3 Ways to Get Kids to Behave at Restaurants

While you may get through mealtimes at home without food fights or tantrums, taking the kids to a restaurant can be a completely different story.

Even new mom Jessica Biel, who welcomed son Silas with husband Justin Timberlake in April 2015, expressed the nervousness associated with taking tots out for food. “You get to a place, you want to make sure the diners around you are not being bothered, you’re full of anxiety, you’re trying to go as fast as you can- you don’t enjoy it at all,” she told E! News‘ Catt Sadler.

But there are a few ways you can get through a meal without apologizing repeatedly to the tables next to you.

Be an example for manners
“You need to teach [your kids] how to be in the restaurant,” Sam Sifton, Food Editor for The New York Times and its former restaurant critic, told Fatherly. “The experience is different than eating at home. It’s more formal. It demands manners that we sometimes forget.”

Avoid the kids menu
Sifton adds the social pressure of being in public will often prompt Minis to try things they wouldn’t normally eat, so try to stay away from the kids menu. There is almost always something on the regular menu that they can eat. Try to remember this rule from our French Food Rules That Will Get Your Kids to Eat Everything– “The parents choose the menu- that’s it, no substitutes.”

Don’t break out the iPad
We’re often too quick to hand out the iPad or iPhone to put tantrums at bay, and if you’re just trotting down to the neighborhood pizza joint, that may be OK. But if you have an evening planned at a fine dining restaurant, it’s because you want your children to experience it. “I’d like to avoid having [my kids] stare at the phone for $70,” says Sifton.

For more ideas on How to Take Kids to Fine Dining Restaurants, visit Fatherly or stick around and read these French Parenting Rules That Will Teach Your Kids Manners.

Opening Image: Emma Kepley for Mini Magazine