Kids causing mayhem
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Kids causing mayhem

Updated | By tanstan fourie

If there’s one thing sure to raise Terence Pillay’s irritation levels, it's noisy children in restaurants and parents who do nothing about them.

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I have two nieces and I often take them to restaurants that have a dedicated children’s area, like the Spur or MacDonald’s. But when I am out for a nice night at a nice restaurant, I don’t want to have a screaming child irritating me during my dinner. 
 
Personally I don’t know if children should even be allowed in restaurants at night. Depending on the level of restaurant – if I was at the Spur or somewhere like that, I would dismiss it because that’s their whole vibe – but if I was somewhere fancy, I would certainly call the management and ask them to relocate the family with the child to an area that’s out of ear shot. 
 
Restaurants have a Right of Admission Reserved and they are allowed to set the conditions of admission and operation. So I think it’s perfectly acceptable not to allow children under 12 in at night, for example, and parents won’t bring them there.
 
I know a lot of parents are going to argue that they have the right to go out just like everybody else. They might say “we are paying, so we’re entitled”. And I fully understand that; but I am paying as well, and I have the right to ask for a meal that doesn’t involve a brat running past me every two minutes screaming like it’s a park. 
 
There are people who can’t afford a baby-sitter, and I’m sorry to be harsh here, but if you can’t afford a baby-sitter then stay at home and order in. 
 
But crazy kids are not confined to restaurants, they’re also in shopping malls and supermarkets, running around tanked on sugar and tearing things apart while the parent seems powerless to do anything about it. Either that or they just don’t feel they should do something. I don’t want to have to encounter this. Sort your kid out. 
 
And I think that stems from a general discipline issue with children these days. When I was a child and if I dared to scream in a supermarket, I would have got a smack. Or I would have got told we were going home that very minute because I didn’t deserve a nice time out. Or if I was out with my mum, I would have been told my father would deal with me when we got home... It was just not tolerated. 
 
So why are we tolerating it now? I watch parents indulge their children all the time. We think that they should be allowed to express themselves and we are not allowed to discipline them.
 
I think we’ve taken the idea of discipline too far. You’re not allowed to beat your child into oblivion with a stick with nails on the end, which you are absolutely not allowed to do and I am completely against that kind of abuse, but parents have taken that and extended it to all other forms of discipline.
 
Even just controlling the child, like if they’re told to sit and stay – not in that kind of Barbara Woodhouse way – children should not be questioning this. 
 
And so parents need to decide what acceptable discipline is and what’s not. And while I don’t really like the fact that some parents discipline their kids in public, where are you going to do it?
 
If the bad behaviour happens now, then discipline them immediately – it’s almost Pavlovian. You can’t discipline them three hours from the incident. If a child gets up and throws a tantrum, you can’t wait till you get home because the message loses impact. Take the child aside though... I don’t want to know your business. 
 
If the child is old enough to reason, then you can sit him or her down and explain why the behaviour was unacceptable, but if your child is very young and is acting out, you need to nip that right there and then. And there has to be consequences to the behaviour.
 
So you’re either going to impose some kind of punishment or withdraw some kind of reward. So the reward for the child, perhaps, is sitting and having a milkshake at a restaurant, you take that away.
 
Unfortunately, it’s going  to take self-sacrifice and discipline on your part as a parent, but what you should do is say to the waiter, “sorry we’re going to have to cancel our order and we’re going home because my child is misbehaving”. So you get your bill and leave. The party ends and you go home. 
 
But a lot of parents won’t do this. They either feel guilty or they have no regard for other people around them in public and continue slugging down their cappuccinos and gabbing with their friends. And so children think they can just do things with impunity. 
 
This is what Terence' followers had to share on this topic - take a look:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
You can follow Terence on Twitter @terencepillay1 or contact him directly at [email protected] 

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