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<DIV><SPAN class=109495915-14112005><FONT face=Arial>Thanks for the article,
Ellen! It's about time someone recognized this as an issue and wrote about it in
a newspaper. I think it's great that some business owners are taking a step
forward to making shopping and going out a more pleasant experience. I get
frustrated when I, as another patron, feel like I have to be someone else's
child's disciplinarian.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=109495915-14112005><FONT face=Arial></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=109495915-14112005><FONT face=Arial>What so many of these
parents don't understand is that their lack of control of their children in
their private lives is not an excuse to allow it in their public lives. I
have season tickets to the Eagles Hockey Games with regular seats.
Unluckily, the family behind me has season tickets, too. Their young children
sit there and swing their feet incessantly and kick the back of my chair. The
girl has even kicked me in the head. At that point, I turn around and look at
the child, and she looks at me challengingly. Not until I eventually look at the
mother, does she finally tell her daughter that "that's not
nice."</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=109495915-14112005><FONT face=Arial></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=109495915-14112005><FONT face=Arial>With many other instances
of this kind, I have to wonder if the true issue is not that the parents are
"afraid" to take control of/discipline their children in public, but that they
just don't care. If you dare to say something to them sometimes, the parent
challenges US as if we're to blame! If they're just tired and worn out from 24
hours a day of keeping up with their kids, why subject us to it? Get a
babysitter if you can't handle your children, and join the rest of the world in
a quiet, relaxing dinner out (or a wild, fun time at a hockey game...but leave
the kicking, screaming, and fighting to the guys on the
ice).</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=109495915-14112005><FONT face=Arial></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=109495915-14112005><FONT face=Arial>Chalyn</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
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<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=en-us dir=ltr align=left><FONT
face=Tahoma size=2>-----Original Message-----<BR><B>From:</B>
childfree-bounces@lists.robsims.com
[mailto:childfree-bounces@lists.robsims.com] <B>On Behalf Of </B>Ellen
Nedzel<BR><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, November 13, 2005 4:10 PM<BR><B>To:</B> Derrick
Nedzel; childfree@lists.robsims.com; denver-nokidding@yahoogroups.com; Jerry
Padbury<BR><B>Subject:</B> [Childfree] Fwd: article, At Center of a
Clash,Rowdy Children in Coffee Shops<BR><BR></FONT></DIV>
<DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=replbq
style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid">>
November 9, 2005<BR>> At Center of a Clash, Rowdy Children in Coffee
Shops<BR>> By JODI WILGOREN<BR>><BR>> CHICAGO, Nov. 8 - Bridget
Dehl shushed her<BR>> 21-month-old son, Gavin, then clapped a hand over
his<BR>> mouth to squelch his tiny screams amid the Sunday<BR>> brunch
bustle. When Gavin kept yelping "yeah, yeah,<BR>> yeah," Ms. Dehl whisked
him from his highchair and out<BR>> the door.<BR>><BR>> Right past
the sign warning the cafe's customers that<BR>> "children of all ages
have to behave and use their<BR>> indoor voices when coming to A Taste of
Heaven," and<BR>> right into a nasty spat roiling the stroller set
in<BR>> Chicago's changing Andersonville neighborhood.<BR>><BR>>
The owner of A Taste of Heaven, Dan McCauley, said he<BR>> posted the
sign - at child level, with playful<BR>> handprints - in the hope of
quieting his tin-ceilinged<BR>> cafe, where toddlers have been known to
sprawl between<BR>> tables and hurl themselves at display cases for
sport.<BR>><BR>> But many neighborhood mothers took umbrage at
the<BR>> implied criticism of how they handle their children.<BR>>
Soon, whispers of a boycott passed among the<BR>> playgroups in this
North Side neighborhood, once an<BR>> outpost of avant-garde artists and
hip gay couples but<BR>> now a hot real estate market for young
professional<BR>> families shunning the suburbs.<BR>><BR>> "I love
people who don't have children who tell you<BR>> how to parent," said
Alison Miller, 35, a<BR>> psychologist, corporate coach and mother of
two. "I'd<BR>> love for him to be responsible for three children
for<BR>> the next year and see if he can control the volume of<BR>>
their voices every minute of the day."<BR>><BR>> Mr. McCauley, 44,
said the protesting parents were<BR>> "former cheerleaders and beauty
queens" who "have a<BR>> very strong sense of entitlement." In an open
letter<BR>> he handed out at the bakery, he warned of an<BR>>
"epidemic" of antisocial behavior.<BR>><BR>> "Part of parenting skills
is teaching kids they behave<BR>> differently in a restaurant than they
do on the<BR>> playground," Mr. McCauley said in an interview.
