How to Get Kids to Behave in a Restaurant

The glare. All parents have felt it – that evil look you get from other diners when entering a restaurant with your young children.

These four tips can help keep your kids well behaved so you can relax and enjoy the experience, while keeping the eye daggers from other patrons to a minimum.

Set expectations from the get-go.

Talk to your kids well before you set foot in the restaurant. Outline their expected behavior, such as no yelling, getting up from the table or playing with their food/drink. Just as importantly, explain the rewards (dessert, an extra story that night) or punishments (no dessert, one less bedtime story) for meeting or not meeting your expectations.

If you make up the rules on the fly, you’re only setting yourself up for disaster. In fact, both eHow and WebMD list expectation-setting as the number-one rule for helping your children become polite little restaurant goers.

Pick the place with care.

Some restaurants cater to young families and some don’t. Look for restaurants with:

Ample seating and a sufficient supply of high chairs and boosters Crayons and coloring books or other entertainment while you wait for your food Kid-friendly changing table in the restroom . How do you spot a bad restaurant to bring your kids? Places that don’t have highchairs or a kids’ menu are a dead giveaway. Real candles with real flames are a bad sign, and so is the exclusive use of breakable dish- and glassware, unless you’re comfortable letting your 2-year-old drink her milk from a real glass. Also avoid restaurants where there’s a long wait to get a table or where the service is slow.

Make your own fun so kids will behave in a restaurant.

Even if you pick the perfect place for your children, it can be hard for little ones to sit still through the entire dining experience. If they’re tired and/or hungry, you’ll need to be especially prepared. Bring some quiet distractions like little cars, crayons, small dolls, stacking toys or even a couple crackers.

You can even use items on the table for entertainment. Line up silverware to make “roads.” Make towers with the jelly containers. Or hide scraps of paper under sugar packets and see who can guess where they are.

Know when to fold ‘em.

Sometimes no matter what you do, your children will misbehave at a restaurant. We all have bad days, kids included.

If they’re distracting others by crying/yelling, endangering the staff by darting through the aisles, or simply making the experience miserable for you – consider leaving early. You may need to take your food to-go or have one parent wait in the car with the misbehaving child. That’s the risk you take when dining with children.

The good news is that as kids get older and have more experience eating out, they’ll usually behave better. And following these tips will help increase your odds.