Posted on 02/14/2023 11:57:20 AM PST by grundle
Recently, an establishment called Nettie's House of Spaghetti in New Jersey announced they will no longer allow children under 10 to dine at their restaurant.
The move caused controversy, with some respondents applauding the policy and others accusing Nettie’s staff of being “child haters.” But the top commenter at MSN.com summed the issue up succinctly:
“We don't hate your kids,” she wrote. “We hate your parenting.”
Congratulations, madam, you won the Internet today.
If this seems a tempest in a teapot, know that it has implications for our entire society, because it reflects a deadly modern problem:
Too many Americans are failing to civilize their children.
It should be obvious that no restaurant would take such a decision lightly, as you want as many customers as possible coming through your doors. But Nettie’s management explained on social media that while they love kids, because of the “noise levels, lack of space for high chairs, cleaning up crazy messes, and the liability of kids running around the restaurant, we have decided that it's time to take control of the situation.”
O.K., a parenting pro tip: If your kids are running around a restaurant as if it’s a playground, you’re doing it wrong.
My parents took me to eateries for as long as I can remember. Yet it never occurred to me, ever, to bound about and treat the establishment like an amusement park. It’s not that I was a saint; in fact, I had a bit of a temper and a low threshold for frustration. But my mother (this was her domain) enforced discipline and behavior standards. So certain actions were just beyond consideration.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
“It hurts me more than it hurts you.”
I use to advise poor parents to subscribe to a daily newspaper and let their child at least see them reading the sports page every day as though reading meant something, and also to try and take their children to a simple restaurant once a month to familiarize them and teach them (casually) formal behavior in public and while dining.
Whoever runs Nettie’s is wise.
“Both young and old are quite out of hand and unmanageable; they have no sense of respect or honor; they will do nothing unless driven to it be force; they slander and put down one another behind each other’s back as much as they can. God therefore punishes so that they get into all sorts of trouble and misery. Usually the parents can do nothing about this, for it was simply a case of one fool raising another, and as the parents had lived, so live their children after them.” - Martin Luther, The Large Catechism, Fourth Commandment. 1529.
One of Kipling’s best.
As true now as it was a hundred years ago.
A Mother or Father can do this. The problem nowadays is people believed that crap about "It takes a village to raise a child" so parents no longer do their job because they think others will, but they won't and they don't.
Interesting point that their closed on Valentine’s Day.
Another possibility - they are family owned and reserve that night to celebrate themselves, despite the missed financial opportunity.
Once knew a couple that owned a bar at the Jersey Shore and closed it every memorial day weekend for family celebrations. They just didn’t care about missing the long weekend business. Their family plans took precedence.
Chilun!
Yeh but if todays parents disciple their children the child won’t love them. That is the stupid mindset these days.
I guess they went out of copyright . . .
The one thing I do have in common with my liberal friends is the standard of child rearing. Maybe it is a generational bond.
Man If I had done any of that as a kid I would not have been able to set down for a week! We were well behaved in public as kids. “OR ELSE!”
“Etiquette”
I remember those classes! They worked for us.
bkmk
This is nothing new. It’s the parents. 50 years ago I was a busboy. Some people brought a tot with them. I setup the highchair and all. The parents gave the kid saltine crackers to keep him busy. You can guess what happened. The kid pulverized the crackers and the wreckage got all over the floor. The manager wouldn’t let me use a vacuum as it would disturb the customers so I had to use a carpet sweeper. That just ground the crumbs deeper into the carpet. Gosh was I mad.
I took my kids out to nice restaurants starting when they were 5 and 3. They had been to chain restaurants many times growing up. The simple rule was if I didn’t get to enjoy my dinner then the pain level would increase when we got home. Interesting, I probably just got lucky, the kids loved eating out in nice restaurants. Table cloths, people dressed up, weight staff that did great jobs.
Ultimately it became an issue. They would get free deserts and people would talk to them like people … buy the way never talk baby talk to kids. Their brains work better than ours. The kids could have conversations, order their dinner, even knew what utensils to use (Mostly). Somehow they ended up learning to behave real well, act like adult little people and free deserts kept coming. As the grew up, the deserts stopped because it was expected they could behave
‘Anyway it was always fun to me to walk into a nice restaurant, see the look of terror in people’s eyes (our nights ruined) then then coming over to say something nice because they expected the worse and saw kids act right. Older people love that. Made me proud. I did have to smack a few butts in private on occasion but after one or two they knew the rules.
Parents and the kids can’t behave good enough for fast food these days.
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