WIMPY: Grim. No booze.

Eating Out With Children

Karen Milford
Aug 8, 2017 · 6 min read

Sometimes, because we are normal humans, my husband and I like to Eat Out. The Best Case Scenario is to get a babysitter and then catch an Uber to somewhere nice with a menu that isn’t laminated in thick plastic, that has no sticky bottles of All Gold on the tables, and that has a wine list that doesn’t make me think of Happy Hour at an Old Age Home. When we eat out at these places we wear nice clothes that might even be white and I wear a bit of makeup and we eat a few courses, slowly and thoughtfully, our hands full of cutlery and wine glasses and nice linen napkins. Maybe we meet some adult friends there who also got a babysitter for the night, or maybe don’t even have children, and we have a proper conversation where we take turns to say things and listen to each other talk. Often we even get a little bit happy-tipsy, we laugh at each other’s jokes and we leave the restaurant holding hands, and go home in another Uber and we thank the babysitter so much and tell her we’ll do an EFT tomorrow. This, like I said, is Best Case Scenario.

The babysitter, however, doesn’t live in our basement and so isn’t available 24/7, and she’s also not the cheapest thing one can spend one’s money on. Also our children are supposed to be Citizens of the World and so sometimes we have to take them to Eat Out with us.

We must then settle for a Distant Second Best Case Scenario*: a meal at a kid friendly place with other people whose kids will hopefully amuse our kids. Or, worse, Third Best Case Scenario: a meal at a place that isn’t completely kid unfriendly, usually on our own with no other kids to entertain our kids. There is also a Very Worst Case Scenario that involves having to take the dog with, but we only resort to this in the extreme family-plus-pet-holiday situation and it’s very stressful because she likes to growl at waiters even after they bring her a nice bowl of cool water.

Anyway, we fairly often find ourselves in the Second and Third Best Case Scenarios. The general rule is that the more kid-friendly a place is, the worse the food is, and the worse the wine is. Like at a place with an outside area with a bit of a rockery we’re talking maybe the Tall Horse with the blue label, but if there’s a sandpit and a jungle gym you’re looking at Overmeer from a box. Actually at kid-friendly restaurants it’s better just to buy SAB beer, and if you’re lucky this will be available to purchase in bulk in something called a Beer Tower.

The thing that makes Eating Out with a kid so stressful is that small kids really don’t seem to like eating out. Specifically they don’t like the part where they have to sit at a table and eat something that isn’t Woollies Fish Fingers. Restaurants are aware of this, so they try to mitigate your child’s pain by providing them with crayons and papers to draw on, and they try to come up with creative kids menus that provide meals that look like Woollies Fish Fingers but are ‘home made’ so that the parents getting stuck into the Beer Tower or the Overmeer aren’t too irritated about dropping fifty ZARs on it.


When I was in my first maternity leave I read a book all about how perfect French children are. I shan’t mention the book’s name because I don’t want you to be tempted to read it and the pack of lies it contains, but the first chapter was called ‘French Children Don’t Throw Their Food’. Not only do they not throw their food, this book said, they are always perfectly appropriately behaved in public generally, and when they’re Eating Out, specifically. Basically French children are born knowing how to behave like adults.

French children, for example, allegedly never whine that they don’t like the pictures in the colouring book provided, they never shriek hysterically when their sibling wants just one little crayon, they never flip the tub of crayons onto the floor out of pure spite. Little French toddlers don’t lie down on the ground and wail because they are enraged by all the things that they are not allowed to have (the knives, the forks, the salt and pepper shakers, the sugar sachets, any of the glassware, the stompies). They don’t find it impossible to sit still at the table, they don’t elect to rather stumble around the rockery like drunken gnomes, or try to climb the decorative statues or splash in the decorative fountains. They certainly never ever fling their ice cream because they are so frustrated about not being able to feed it to themselves, and their parents never have to go to neighbouring tables proffering wet wipes so that the patrons there can wipe the flung ice cream off of their shoes.

I guess French parents, because they have perfect French children, just love Eating Out, even when it’s not the Best Case Scenario. They probably actually look at each other and talk to each other, instead of constantly tracking their offspring with their eyes and yelling ‘Leo no!’ or ‘Max come away from there!’ every thirty seconds. They probably aren’t feeling sad about how bad the wine is and vaguely ashamed of themselves for drinking it anyway (because there is no bad wine in France). Because they’re not barking cautions at their children all the time their brains are probably not on autopilot, wondering if they’re even capable of having an uninterrupted conversation that isn’t about children and schools and milestones and whose turn it is to go to the next kids’ party anymore. Their brains don’t wander from there to when last they read a book in peace and quiet and also when last they actually had sex and then to when last their partner even paid them a compliment and then to whether or not they actually deserve compliments, for that matter, what with the post-baby boob-sag, the constant mom-bun, the seemingly unstoppable bum-spread. When French families are Eating Out it’s all clinking wine glasses and happy laughs and things never get dark inside their heads like that.

French parents are never super-relieved to get the bill, they’re never shovelling leftover pineapple pizza into their faces while they wait for the credit card machine to come. They never discover congealed All Gold in their hair when they get home. They never promise themselves that they’re not taking the kids Eating Out again until they turn 21.


I know, you’re thinking, all this moaning, all this complaining: just quit with the Eating Out unless the babysitter’s around, get an UberEats for a treat if she’s not. Learn to control your kids. Get a grip. We’re just normal humans living in the real world though, and so we want to do normal things like take our offspring to a restaurant, because this is a thing they’ll have to do one day when they’re normal adults. So we persevere, we load up the car, we offload the screamers, we order the chicken strips and threaten them with No Pudding. What else are we to do? It’ll get better eventually, right?


*There is actually one place we like to go that is nice: it’s called The Table at De Meye and it has a nice big lawn for the children to run around on, the food is great (and you don’t have to order some extra thing you know the kids won’t eat — they can just snack on yours) and the wine is perfect. Obviously it’s best when the weather is good and you have to book far in advance and it really is always best to go with other people with children.

The Baby Test

Or, learning to be a parent. There are a million textbooks, but no right answers.

Karen Milford

Written by

State doctor, mom-in-training. Bad runner. Fiction reader. Occasional cook. Dog and cat owner.

The Baby Test

Or, learning to be a parent. There are a million textbooks, but no right answers.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade