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Sometimes parents are the ones who need the reprimanding — not the children.
A thoughtless family that left behind a disgusting mess after dining at a restaurant has sparked a massive online debate about disciplining children in public.
Shared in a recent viral post on threads, alongside an image of a booth filled with massive piles of crumbled napkins, dirty plates, half-sipped drinks, and food thrown all over the floor surrounding a highchair, text read: “If you take your kids out to dinner and they make a mess… that’s YOUR job to clean it.”
“Yes, I said it. Servers are there to take your order, bring your food, refill your drinks… not scrape smashed mac & cheese off the floor and pick up handfuls of fries thrown like confetti. Accidents happen. I get it. Spills happen. Totally different story. But letting your child destroy a table and walking out like it’s someone else’s problem? That’s not cute,” the post continued.
It’s unknown who shared the image, whether it was a restaurant worker or another customer, but it stirred up a larger conversation about misbehaved children and parents not doing anything about it.
“…teach your kid some g——ned table manners BEFORE you take them out. Table manners are so weirdly under valued these days I hate it. Respect the table, respect the meal, respect the staff,” wrote one disgruntled commenter.
“That’s multiple generations of parents not teaching their children how to act in public,” chimed in someone else.
“Or train your kids to NOT make a mess or eat like humans. Not animals,” read another grumpy comment.
“I agree. We went to lunch with this young couple who had a toddler in a high chair. S*** fell all over the floor and the mother was like ‘et them clean it that’s their job.’ Excuse me? I just bent down myself and picked the shit up. Really pissed me off. So disrespectful,” quipped someone else.
“And they wonder why people want the option of child free places. Parents missed their own manners,” another commenter wrote.
This commenter isn’t wrong about more and more people demanding childfree places as of late.
Dominique Bird, a 31-year-old Austin resident, who is “childfree by choice,” took to social media to share an experience that made her wish child-free businesses were more normalized.
“Parents don’t know how to act sometimes,” she said in a TikTok video with over 200,000 views. Bird explained how she was out with a friend for afternoon tea.
“We’re sitting there…we’re having a great time. A family walks in with probably a 2 or 2.5-year-old child and within seconds of walking in, she [the toddler] vomits everywhere,” the 31-year-old recalled.
“Instead of picking her up to take her outside, the mom slowly leads her by the hand towards the door, and the girl spews vomit all over the door, the floor. Then they left. No, they didn’t clean up first,” she angrily explained.
Bird explained how the parents left without cleaning up their toddler’s mess.
