children of all ages have to behave and use their indoor voices when coming to A Taste of Heaven
But many neighborhood mothers took umbrage at the implied criticism of how they handle their children. Soon, whispers of a boycott passed among the playgroups in this North Side neighborhood, once an outpost of avant-garde artists and hip gay couples but now a hot real estate market for young professional families shunning the suburbs.
"I love people who don’t have children who tell you how to parent," said Alison Miller, 35, a psychologist, corporate coach and mother of two. "I’d love for him to be responsible for three children for the next year and see if he can control the volume of their voices every minute of the day."
Mr. McCauley, 44, said the protesting parents were "former cheerleaders and beauty queens" who "have a very strong sense of entitlement." In an open letter he handed out at the bakery, he warned of an "epidemic" of antisocial behavior.
"Part of parenting skills is teaching kids they behave differently in a restaurant than they do on the playground," Mr. McCauley said in an interview. "If you send out positive energy, positive energy returns to you. If you send out energy that says I’m the only one that matters, it’s going to be a pretty chaotic world."
And so simmers another skirmish between the childless and the child-centered, a culture clash increasingly common in restaurants and other public spaces as a new generation of busy, older, well-off parents ferry little ones with them.
I have three little ones and one might assume that I side with the parents. After all, it IS a little presumptuous for people with no children to tell people with children how to handle their kids. I resent it when I get preached to, even by fellow parents. So the coffee shop owner is wrong, right?
I do not side with the parents in this case. I worked in restaurants for years, and can tell you without a doubt that teaching children manners in our society is as arcane as ice trucks. I’m not talking about charm school here, I mean simply distinguishing between ones own living room and the outside world. It’s incomprehensible to these people. And they IGNORE their kids while they blather to the other phonies about their fake phony lives leaving the staff to deal with kids who never learned boundaries.
It’s actually not about giving the staff a break from the mini ids raising hell in the establishment (although that would be a nice outcome); it is part safety, and part consideration for ones fellow patron. I have seen too many close safety calls with uncontrolled children, and I know that my children are not as cute to others as they are to me.
Ann does not feel the need to compare tennis sock pom poms with other moms during the day, and when we want to dine out we instead order takeout. So let the desperate housewives boycott. The rest of us can then relax without their shrill voices or their bratty offspring.
J. Philip Faranda
Don’t event get me started about the snot-nosed little brats when they’re in airplanes. I want to toss them out the window.
The parents need to realize that in a normal world where normal people live that an unruly, screaming attention getting child is a reflection on them as parents.
I’m sure that if they were the ones in a restraunt without children at their table and another parent had an obnoxious child with them that was callng attention to their tantrum they would be one of the first to make comments about the child and the parents.
As a mother of 5 grown children I can testify that it is really not a hard job to explain to children that there is a difference in inside talk & outdoor talk. All they have to do if they are against correcting their precious child that no one wants to be around is point out a child who is throwing a fit the next time they see one and show them how the other people in the room react to the child. Children are fast learners.
Like most normal prople I do not want my dinner or drink spoiled by a child & parent who call attention to themselves making everyone in the place miserable.