Eating Out With Kids

Quick!  Think of your favorite restaurant.  Finding out someone's favorite restaurant can say a lot about a person.  If they like something expensive, high class, like you have to wear a jacket to eat there, then that tells me that I probably won't enjoy hanging out with them too much. If they like a hip little restaurant that serves some random ethnic food that I've never heard of, then they are just a lot cooler than I am.  If they say Denny's or Village Inn, or any national chain of buffet, then they are old.  If they happen to say it's one of those places between fast food and sit down, where you can pop in real quick and order the food to go, or better yet call ahead or order online so you can pick the food up real quick, and they are open later than 8:30, and have locations in every major suburb, so they're conveniently just down the street, well if they say that, then I know: They're a parent with little kids, and they hardly get to go out and eat.  In other words, a kindred spirit.  My personal favorite is Cafe Rio. I only mention that in the off chance that someone high up at Cafe Rio happens to read my blog and they decide they would like to provide me with some free meals, which would really be providing my wife and I with some much needed couple time.

Eating out totally changes when you have kids. You go from picking the semi-nice to nice restaurants for dinner on Fridays and Saturdays to quickly stopping at the Drive-thru to grab something for the kids on your way to or home from somewhere.  At first, you think you will raise your kids to know how to behave in restaurant, so you will be able to keep going to the same places you went without kids.  This is not only delusional, it just causes stress to you and everyone around you when you try it.  Kids were not made for restaurants and restaurants were not made for kids.  That's not entirely true.  There is one breed of restaurants that were made for kids: Fast Food.  Fast food restaurants have everything kids want.  They usually have a play place, the food has absolutely no flavor, which kids love, and they typically have some kind of cute mascot.  Fast food restaurants are basically the close to home version of Disneyland for small children.  Unless you live in or near Anaheim, in which case, Disneyland is the close to home version of Disneyland.  The worst part about fast food restaurants is the toys.  I hate their stupid toys.  If we somehow found and gathered up all the dang toys we have ever gotten from a fast food place, we could probably fill up multiple plastic tubs with them.  And they are always something stupid.  I have never seen my kids open up a kids meal toy and thought, "Wow, that's really cool.  That was totally worth all the fighting and screaming and battling to come here.  We should come back tomorrow."  Nope.  Usually, it's "Oh, another piece of junk.  Just add it to the junk pile."

If we do take our kids out, it usually just through the drive-thru.  I do this because number one, I don't want to be seen at a fast food restaurant by someone I might know, and number two, my idea of the worst punishment ever is probably sitting in a fast food restaurant trying to get my kids to eat their food.  They are always distracted by either the toy they got (or fighting about it because they never give all five of my children the same toy, so invariably, one of the gets the one toy that the other four want), wanting to play in the play place, or just simply staring at the other people while they try to eat. It becomes a constant battle of "please sit down, turn around, don't play with that, don't touch that, please don't chew the gum you just found on the bottom of the table."  Let's just say that I can feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about.  My palms have even gotten sweaty. So we avoid this all together, and we just go through the drive thru to order food, and then we bring it home where there are fewer distractions, and I don't care what they destroy.  The only negative here is having to order through the drive-thru.  When I was a kid, it seemed a lot easier because there were fewer options.  I feel bad whenever we pull up to order food and there is someone behind us, and my kids have made it even worse by some of them wanting burgers and some want nuggets.  Plus you have to let them know the gender of each child you are ordering for because they have boy toys and girl toys, and that's not sexist at all or anything.  Then you have to select the drink, the sides, the dipping sauces.  I just hate the whole process, but it is slightly less than going inside.

Our latest thing is to get the kids something at the fast food place, we bring them home, feed them, put them in bed, and then one of us sneaks off to get something just for the two of us.  This is where Cafe Rio, or similar comes into play.  And we're not the only ones.  You may not notice us when you go there and stand in your line ordering your food, but look around at the online order pick up and you'll see us.  Around 8 or so, on a Friday or Saturday.  You'll see the men in t-shirts and a jacket (for the cold, no the dressy kind mentioned earlier), sweats and flip-flop sandals.  They typically look beat and tired.  These are the dads, sent by the moms to pick up their dinner for their at home date night.  I see at least one more besides myself every time I go.  I always give them a head nod, and it's always returned.  It's the nod that says "Comin' to pick up your date night dinner?  Me too.  Kids in bed?  Me too. Enjoy."  Yes, all of that is communicated in one little nod, because we get it.  We've been there, we are there, we understand each other.

Eating out with kids is torture, but this is different than just eating with kids, and I think it's an important distinction.  Yes, dinner with your kids is not always fun, but it is essential.  There is nothing more important than sitting down with your kids to a meal once a day.  They need that time more than we can ever know.  You need that time with them, to remind you why you love them.  My wife has championed this idea in our house, and it has made a huge difference for us.  Our kids know when it's dinner time it is time to shut off the electronics, sit down and be together.  It happens everyday for about a half hour, but the funny thing is that dinner time for us usually leads into after dinner which is usually in the front room where we continue to be together, and that seems to be the most important thing, more than what you're eating or where it came from, so while I poke fun at eating out with kids in this post, by no means am I saying you should not eat with your kids at home. Nothing could be more important.

I am saying that, as well as Cafe Rio gift cards always make the perfect gift for any occasion, or if you just want to give a gift because you feel my pain.