Kids who Live in Glass Houses Shouldn't Throw Tantrums

When my husband and I were celebrating our first anniversary, I was four  months pregnant and we went to Maine for the weekend.  We went out for what we thought may be one of our last romantic dinners, daring to take a 9 p.m. reservation.  

When we arrived, we were seated next to a table of a family celebrating a birthday.  Within minutes we realized romance and quiet talk would be hard to come by as the children in the party were miserable.  

They were exhausted, screaming, crying, no amount of begging and bargaining from their parents, aunts and uncles would help.  

My husband and I sat there, hard-pressed to look away from the madness that was happening next to us and proceeded to do the unspeakable, we judged them. We spent a good deal of our meal analyzing what these fools had done wrong.  

“They don’t have anything to keep the kids busy while they’re waiting for their food”  “Who makes a 9 o’clock dinner reservation when there are little kids involved?”  We vowed to never be the kind of people who took their kids to restaurants late at night.

Years later, vow broken, I sat at a nice restaurant celebrating my mother-in-law’s birthday, at 9 at night with my daughter crying hysterically next to me.  How could this be happening?  I prepared for this!

I staggered all our meals that day, so that no one would be too hungry by the time dinner rolled around. I even scheduled naps, an almost impossible task as my kids are 12 and 6. I double-checked the menu online to make sure that, after waiting all day, there would be something my kids would enjoy eating.  

The fact of the matter was, my daughter was just exhausted, not feeling well and it was too late for her to be at a restaurant.  

After calming her down, I looked up from our table to realize we were getting a few of those looks that we had so carelessly thrown around 12 years ago. Even our waitress made a comment about how she was exhausted and would love to be in bed. I am hip to reading between the lines and quickly translated this to, “Who makes a 9 o’clock dinner reservation when there are little kids involved?”

My dad is a fan of saying, “It’s always easier to raise someone else’s kids.” As with most things my dad said to me in my youth that I rejected, it turns out he’s right.  

It’s so easy to see that mom in Target with the screaming kid in her cart and wonder why she doesn’t just grab the kid and leave. I like to think that maybe this is the only day she can get her shopping done and she isn’t enjoying listening to her kid scream any more than I am, but she just has to get though it and move onto the next task. 

So, to the family we sat next to all those years ago, my apologies, and lesson learned.