Eating out with young children is never a breezy walk in the park. In my experience, most times dining out with little kids does NOT look like this:
My youngest son and I at the dinner table while eating out on vacation.
For just a moment, let’s analyze what’s missing and what’s wrong with this family dining shot.
#1. The table AND the child are clean…
This is obviously taken prior to any food or drinks arriving since the majority of my dining experiences with a toddler, tend to include spilled milk and food everywhere (face, table, hands, shirt - EVERYWHERE!)
IMPORTANT NOTE: You can always tell the servers that do not have children because they put the beverages WAY too close to your little one!)
#2. Both myself and my little guy are smiling…
And what’s even more amazing is that I am smiling AT him! It’s not that we don’t ever have enjoyable times eating out as a family. It’s just that it is amazing to capture one of these rare moments on camera - where my toddler is smiling and playing, and I am looking calm, happy and unstressed!
I can laugh at this shot, knowing that it is a rarity. (And knowing that is was taken WAY after our disastrous flight to our vacation!) And I will admit that eating out with young kids comes with many challenges. Yet my husband and I absolutely refuse to stop trying. And believe it or not, dining out has gotten better with our little ones over the years! Especially since we have learned to revisit our own expectations.
Managing Expectations
Before becoming parents, my husband and I ate out all the time. After having kids we obviously still eat out BUT… well… lets just say we both needed to learn to modify our expectations a bit.
Before Kids: We expected great conversation.
After Kids: We hoped to finish at least one conversation.
Before Kids: We expected magnificent service and an extraordinary meal.
After Kids: We hoped for quick service and the option of a kid’s meal.
(There’s nothing worse then realizing a restaurant has no milk or no kid’s meal options!)
Before Kids: We expected a relaxing evening out.
After Kids: Relaxing?!? Lets just say this is NOT always a part of our eating-out-experience anymore.
Even after adjusting our own ideas and expectations, dining out with children is still not always easy. Yet we have found it doesn’t always have to be a battle. Especially if you have a good plan of attack! Our plan focuses on preparation, timing and location.
1. Preparation is Key
As Benjamin Franklin said, “By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.” Without preparation, we are being set up for a dining disaster. Besides mentally refocusing our own expectations of the evening, my husband and I make sure we have our “bag of tricks” complete with no less than some paper and crayons, a few small snacks and a sippie cup of milk for our 1-year-old. (To hold him off if dinner is running late!)
2. Timing is Everything!
When our kids are hungry, that’s it! They want their food RIGHT. NOW. That’s why we avoid at all costs the “witching hours” (a.k.a. the times too close to bedtimes and too close to when our kids need to eat).
Witching Hour = Cranky Kid = COMPLETE Dining Disaster
3. Location, Location, Location
Most battle locations are chosen strategically, not randomly. Likewise, it is much easier to carry though your dinning “plan of attack” if a restaurant’s environment is more conducive to family dining. We tend to scout out locations that have short wait times, quick service and are in general a little nosier (there’s noting worse than choosing the quietest restaurant in the city to bring three of the loudest kids in the city to!)
The Tragedy of a Plan
But here’s the problem to any plan… Plans. Do. Fail. Even good ones. You just can’t always plan for everything.
A couple weekends ago my husband and his mother took our kids out for an early (to avoid the “witching hours”) lunch. They went to a noisy diner that had no wait, fast service, a kids menu, and activity place mats. Check, check and CHECK! All the right ingredients for a victorious battle lunch out with the kids. Right???
Wrong. Not even five minutes into being seated, our youngest started screaming for absolutely NO apparent reason!
My husband, equipped with our standard strategies, tried every preparation tool in our “plan book.” Even his last resort plan to give our son grandma’s real cell phone to play with backfired! (I know… amazing! I thought that this last tactic was fail proof?!)
So, what’s a dad to do???
Just what I would have done… He packed everyone up, had all the food boxed and headed to the car.
Five minutes later he carried our still screaming toddler inside our home, we gave him his blankie, snuggled with him to quiet him down and put him (now sound asleep) to bed. (30 minutes of crying can really wear a little guy out!)
Interesting side note: the boxed-up food that was supposed to be my husbands lunch ended up on the road somewhere between the diner and home (since it never made it off the top of the car as he struggled to get our screaming toddler safely into his car seat!)
Plan? What Plan?!?
