The Internet is in a tizzy again. People are taking sides and throwing stones. Gawker media is having a freaking hate orgy.
Why?
Last Saturday, a family on vacation wandered into a little diner in Maine for breakfast. It was pouring rain outside. The diner was crowded. The couple and their nearly two-year-old daughter were all hungry. They ordered 3 pancakes for the baby and sat about talking with each other while waiting for the food to arrive. They waited. And waited. And then the inevitable happened: that baby started to cry.
This is where it gets murky. Maybe the baby cried for 40 minutes waiting for her pancakes. Maybe she only cried for 10. Maybe the parents did everything they could do to calm her down. Maybe they left the pancakes in the middle of the table, out of her increasingly frustrated reach. Maybe the owner asked the parents to remove the crying child. Maybe she just tossed to-go boxes at them and promptly lost her mind. In any event, this next part is clear. Let’s hear it from the owner herself:
What happened here? Well, anyone who has been a parent for more than fifteen minutes can tell you. That lady lost her shit. We know because we’ve been there.
It’s no accident that people talk about rage “boiling”. It bubbles up from somewhere in your belly; you can feel it climbing the edges of your pot, the heat filling up your chest, the warmth spreading to your cheeks, the tight hot sensation in your throat. Then BAM! It bubbles over and out of your mouth and your whole body is shaking with the vibration of that rolling boil.
Why? Why does this happen? Because parenting is hard work. Duh. It can be exhausting and relentless and utterly unappreciated. And we are human beings who only learn new skills, like patience, through practice. You want to be a patient person? Go have yourself a half-dozen kids. Oh, you’ll screw up a billion times, but eventually you’ll get there. You’ll get all the practice you can handle. What’s to keep you from staying stuck with the perpetual short fuse? The look on your child’s face when you blow it.
Darla Neugebauer, that diner’s owner, said that when she got up in that baby’s face, pointing and yelling, the baby shut up. And I’m sure she did. For about ten seconds, just long enough to take in a very deep, surprised breath, and erupt in an earth-shattering, terrified, there-is-no-safe-place-in-the-world, forsake-all-hope-ye-who-enter-here, primal scream. The baby’s parents said their daughter cried “harder”, but anyone who’s ever yelled at their toddler knows what they really meant.
There is absolutely no doubt that children crying in public places are annoying – even infuriating. If you think it’s bad from across the restaurant, or three rows back on the plane, you should try it at ground zero. There are definitely parents who don’t handle it well, or at all. And that’s frustrating, but it’s mostly sad. Because the child who can be ignored while throwing a 40 minute tantrum in a diner, can be so much more easily ignored while sitting at home playing alone. Furthermore, the child who isn’t taught by her parents what appropriate behavior looks like, grows up to be an adult who still doesn’t know. That child might grow up to post things like this on her business’s Facebook page:
Yeah. Wow.
Maybe I’m absolutely right, and you know it crazy, but this doesn’t seem like the kind of woman that I’d want to represent my cause, even if my cause was the utterly impossible, but so very tantalizing worldwide abolition of crying toddlers.
Before people go making Darla Neugebauer the spokesperson for pissed off diners everywhere, I’d like to suggest they look around for someone who’s doing something to make the situation better, not worse. Or, better yet, lets take a crack at it ourselves. Start by assuming that those parents in the next booth are in a level of hell much deeper than the one you find yourself in. Maybe they are just ignorant breeders, overpopulating the earth and ruining your brunch, but I’ll bet money they didn’t know they were getting into this. Right now, they’re feeling pretty duped too.
Next, consider for a moment that they didn’t intentionally drag a poorly behaved, hungry and exhausted child out into public in order to torture you. I promise, they wish they were at home alone with their sweet darling where they could gently lose their shit correct the embarrassing behavior in private, or at the very least, hide their head under a pillow. If you see a screaming baby in a public place, I bet dollars to donuts those parents are trapped there. Maybe they are on their way to bury a parent (it happened to me), maybe they’re waiting on a tow-truck (ditto), maybe it’s pouring outside and a 40 minute wait for pancakes is the only game in town. Assume good intentions. So much of life would be easier if we’d only tattoo this on our clenched fists.
