Monsters at the Restaurant
E. Noel Preston, MD

   Andersonville is an upscale suburb north of Chicago, where a man 
named Dan McCauley has a cafe named A Taste of Heaven. Fed up by 
parents ignoring the bedlam of shrieking kids climbing over his 
furniture and flopping on the floor and blocking his wait staff trying 
to carry trays of hot food and coffee, he posted a small sign at 
kids'-eye level. The sign read "Children of all ages have to behave 
and use their indoor voices when coming to A Taste of Heaven." Some of 
the children's mothers were infuriated and called for a boycott, 
believing the sign implied their children were hellions and that they 
were lousy parents. The story was reported in the Chicago Tribune and 
then picked up by The New York Times. Geraldo Rivera sent a TV crew to 
interview Mr. McCauley, talk radio hosts put angry moms on the air to 
complain about "those people" without kids who were intolerant of 
little children who make noise when they're hungry, and the 
restaurant's business tripled.

   The New York Times quoted one of the mothers participating in the 
boycott as saying "kids scream and there is nothing you can do about 
it. What are we supposed to do, not enjoy ourselves at a cafe?" and 
hundreds of other moms called in to talk radio stations to disagree, 
saying if parents can't control their little monsters, just keep them 
chained in the basement where they belong. Alison Miller, one of the 
other moms quoted in the Times, wrote, "I believe it is my 
responsibility to discipline my children and teach them to have good 
manners and be respectful," and even this relatively mild response to 
Mr. McCauley's sign resulted in Ms. Miller receiving numerous threats 
and insults.

   Meanwhile, back in Andersonville, most parents agreed with Mr.
McCauley. 88% of more than 3,000 respondents to the Chicago Tribune's 
web site said the parents who complained were wrong. 81% of callers to 
WGN-AM said they wished more restaurants would post signs asking 
parents to keep their children quiet. 97% of callers to the Daily 
Herald said they thought McCauley was right to post his sign. One of 
them said "There are many other places to eat and shop, so those of 
you who protest the establishment of behavior norms should pick up 
your misbehaving kids and take them to a place that will welcome you.
The rest of us, who actually parent and try to teach our children how 
to act in public, will enjoy the relative calm created by your 
absence."

   Many years ago when my eldest daughter Caroline was about 20 months 
old, our family went to a California steakhouse for dinner.
After we were seated, Caroline decided she didn't like sitting in her 
high chair and began banging a spoon on the table and yelling at every 
beat. She wouldn't stop when her mom and I told her to quit. And so I 
took Caroline outside to the parking lot and plunked her down on the 
roof of the car. "We are staying here until you be quiet," I told her, 
and we did. When we went back inside, she started howling again, and 
so we turned around and went back to the parking lot. When she finally 
quieted down and we went back inside, she sat in her high chair and 
behaved. Once in a while I see other parents do that with their noisy 
toddlers, but most of the time the parents just try to ignore their 
child's bad behavior and hope it will go away.

A few years ago there was an Italian restaurant on Cheshire Bridge 
Road here in Atlanta named Camille's, and Camille herself was in the 
newspaper once for telling customers who asked for them that she had 
no high chairs and only a few booster chairs. People complained and 
wrote letters to the newspaper's food critic. "What kind of a family 
restaurant is this, that has no high chairs?" they asked, and the food 
critic asked Camille. "It's really quite simple," Camille answered.
"This is not a family restaurant, it's a neighborhood restaurant, and 
we cater to the neighborhood, not to families." And her business 
thrived.

   Flushed with success at how well his sign was received,, Mr.
McCauley didn't quit while he was ahead. He later posted an aggressive 
statement in his cafe that dismissed his critics as "former 
cheerleaders and beauty queens" who "have a strong sense of 
entitlement," and there are regrettably, too many people who are like 
that. My pediatric Registered Nurse, Susan, used to take her ancient 
mixed breed dog Sparky, to Happy Tales, a volunteer pet therapy 
program for hospitalized children. One day an irate parent registered 
a formal complaint -- not against Sparky, but against Susan! The 
child had been playing with Sparky and wanted to know how old the dog 
was, and Susan had carried on a small conversation with the boy. Later 
the mother claimed Susan had "engaged in inappropriate contact" with 
her son, and the hospital asked her and Sparky to leave and not come 
back. And so, some of these "injustice collectors" can make life 
difficult for anyone. But it's natural for parents to take umbrage at 
being criticized. I know that if someone had criticized me for setting 
little Caroline on the roof of the car and telling her we wouldn't go 
back inside the restaurant until she stopped yelling, I would have 
regarded such criticism as intrusive and nobody's business but my own.

   Life is seldom painted in just black and white, and nothing's 
as simple as it looks. There's always another point of view, and one 
of the more thoughtful comments on the Andersonville brouhaha comes 
from a mother in Chicago: "When you have children you lose at least 
some of the ability to come and go as you please. Your freedoms are 
largely in the hands of a small, unpredictable person. And because 
your small person is unpredictable... either you have control over 
their public behavior, or they have control over your ability to go 
where you wish."

   But your freedom to smoke stops at my lung's epithelia, and your 
child's freedom to express himself stops at my restaurant table.
What's wrong with asking a child to speak with an "inside voice,"
inside a nice restaurant, or not to throw crayons across the aisle at 
another table? These horrible restaurant children will eventually grow 
up, and when they do they will be horrible restaurant adults, like the 
ones who take up two spaces when they park their cars, and who keep 
standing right in front of the hostess desk so that other customers 
are not able to ask for a table, and who sit in the middle of the room 
and talk in loud voices on their cell phones, and who laugh by 
throwing their heads back and braying at the rafters so that no one 
else can have a decent conversation, and who block an entire buffet by 
standing at the head of the table and not moving while they taste one 
piece of food after another, and who leave the men's room without flushing the toilet or washing their hands.

   My grandmother had a remark for people like this: The apple 
doesn't fall far from the tree.

(This article was based on other articles published by Eric Zorn, 
John Kass, and Janet Franz of the Chicago Tribune. Read more about 
this subject at www.chicagotribune.com/changeofsubject .)

E. Noel Preston, M.D. is a pediatrician in solo practice in Peachtree Corners. 6063 Peachtree Parkway, Suite 202-A, Norcross. (770) 448-1553. More information can be found at www.PeachtreeCornersPediatrics.com

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