HELP! What can I do when DD throws a tantrum in a restaurant??

[karolyp]

Saturday morning DH and I took DD out to what we thought would be a nice family breakfast. Needless to say, she threw a fit, we couldn’t calm her down, everyone stared at us, and we left shortly afterwards.

Come last night, Sunday night, I had dinner with my dad. With Saturday morning memories fresh in my head, we decided to go to one of those Japanese steakhouse places thinking that DD would be entertained by the cook. But yet again, she threw a fit, everyone stared, and finally my dad took her out while I ate and then we switched places once I finished.

Now I’m fearing that she’s learned if she can scream, she’ll get whatever she wants. I would let her scream if we were out in public, say shopping. But what can I do in a restaurant? Crayons only entertain for a short period of time (kwim)...

[kristenk]

Honestly, we hit certain ages where DD just wasn't good at restaurants. We'd stay away for awhile and then try again to see if we could do restaurants as a family. NOTE: We normally eat out a lot, so staying home was not something we liked doing, but it really was necessary for our sanity and the ears of those around us.

I don't know how you feel about toys at the table, but taking along restaurant-only toys is great. We have some Playmobil people that DD can play with (okay, we all play with them) at restaurants under supervision that we wouldn't have let her play with otherwise. Also, DD isn't all that fond of the crayons a lot of restaurants give out, but she loves pens and pencils, so we're well stocked with those.

We try to go at off times so there aren't as many people and so our food arrives faster. We tried to keep her out of her highchair until the food actually arrived. She'd tire of the highchair fairly quickly, so we tried to save it for when we really needed it. Sometimes, one of us would walk around with her before the food arrived to minimize time at the table. Going to wash hands is always a good thing as long as you do it AFTER you order food. Try to order drinks and food at the same time b/c sometimes servers disappear on you. If all that fails, just give it time. It'll get better and worse and better as she gets older. Seeing older children sitting in their chairs happily eating their food always makes me feel like this won't last forever!

[californiagirl]

My first concern would be to figure out why she's screaming. Is it boredom? Is it overstimulation? Does she want to go outside because it's more interesting or because it's cooler and quieter? (It's usually pretty easy to tell; if she calms down if you go outside and stand still looking at a wall, until she gets bored, she was overstimulated.)

Boredom is usually relatively easy to fix. Crayons don't cut it for long, sometimes a pen helps, or a book, or a magnadoodle, or small toys, or some food. Overstimulation is harder; picking quiet restaurants and quiet parts of them can help. If it's not too bad, going out and coming back can help. But you may need to accept that she's really genuinely miserable in noisy (flashy, smelly) places and you need to help her extend her tolerance slowly, not trying to do "fun" restaurants for any length of time.

DD doesn't tend to have a problem, but one of our friends has a DS who had big overstimulation issues. He's now usually capable of spending an entire meal in a restaurant (but he's 3.5). At 18 months, he was not really capable of tolerating a noisy restaurant at all.

[nfowife]

I agree with Kristen, we've also hit the age in the past few weeks where DD doesn't throw a huge fit, but it just ain't fun eating out with her. So, we've been ordering in from restaurants a lot more. Hopefully this will pass and we can go back to eating at our favorite places as a family!

[raynjen]

We would take my daughter somewhere extrememly boring where she couldn't bother the other patrons. Usually this was the bathroom, or the little hallway that the bathrooms were off of. There we treated the fit the same way we would at home - we ignored it (as much as you can ignore a fit in a loud enclosed space). When she started acting up (before she got too loud) one of us would say, "oops looks like you need a little quiet time!" in a cheerful voice and whisk her away. When she was done with her tantrum we would say, "are you ready to go back?" and head back for the table. Of course, like the other posters said, the table needs to be a more interesting place than the place you take her. Outside the restaurant doesn't usually work because it is so interesting with people coming or going. Inside the car works in a pinch if there was nothing indoors. We really only had to do this like 5 times. About 3 times to "break" the habit and then twice when she was checking later on down the road (hey, do mom and dad still care about this - oh yeah, they do!) Now we can just ask her (if she starts getting a little whiny), "oh, do you need to have a little quiet time?"

Jen in Wichita
Mom to my beautiful little daughter, Noelle!

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