Restaurants is a few places where a tablet is a godsend. Children aren't always involved in adults conversations, so they get (obviously) bored at the table. A tablet guarantees some time off to the parents.
Now obviously is a problem if you go to the restaurant often, in our case it's once every few months and having them watching a movie makes going to the restaurant possible again (we waited 6 years before we could)
>Restaurants is a few places where a tablet is a godsend. Children aren't always involved in adults conversations, so they get (obviously) bored at the table. A tablet guarantees some time off to the parents.
as a fellow restaurant patron : I don't care that your kid is bored or if you can't afford a baby-sitter -- what I do care about is listening to the latest baby shark or whatever other youtube-brainrot-babysitter-program blaring near me while I'm trying to eat my linguini.
When I was younger if you brought a loud/obnoxious kid to dinner at a restaurant it was a sign that either you were inexperienced as parents or too poor to afford a baby-sitter (which then raises questions about eating out..), or otherwise didn't give a fuck about appearances or anyone else near you.
Also : not all kids are bored by what adults are doing, and a big part of getting good at those kind of conversations and 'adult actions' later in life is fueled by social mimicry and third party practice; to dismiss all children from such activities by directing their attention towards whatever the closest thing that minimizes parenting time and effort is , imo, likely damaging.
But, at the end of the day I gotta throw my arms up and say "Well, i'm not a parent." -- but it just seems obvious to me as a bystander that this level of forced autonomy and independence for smaller children reduces any chance that a kid will say "Mom, what does that word you just used mean?" and actually learn something from a novel experience. It reduces the amount the kids will read the faces of strangers and make social decisions. It reduces the chance that a kid will make a social faux pas slip and require corrections preventing it in the future.
It does, however, keep a kid busy , often annoying everyone else, while you gossip. I'm not sure that's supposed to be the end goal here.
Fire-Dragon-DoL|1 year ago
Now obviously is a problem if you go to the restaurant often, in our case it's once every few months and having them watching a movie makes going to the restaurant possible again (we waited 6 years before we could)
serf|1 year ago
as a fellow restaurant patron : I don't care that your kid is bored or if you can't afford a baby-sitter -- what I do care about is listening to the latest baby shark or whatever other youtube-brainrot-babysitter-program blaring near me while I'm trying to eat my linguini.
When I was younger if you brought a loud/obnoxious kid to dinner at a restaurant it was a sign that either you were inexperienced as parents or too poor to afford a baby-sitter (which then raises questions about eating out..), or otherwise didn't give a fuck about appearances or anyone else near you.
Also : not all kids are bored by what adults are doing, and a big part of getting good at those kind of conversations and 'adult actions' later in life is fueled by social mimicry and third party practice; to dismiss all children from such activities by directing their attention towards whatever the closest thing that minimizes parenting time and effort is , imo, likely damaging.
But, at the end of the day I gotta throw my arms up and say "Well, i'm not a parent." -- but it just seems obvious to me as a bystander that this level of forced autonomy and independence for smaller children reduces any chance that a kid will say "Mom, what does that word you just used mean?" and actually learn something from a novel experience. It reduces the amount the kids will read the faces of strangers and make social decisions. It reduces the chance that a kid will make a social faux pas slip and require corrections preventing it in the future.
It does, however, keep a kid busy , often annoying everyone else, while you gossip. I'm not sure that's supposed to be the end goal here.
mercurialuser|1 year ago
We used to bring paper and pen to have them draw.