The best form of birth control is other people’s children.
On FM 107 yesterday, they talked about the Chicago bakery that has posted a sign stating that “children of all ages have to behave and use their indoor voices when coming to A Taste of Heaven.”
My opinion on the subject is something along these lines:
Listen: If your kid cannot behave in public and use an inside voice, you should not be taking the kid to small, cozy cafes. Period. If the parent does have such a kid who cannot behave and that parent wants to go to said cafe, it’s called a babysitter.
What I don’t get is how the parents of the screaming kids in question say kids are gonna scream because that’s what kids do and they just want to enjoy themselves. I can see with babies how sometimes you can’t just calm ‘em down. I know that when that happens it can be a frustrating and sometimes embarrassing situation for parents. But how the hell can the parents enjoy themselves while their kids are screaming?
My personal favorite is when the kids are running around, and the parents are yelling across the room telling them to stop. Not going after them or anything. Just yelling.
Also in the NYT article, there’s this:
Menus at Zumbro Cafe in Minneapolis say: “We love children, especially when they’re tucked into chairs and behaving,” which Barbara Daenzer said she read as an invitation to cease her weekly breakfast visits after her son was born.
Now, I’ve never been to Zumbro Cafe, so I have no clue as to what the atmosphere is like, or how it might be different now compared to how it may have been before that suggestion was explicitly made on the menu. The City Pages Dish Dining Guide describes it as kid-friendly.
Thoughts on Zumbro as a kid-friendly place? Or any other spots around town? For some reason, my mind automatically pictures the Sunday breakfast scenario. Louisiana Cafe has a separate backroom and I’ve done Sunday breakfast in the backroom. All the groups with kids get put there.
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The Zumbro Cafe in Minneapolis is an intimate breakfast cafe. It is kid-tolerant but not kid-friendly. The description on the menu sums it up beautifully - which means if you have kids that sit and converse in appropriate tones or draw quietly, they’re quite welcome. Otherwise, don’t bring them. I think patrons get the message. We have two kids and we’re not offended at all by the note on the menu; in fact we appreciate it.