"Tell the waitress what side you want," I prompted.
"Superman!" my son chirped happily.
I sighed. "You can have orange slices, carrots and dip or..."
"But they have Superman, Mom! I want to watch Superman too!"
I followed his finger pointing to the next table at the little Greek place my husband and I had picked for our weekly family dinner out. Sure enough, the kids at that table were glued to an episode of "The Justice League" playing on an iPad the parents had propped up against the condiment basket.
"You guys giving out iPads in your kids' meals?" I asked the waitress wryly. She just laughed and walked away.
During the meal, I couldn't stop looking over at the other table and neither could my kids. They were just as glued to the show as the intended recipients were. "What do we do?" I asked my husband.
He shrugged, "At least they're quiet."
True.
Every parent knows the first rule of dining out with children: Don't Make a Scene. Quiet is everything. It's the reason I carry four tubs of Play-Doh in my purse at all times. It's the reason restaurants have crayons. It's the reason, frankly, that a lot of parents don't enjoy dining out with their kids. We're so busy trying to keep the little savages from acting out their true natures that we often end up with cold food in a takeout box.
And yet, every week my husband and I insist on taking our four young children out to dinner at some place child-friendly but doesn't have a drive-thru. Sure, it's nice to not have to cook one meal out of 21, but the real reason is that we're trying to socialize our kids. We talk about dinner table etiquette at home and then practice it in public. They learn how to speak clearly and confidently to other adults (the waitstaff). They learn to be patient. (They also learn that if they throw a screaming tantrum over getting a red gummy worm in their dirt cup instead of green one that mommy will haul their butt outside faster than they can say "chicken strip", no matter that it's negative 10 degrees.)
But one of the primary lessons we are trying to teach our kids is how to handle boredom. Not to get all back-in-my-day up in here, but my siblings and I used to spin quarters and practice napkin origami (and eat sugar packets) while we waited for our spaghetti. I'd like my kids to get used to the fact that in the real world there will not always be something specifically intended to entertain them.
Except now there is.
If it isn't an iPad propped on a table, it's a DVD player in the car or an iPod in the doctor's waiting area or a game played on mom's cellphone in the pick-up line at the pharmacy. We've found a way to chronically anesthetize our kids, and it isn't done to make them happy -- even though that's what they say they wan. It's done to mitigate our short-term discomfort. Nobody wants to hear their kid whine. And nobody wants to get the death glare from the other passengers on the plane. But we're just delaying dealing with the problem. Teachers wonder why their students can't sit through an entire history lecture; it's because they've never had to.
The only way to teach our kids how to live in this world is to let them try it, even if that means they're disruptive sometimes. Frankly I would have rather heard the neighboring table's kids argue rather than the unrelenting narration of the cartoon.
What do you think? Is it rude to have an iPad playing a movie in a restaurant? Or do you think anything that helps keep the kids quiet is kosher? How do you teach your kids to manage boredom? Vote in our poll.
Follow Charlotte Hilton Andersen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CharlotteGFE
Charlotte Reznick, Ph.D.: 6 Ways to Help Your Child Develop Better Friendships
Eileen Piper: Denver Preschool Program Provides Quality Early Childhood Education
Tina Barseghian: A Day in the Life of the iPad Class
Corinne McDermott: Five Things Flying With Kids Has Taught Me
Entertaining young babies and children
Is David Cross Entertaining Children?: Pics, Videos, Links, News
Summer holidays: entertaining children - Telegraph
How to Entertain Kids when You Are Babysitting - wikiHow
10 ways to entertain young children for $1 or less (without the TV)
Of course, we only use the iPad as the last resort. On average our daughter gets to play ipad less than 15 minutes a day. We spend a good amount of time playing with her and speak 3 languages at home. Ipad is merely one tool out of many.
Regarding iPad usage, I don't see why it would be so difficult to restrict the usage of toys to 15 minutes day. Keep in mind that we do communicate with our own daughter and try our best to make things work. However in cases when things don't work out then we use the iPad. This is why I say on average our daughter only gets 15 minutes of iPad a day. Most of the time we dine we don't even need to use iPad because many mid level restaurants provide stuff like crayons and paper for kids to play with.
If the article argues that parents with young kids shouldn't eat out at a restaurant period, that I would more or less agree. However the argument here is that parents shouldn't use devices such as iPad to keep their kids busy. Maybe the author should advocate restaurants to stop giving crayons to kids too.
Parents have just become lazy. They use electronic pacifiers everywhere. It's easier to turn their brains to mush with a never ending stream of electronic guano than to actually teach them manners and respect for others in public.
Not only is an iPad in a restaurant rude it is horrible parenting.
http://surfpoet.com
Some of us still actually consider going out to eat to be a special occasion, and when we do go out, we want to be able to enjoy what we came for, namely, the food and the company of our tablemates.
As for children being bored, why not try actually engaging them in conversation? If they're too young for this, then I guarantee you they are too young to be eating out at any place more sophisticated than McDonald's. And if they aren't too young but simply won't behave, then why not let the penalty for that be missing out on the next couple of restaurant trips? Instead of buying endless annoying, noisy gadgets, hire a good babysitter and cut the rest of a break.