All parents know how it feels when your toddler suddenly throws a fit in public.
Clint Edwards also experienced the same problem of parenting when he, his wife and three children were trying to have a casual dinner.
While eating at Red Robins, their 2-year-old daughter started to scream because “mom wouldn’t let her throw chicken strips.”
The screaming and kicking forced Edwards to keep himself calm from all the angry stares of childless diners as he took his daughter out.
He took to Facebook to write a message to people who do not have kids. He also shared a photo saying: “I’m stuck in the van with my toddler… since I was the only one finished with my meal, I had the pleasure of dragging her out of Red Robin.”
He addressed the looks of others that seemed to say: “if you can’t control your kid, then don’t go out.’” “Well… no. I can’t control her.”
“She’s two and it’s going to take years to teach her how to act appropriately in public,” Edwards wrote. “The only way I am ever going to teach that is to take her out and show her what’s right and wrong.”
He said that those same annoying diners at the bar were also a part of a learning process. “These lessons take patience, hard work, and real world experiences, and I’m sorry to those at the bar who got irritated by my child’s fit, but you are part of this practice.
“Your parents did the same with you, and that’s how you now know how to recognize when a child does something irritating in a restaurant. It’s how you learned to look at a situation and say, “That parent needs to control their kids. It’s how you learned to be a respectable person.”
This father admitted that he used to be that person who got irritated and complained about wailing kids. Now, he wishes he could return to the past and tell himself about the ‘realities of parenting.’
“I get it. Kids are irritating when they are loud in a restaurant,” he wrote on Facebook.
“But before you get angry and judgmental, realize that what you are witnessing is not bad parenting, but rather parents working hard to fix the situation.”
He added: “You are looking at what it takes to turn a child into a person.”
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