yet... One AC is moving in that direction though

I used to worry if they all had 5 I would never remember their names but ive since learned an entire primary school worth so all good there.

I cant wait honestly. No judgement at this (future) nanny's house. Parenting is hard enough.

Absolutely parenting is hard, especially with the last two years of lockdown added in.

A pity that the father was so lacking in awareness that he failed to see that the amount of noise being made was unacceptable, and as the OP wasn't the only one irritated by it, it must have been pretty loud.

GrannyGravy I have 5 too, 2 adults but no grandchildren as yet... One AC is moving in that direction though

I used to worry if they all had 5 I would never remember their names but ive since learned an entire primary school worth so all good there.

I cant wait honestly. No judgement at this (future) nanny's house. Parenting is hard enough.

VintageJazz if it bothered you that much you could have said something to the front of house manager earlier, you could have asked to be seated somewhere else, but no you sat still for twenty minutes until someone else intervened.

GrannyGravy13

VintageJazz perhaps I am just more tolerant.
A father totally immersed with playing with his toddler, stops immediately he is made aware that it is annoying another diner.

What more did you want?

For it not to have got to that point. We tolerated it for about 20 minutes thinking he must surely stop soon. How much more tolerant do you think we andvthe person at the other table should have been? I am not talking about SIMPLY happy laughing. I am talking about shrill screams preceding each bout of laughter.

VioletSky we have 5 AC and partners along with 8 GC, we have all gone out to eat together.

The GC do not run around, the two 2yr olds are in high chairs, I should imagine the adults are noisier than the GC, it’s absolutely lovely to all be together after two years apart.

There is nothing worse than being in a snobby restaurant where everyone whispers.

MissAdventure

Ah, yes.
Just,seen in the first post that there is nothing about running around.

GrannyGravy13

VintageJazz perhaps I am just more tolerant.
A father totally immersed with playing with his toddler, stops immediately he is made aware that it is annoying another diner.

What more did you want?

Exactly

Hope it didn't spoil his whole evening too

Ah, yes.
Just,seen in the first post that there is nothing about running around.

VintageJazz perhaps I am just more tolerant.
A father totally immersed with playing with his toddler, stops immediately he is made aware that it is annoying another diner.

What more did you want?

Indeed Vintagejaz and maybe that's because he wasn't taught appropriate behaviour when dining out when he was a child.

I would understand if this were a behaviour issue rather than having fun that got loud and resulted in a told off and embarassed father.

One thing, I learned as a parent, later than I wish, is that you do not get that time back.

Time spent shushing children amd worrying about what the neighbours think because children are loud is time wasted.

Letting a negative comment about a todder tantrum ruin your whole day feeling like a bad parent is time wasted.

Letting the woman who moved chairs so she could more easily glare at me in a restuarant while I breastfed (nothing was visible) ruin my meal is time wasted.

If I see a happy, loud, laughing child, that joy is contagious.

If I see a toddler tantrum, I tell mum she is doing a great job.

If I see a woman breastfeeding, its a thumbs up from me.

Have a meal later in the evening or get a takeway if its been an exhausting day and you want peace.

Quite a large percentage of the popuation are children who deserve their space in the world too. Happy children with parents willing to bring that out seems like a pretty amazing thing to me.

Good point Grannygravy btw

GrannyGravy13

The OP said the child was a toddler so could be anything from 1 - 3 years.

The father has obviously got carried away interacting/playing with his child, the moment someone asked him to quieten down he did. End of noise and end of the problem.

The fact that someone had to tell a grown man to cut it out and that another table were at the point of asking staff to intervene surely indicates that the father was not behaving appropriately?

What appears to have been overlooked by some respondents GG is that Vintagejazz in her OP asked if she was being unreasonable to have been irritated enough, to have been on the verge of asking a staff member to have a word with the father.

It was the intervention of a fellow diner that prevented her from doing so. The fact that once the father realised the noise was irritating other diners and stopped once this was pointed out is irrelevant.

He shouldn't have been encouraging the child to be so noisy in the first place. There's nothing miserable or boring about those who wish to enjoy a meal out in a relatively peaceful and quiet environment.

Any parent who is not teaching their child appropriate behaviour is certain social settings, isn't doing them any favours.

MissAdventure

I would think it is basic manners to teach your child.
Places we don't run around: restraunts, doctors' surgeries, on buses, etc.

The toddler in question was laughing due to her father making funny faces at her.

Running around is a different thing all together especially in a restaurant where staff would be carrying plates of hot food.

I would think it is basic manners to teach your child.
Places we don't run around: restraunts, doctors' surgeries, on buses, etc.

Sorry, i need to add another

Miserable and boring and full of assumptions about others based on a few short sentences from a third party who doesn't know them either..... Lol

The majority of you seemed to have missed the fact that as soon as the father was made aware that he was being overly loud he immediately stopped.

VioletSky

That is a young age to discover how many adults are miserable and boring having forgotten how to be silly and make each other, and especially children, laugh.

... there's a time and a place.

"Miserable and boring"? Or maybe after a hard day's work just wanting some peace and quiet and conversation... some might even be parents themselves who've paid someone to look after their own children whilst they have a night out.

There's a time to be "silly" and make people laugh (continuously) - being in a restaurant isn't one of them. The father sounds like one of those men (it's usually men) who go into an Indian restaurant after the pubs have closed and conducts his whole conversation in a loud voice, making 'witty' comments for the consumption of all and sundry, basically, attention-seeking.

No you are well justified in becoming annoyed. Young parents, in my opinion, sometimes don’t understand that young children struggle with modulation. Adults can typically “lose it” momentarily if they, for example, become tearful or very and loudly amused in a public place, etc., but young children cannot always turn it off. His goal was probably to keep the child engaged and amused but as others have noted there are better ways to do that.