At Center of a Clash, Rowdy Children in Coffee Shops – New York Times
Wednesday’s New York Times article, reported on toddlers who hurl themselves into display cases “for sport,” parents who ignore them and coffee shop owners brave enough to face off against those fearsome two year olds.
There were interviews with angry mamas and annoyed wifi connesiurs. The owner of the coffee shop in question compared his efforts to keep loud children out of his store to anti-war efforts and the Katrina response. I mean, I knew the toddler years were challenging but hey. No need to declare war or natural disaster.
There were no interviews with parents who feel isolated, lacking support and connections to not only survive those early years, but help their children thrive through them.
Before I get flamed, I’ll say that I’ve waited many tables in my day, and my children do not get to walk around in restaurants. I have visions of scalding coffee and heavy serving trays, not to mention an acute sense of how stressful it is to wait tables. A desire for safety is enough for me to keep my kids close to me. I have my “emergency pack” in my diaper bag that includes a book of mazes, paper clips, markers, action figures, books and an etch-a-sketch. I attempt to dole out the supplies a little at a time as we wait for food.
Our favorite restaurant is locally owned and has a “toy corner,” that allows me to sit near a batch of hand me down toys and allow my kids to play with them without standing in the way of anyone toting hot drinks or breakable plates. When we leave, frequently one of the workers jumps out from behind the counter to help me carry bags of bagels and children.
However, they are located on a street without much parking, and my grandmother is wheelchair bound. When she wants to get out of the nursing home, we take her to Lennie’s.
Frequently, it takes a long time to get our food, especially since we’re, well, possibly a bit high maintenance (I’ll have the name your own strom with cheese, cheese, red peppers, feta and cheese, ranch on the side and tomato sauce too, with a ramekin of the vegetarian soup of the day and a bunch of crackers, a plate of noodles, the flat kind, with no color of any kind and that includes parsley, two drinks with lids for the kids, room for a wheelchair and a high chair and a kid seat that I can block with my foot) and it’s hard to nurse without elbowing someone at the next table, but it’s our second favorite Bloomington restaurant, and I can pull the car up onto the sidewalk to unload my grandma.
Last week I called my grandma and asked her to lunch. “I’m feeling brave,” I said, “wanna take the boys out?” Lunch was going pretty well, Carter was playing with an etch-a-sketch and I was feeding Archie soup crackers. Carter noticed that I had given Archie the crackers that were in front of his plate. In the two seconds between when Carter used his indoor voice to “notice,” and prepared to use his nuclear voice, to “complain,” as I was taking a deep breath and strategizing desperately, the hostess miraculously showed up right next to Carter, touching his shoulder and said, “You look like you need some crackers!” Carter said yes, she brought him crackers, and we survived the wait for lunch.
Two people came up to me to say how well behaved my children were. I smiled and responded, “today.” We made it through lunch without using outside voices or otherwise annoying the power lunchers surrounding us, but it was the child friendly hostess that made it happen. She winked at me and said, “I’ve got a three year old.” We were in it together.
It was a small thing, but I felt supported as a mom, as a community member. When I think I have to be isolated with my kids so that we don’t bother anyone, I go downhill fast. I need a sense of community and support. The message I got from that article was not one of community building, cherishing children and families, or even of courtesy for other patrons, but of shutting up so Joe Schmoe can drink his coffee in solitude, something, by the way, that is easily accomplished in isolation.