Depends on the parents and the child. I no longer have any under ten, but we regularly took our children to white table cloth restaurants without incident. We didn’t take them when they were four, but long before ten they had table manners Queen Elizabeth would applaud. It’s all about parenting.
Many years ago when my older daughter was about 2/3, we went to Sarasota, Florida. It was a business trip for my husband. One night the man he went to see and his wife invited us to go out to a really nice restaurant. We took our daughter with us. They could not get over how well behaved she was. We had been taking her to nice places for months. Kids today are an entirely different story. Some do not know what no means. It seems like they have never heard the word. It is a shame.
You sir are my favorite caliber!
Amen to that. It is all about the parenting. Too many Freepers sound like spinster country-club Pepublicans (i.e. douche-canoes)on this thread.
When our kids were young, the church we attended had a very strong Wednesday night program and for many years, had a family night dinner, cooked at the church kitchen by volunteers, for a very reasonable price.
We’d go eat dinner, the kids would play with their friends for a little while, and then they’d go to their programs.
The kids learned to eat out in public in a very safe setting, where if it didn’t go really smoothly, we could take care of it and nobody was offended.
They also LOVED to eat out at restaurants and knew that they had to be on their BEST behavior or we wouldn’t take them out again. And they knew we meant it.
We actually got compliments on them on occasion.
However, we never took them to upscale restaurants.
We couldn’t afford that much money and they wouldn’t really appreciate it.
Agree 100%.
When our kids were small, we would often receive compliments from restaurant staff and patrons, alike, on how pleasantly surprised they were by our kids’ behavior.
Same with flying. Nearby passengers were very complimentary, when we were deplaning.