If there’s nothing to be done, if you just can’t stand it any longer, if you’re outraged because your children never acted that way in public/you knew better than to have children/you just got fired by the man who is sleeping with your wife, talk to the parents. Don’t scream at the baby. After all, as inconvenient for everyone as a toddler tantrum is, it’s age appropriate.
That’s what two-year-olds do.
What’s your excuse?
I don’t have children. Not because I can’t, but because I am one of those people who never wanted them. I am not selfless, or patient. As a child, if we went to a restaurant and misbehaved, one of my parents (yes, I had two) would remove us from the establishment (I remember having to sit in the car until I was over it). I wasn’t allowed to scream, fight with my brother, or cry in public (unless, I fell or hurt myself, since I know there are people out there who are saying “oh, well what about…?” ) Thus did I learn good behaviour. Now, when I actually get to go out for a meal (which is rare) I don’t want to listen to someone’s child having a melt-down (or the diner owner, either!) I want to enjoy my meal. (What if another diner brought in their radio and wanted to listen to their music LOUD at their table? Maybe they would be asked to leave?) It seems to me that those poor parents (one of them) might have excused themselves from the table and taken the poor child outside (or into their car, since it was raining. I do sympathize with the parents in trapped situations like airplanes, although that does not make the crying any more pleasurable to hear.). As human beings I believe we are programed NOT to like babies crying. I mean, think about it…if we ignored the needs of our infants there probably wouldn’t be a very high survival rate, right? But, we are raised (or were, back when I was a child. Like the stone age) that certain behaviors, no matter how “natural” or “normal” are not “acceptable” in public. Behaviors that someone else may find offense or stressful. Babies crying without cease is one of them. Parenting is never easy, and I highly respect those that are trying to do a good job. But I should be able to eat in peace, in public, at the restaurant of my choice, if I want to.
cvbc. /
Regardless of whatever the issue may be, 2 or not, a temper tantrum of that magnitude would not be allowed to go on in an enclosed public area for that amount of time. A 2-year old may be hungry, but regardless, it’s at that age where they begin to learn appropriate behavior in public. Acting that way is not acceptable, I would have given my child the opportunity to calm down, if they refused they would have been taken to the car, or outside to cry it out there and they would not re-enter the restaurant or eat, until they were able to calm down, as crying, in my opinion, should never get a child what they want. I would also have come prepared, I would have never take a 2 year old to a restaurant at any peek time of the day and not have brought toys, and possibly a snack to hold them over until the food got there. Why on earth a 2 year old would need three huge pancakes is beyond me, and could be a part of a deeper issue to begin with. With that being said, I am not the parent, I don’t know what they had going on or why they did not feel like doing something differently, so I don’t know, based on their circumstances, how I would have handled the situation, but do I know, that with children that I have cared for, what I mentioned above is what has and will always happen.
I’m sorry, but I don’t blame the diner owner for their outrage. People were probably leaving, people were probably not able to focus on the food they were eating, workers were probably complaining for a while and also unfocused on the food they were cooking, and overall that hour could have done significant damage to their profits and customer satisfaction. They shouldn’t have to justify someone else’s actions in order to stay calm, it shouldn’t have happened to begin with. I’m against this “blame the parents” movement because yes, almost all of them work very hard, but it’s not like the child only upset one person.
However, the owner should have taken action much, MUCH sooner – like after 5 minutes of it. Before people got too upset to eat and cook, and before the manager wanted to blow a fuse. S/he should have recognized the bad situation, and done something about it after 5 minutes, and after the parents declined the offer to get the pancakes to-go. Maybe then the parents could have explained themselves, if they had an explanation other than “she’s 2, what do you expect?” in a calm manner, maybe the owner could have found a fun little sticker to give to the kid, and say nicely that “we’re trying our best to make everyone happy but you’re making us sad by crying so much, please cheer up” then if it doesn’t work for another 5 minutes, pull the parents aside and tell them they should leave. “Your order is quite big for a small place like ours and we will not tolerate the tantrum in our business any longer. Please find somewhere else” etc. Come on, people can think of these little things to say within 5 minutes. And if you think these are out of line they are still much better and more effective than what really happened here. If you stand there and take it for 40 minutes you are bound to break, especially if you have not only your mind to tend to but a diner and customers as well.
10 minutes and they should be gone.