How To Shun Children From The Dinner Table (And Why the Kiddie Table is Dead)

Photo via yumamom.com

We’ve all heard and talked about the possibility of baby taxes in restaurants, straight banning tots from restaurants and bars altogether, and kids just being annoying in general whenever we adults are trying to eat, drink or breathe. But we’ve now hit a whole new level, and it was only a matter of time before someone brought it up: kids being banned from private dinners at home.

Since parents can be easily offended if you publicly “shun” their kids, Gourmet wrote a lovely article on how to politely ban children from adult dinner parties.

Here's an excerpt:

As a host, there are a few steps you can take to ease the path to adults-only dinner parties.

Start the gathering at an adult hour, like 8 p.m., when younger children will have already gone to bed. Not only does this send the signal that the evening is intended for adults, but it makes things easier on parents by not asking them to miss out on time with their children.

Vary things up. If you intersperse adults-only events with ones that include children—think lunches, brunches, picnics, and barbecues—it will go a long way toward preventing your friends from feeling that you don’t like their kids.

Lastly, be reasonable. If you’re inviting a person with a 6-week-old baby, you can’t reasonably expect them to chuck the child with a babysitter. You should assume any child under the age of 3 months is functionally inseparable from his or her parents, so either don’t extend an invitation to those friends or accept the baby’s presence with open arms.

Though I agree with Gothamist when they say how funny it is that Gourmet compares children to drunks ("Bringing a child unannounced to a dinner party is not unlike arriving with an uninvited, intoxicated guest in tow."), I find it AMAZING that nobody has commented on the part of the article (right at the beginning, can't miss it) where some asshole parent arriving to the dinner lets his or her kid ring the doorbell a million times simply because “he likes doorbells...” What?! That is exactly the problem right there: shitty parenting.

Now, I don’t have kids and am not a huge fan of them being around during eating and drinking functions anyway, so if you asked me to make a choice I’d totally ban them. However, I still can’t help but ask, could it be possible that the reason kids are becoming so outrageously intolerable at dinner is because parents are just getting shittier?

I grew up in a family where, at every dinner that included more than the immediate family, there was a “kiddie table.” Being that children have no decency, kiddie tables are meant to separate them from the civilized adult conversation so they don’t interrupt or have to be dealt with. It was as simple as that.

This leads me to believe that either nobody has heard of a kiddie table/section recently, or the children are so obnoxious and out of control that the sheer act of having them in the building ruins the night. We shouldn’t be talking about how to politely make sure we don’t hurt the parents’ feelings in telling them the kids aren’t invited, we should be saying what everyone’s thinking and tell the parents the truth: your kid isn't invited because you've raised an asshole. And you’re not doing the parent any favors by sugar coating life for them. If you don’t tell the truth they’ll never learn!

So, to this particular parent and any others like this (I’ve heard it said about elevator buttons too, you bastards): If you’re gonna say “Sorry, he likes doorbells,” you might as well just say, “Sorry, I’m raising an asshole.” Get your shit together, because you're KILLING the KIDDIE TABLE.