Sometimes plans just don’t work out. Yet, we still march forward… onwards to challenge and triumph over our next dining disaster excursion. My husband and I refuse to accept defeat! We will continue fighting each battle of this war in hopes of V.D. Day (Victory in Dining!)
What do you think? Is it a war worth fighting? Or are we fighting a loosing battle? What strategies and tactics do you (or did you) use to help your family enjoy eating out together?
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh girl…I so hear you on this. We used to eat out all the time before Jackson and when he was a newborn but we have definitely scaled back because it’s just not so relaxing right now. We have started doing some Sunday late lunches (after naps) instead of at night since Carson goes to bed so early…and with the great weather we tend to grill and chill more during the nights. One day dinner with kids will be enjoyable again!
That’s the attitude Dawn! Yes, I am a firm believer in “V.D. Day” (Victory in Dinning!) And I am beginning to think that grilling out is going to be the new “dining out” this summer with our 18-month-old! Good luck with your battle
There’s a certain age I won’t even take my kids out. You are obviously braver than me!!! Now following on Twitter.
Best wishes,
Clayton
http://www.claytonpaulthomas.com
twitter: @claylauren2001
Thanks for calling me “brave.” (Although some might call me just stubborn! - Ha!) With that being said, you know when going out to dinner IS NOT going to work for you! I have had months were we too refuse to go out to dinner with our kids because it just sounds like too much of a chore. Thank goodness for takeout! Thanks for your comment Clayton.
We moved to Toledo when our #2 of 3 was about 3 months old, and that was just about four years ago. When my parents come to visit and want to take us to our favorite restaurant we tell them, we don’t even know where to go, and can we just get take in. We have found IHOP to be pretty kid-friendly for dinner but other than that I don’t find it worth the effort. Going out is now reserved for date nights.
Barbara, IHOP is one of our favorites too… although often forgotten about because it is on the other side of town. We have also found during a nice day that restaurants such as Sonic are great places to visit for a fun, quick dinner since they can bring the food to your car and/or have quick outside eating areas! There are a lot of other options out their besides just the good old-fashioned, wait-for-a-table places to eat that we have discovered after our 8+ years of continually adding children to our family. Yet, I am still hopeful to be able to conquer the wait-for-a-table places too!
We rarely brave the going out to dinner battle. When we do we always remember why we don’t do it more often. Too funny about the food being on top of the car!
I wish I had a photo of my husband’s expression when he realized what happened to his food! Priceless! Would have made a great shot for the blog
It’s funny, with my hubby deployed and me with two little ones and a third one on the way I get the most kudos from adults when they see me sitting at a restaurant table with my daughters. If the restaurant isn’t McDonald’s PlayPlace, it’s a challenge but we manage. I’d like to think for each meal we have a few moments of smiles like your cutie pie son
Most of the time it is me trying to get them to eat while I eat a couple of bites and take the rest of mine home. I think the main reason I try to eat at restaurants is to feel normal and be around adults. When 90% of my day consists of non-adult conversation I start to get a little stir crazy 
Thanks for the comment Kim. I completely agree when you say:
I do that with my kiddos too! Especially during long stints of bad weather when we can’t get outside much! Good luck with your third little one on the way. We found, after we had our third, that it actually seemed easier to go out to eat because we just didn’t stress and worry about little things (like noisy kids who didn’t want to eat! - Ha!) as much as we used to anymore!
Ha! yeah, it definitely doesn’t look like that for long when I take mine out. LOL
Hi Kate - a pleasure to encounter your blog! This is a great post - and I like the photo of you and your youngest - “what dining out SHOULD look like” - heh. (-: One thing that helps me is my husband is so “normal” that he just has had a v. low tolerance for kids acting out in restaurants - so mainly because of expectations he set very early on (and like your husband, enough bravery to haul ‘em out if need-be and go straight home) - in general our kids have been pretty good in restaurants (this does not include toddler phase, everybody sort of gets a free card in that realm IMHO). (-; So glad to find you! (-; See you on Twitter…
Glad to hear that we all should get a “free card” when it comes to the toddler phase in restaurants!
It is interesting that you bring up your husband’s very high expectations that he set early on. As hard and as challenging as these high expectations can be, looking back on the few high expectations that we set and (*this is VERY important!*) followed through on from the very beginning, these are the lessons we have taught our children that have proven to be some our biggest successes when it comes to molding their behavior.
Great comment! Thanks for sharing. Look forward to “seeing you” on twitter!