Should parents use iPads to help kids stay quiet at restaurants?
You can't walk into any family restaurant these days without seeing it: families happily chowing down on their meals while the youngest kids (and sometimes the older ones, too) watch shows on iPads or play games on a phone. Yes, we are living in the generation of the iPad kid, and people have thoughts.
Yes, the criticism of modern parents comes fast and strong. Accusations that "parents don't parent anymore," and that they're lazy and happy to rot their kids' brain are thrown around easily. We've seen the data that too much screentime can be incredibly harmful for kids and young people, leading to sleep problems, bad behavior, poor academic performance, and more. So, there's definitely a growing movement that urges those parents at restaurants: Get those kids off the iPad!
One mom is going viral for her opinion: If we want to see fewer iPad kids, we have to be more accommodating of annoying kid behaviors.
iPads help entertain kids and also give parents a needed breather. But there is a such thing as too much.
Photo by Patricia Prudente on Unsplash
"If you all want to see fewer iPad babies, you are going to have to increase your tolerance for childish nonsense outside in the world, okay?" says mom Jordan Simone in a TikTok video. "If you don't want to see little kids, toddlers, on their iPads at dinner, you're going to have to accept the fact that for a while, they're going to be loud, obnoxious, even disruptive to what you at a separate table are up to."
The oft-quoted line goes something like this: Kids should learn how to behave in public! Simone has thoughts on that one, too:
"Kids can't learn how to behave in public unless they're in public getting those experiences. And that learning curve is going to be inconvenient and uncomfortable for you."
So, she's saying in a culture that absolutely loves to complain about the presence of children almost everywhere, asking parents to put the iPads away means restaurants, planes, movie theaters, and other public spaces are going to have to get a lot more annoying. Watch the whole rant here:
@jordxn.simone the way yall act people either give their kids screens or start putting their hands on them, and frankly myself and others like the first option more. #kid #toddler #toddlers #ipad #restaurant
Interestingly, the reaction to the video was not overwhelming agreement...even from parents.
I thought this take would be a slam dunk with exhausted parents who are tired of the criticism. But some people chimed in and took issue:
"The problem is parents ARENT teaching their kids how to behave in public. It’s a default to hand them a screen before putting in any actual effort."
"Idk the teacher has 20 of them and they deal with them screaming. Interact with your kid instead of expecting them to entertain themselves at the table."
"My mom’s strategy when we were kids is if we started misbehaving we got a warning, if we didn’t start then we got taken outside until we were able to calm down. So actions and consequences!"
"parents should accept that they will need to constantly be engaged & interacting w/their kids. your life of ease ended when you decided on parenthood. they are now the priority, not your convenience"
But overall, parents appreciated Simone calling out the catch-22:
Is it possible we're all romanticizing how well-behaved we were as kids?Giphy
"Also, a kid on a screen somewhere doesn't mean they're on it all the time. My kid is autistic, she has a hard time at restaurants with the sights, smells, and sounds, the tablet helps her focus."
"Literally the reason people hand iPads and their phones to their kids is to distract them and keep them quiet. Because people complain about kids being kids in public spaces"
"Yall want community so bad but guess what? Community includes children."
"Adults don’t know how to act in public, but they expect children to"
"People forget they go to family friendly restaurants and expect private dining experience"
Experts say it's developmentally appropriate for young children to have trouble sitting still for a whole meal. If you have a very well-behaved two-year-old, you might be able to hope for about 20 minutes. If your kid is especially hyperactive, it'll be less than that. Table service at a restaurant takes much, much longer than 20 minutes. Sometimes you can stretch that 20 minutes if you're really creative and engaging, well-prepared with coloring books and activity books and games. But it takes a ton of work, ruins your ability to enjoy your own meal, and still might not buy you enough time. Even worse, even six-year-olds might struggle to stay seated at a table for more than 35 minutes or so! That could mean you're dealing with this issue for years and years and years.
I've always thought a good compromise is to save the screen for the actual eating part of the meal. My youngest has ADHD and is an absolute disaster trying to sit at the table, so we'll usually pull out our whole bag of tricks including activities, games, or even walking around the restaurant until the food has arrived. This is her chance to learn how to behave in a public space. When the food comes, that's when she usually gets the screen so she'll actually eat, and we can enjoy our own food—but we always reserve the right to bring out the screen earlier if she's really bouncing off the walls.
And even as a parent, I can completely agree that kids don't belong everywhere. I've had enough babies crying through bloody R-rated horror movies at 10pm. Toddlers don't usually need to go to fancy steakhouses or romantic inns. And I can also agree that using screens as an easy default instead of helping kids learn how to behave in public is the wrong move in the longterm. But I've also gotten dirty looks when my child is throwing a tantrum and I've felt the discomfort in the air when my kids are being too loud in public. Unfortunately we can't have it both ways.
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