"If<BR>> you send out positive energy, positive energy returns<BR>> to
you. If you send out energy that says I'm the only<BR>> one that matters,
it's going to be a pretty chaotic<BR>> world."<BR>><BR>> And so
simmers another skirmish between the childless<BR>> and the
child-centered, a culture clash increasingly<BR>> common in restaurants
and other public spaces as a new<BR>> generation of busy, older, well-off
parents ferry<BR>> little ones with them.<BR>><BR>> An online
petition urging child-free sections in North<BR>> Carolina restaurants
drew hundreds of signers,<BR>> including Janelle Funk, who wrote,
"Whenever a hostess<BR>> asks me 'smoking or non-smoking?' I respond,
'No<BR>> kids!' "<BR>><BR>> At Mendo Bistro in Fort Bragg, Calif.,
the owners<BR>> declare "Well-behaved children and parents welcome"
to<BR>> try to stop unmonitored youngsters from tap-dancing on<BR>>
the 100-year-old wood floors.<BR>><BR>> Menus at Zumbro Cafe in
Minneapolis say: "We love<BR>> children, especially when they're tucked
into chairs<BR>> and behaving," which Barbara Daenzer said she read
as<BR>> an invitation to cease her weekly breakfast visits<BR>> after
her son was born.<BR>><BR>> Even at the Full Moon in Cambridge, Mass.,
a cafe<BR>> created for families, with a train table, a dollhouse<BR>>
and a plastic kitchen in a carpeted play area, there<BR>> are rules about
inside voices and a "No lifeguard on<BR>> duty" sign to remind parents to
take responsibility.<BR>><BR>> "You run the risk when you start
monitoring behavior,"<BR>> said the Full Moon's owner, Sarah Wheaton.
"You can<BR>> say no cellphones to people, but you can't say your<BR>>
father speaks too loudly, he has to keep his voice<BR>> down. And you
can't really say your toddler is too<BR>> loud when she's
eating."<BR>><BR>> Here in Chicago, parents have denounced Toast,
a<BR>> popular Lincoln Park breakfast spot, as unwelcoming<BR>> since
a note about using inside voices appeared on the<BR>> menu six months
ago. The owner of John's Place, which<BR>> resembles a kindergarten class
at recess in early<BR>> evening, established a separate "family friendly"
room<BR>> a year ago, only to face parental threats of
lawsuits.<BR>><BR>> Many of the Andersonville mothers who are
boycotting<BR>> Mr. McCauley's bakery also skip story time at
Women<BR>> and Children First, a feminist bookstore, because of<BR>>
the rules: children are asked not to stand, talk or<BR>> sip
drinks.<BR>><BR>> When a retail clerk at another neighborhood
store<BR>> asked a woman to stop breast-feeding last spring, "the<BR>>
neighborhood set him straight real fast," said Mary<BR>> Ann Smith, the
area's alderwoman.<BR>><BR>> After a dozen years at one site, Mr.
McCauley moved A<BR>> Taste of Heaven six blocks away in May 2004, to a
busy<BR>> corner on Clark Street. But there, he said, teachers<BR>>
and writers seeking afternoon refuge were drowned out<BR>> not just by
children running amok but also by<BR>> oblivious cellphone
chatterers.<BR>><BR>> Children were climbing the cafe's poles. A
couple were<BR>> blithely reading the newspaper while their
daughter<BR>> lay on the floor blocking the line for coffee. When<BR>>
the family whose children were running across the room<BR>> to throw
themselves against the display cases left<BR>> after his admonishment,
Mr. McCauley recalled, the<BR>> restaurant erupted in
applause.<BR>><BR>> So he put up the sign. Then things really got
ugly.<BR>><BR>> "The looks I would get when I went in there made me
so<BR>> nervous that I would try to buy the food as fast as I<BR>>
could and get out," said Laura Brauer, 40, who has<BR>> stopped visiting
A Taste of Heaven with her two<BR>> children. "I think that the mothers
who allow their<BR>> kids to run around and scream, that's wrong, but
kids<BR>> scream and there is nothing you can do about it. What<BR>>
are we supposed to do, not enjoy ourselves at a cafe?"<BR>><BR>> Ms.
Miller said that one day when her son, then 4<BR>> months old, was
fussing, a staff member rolled her<BR>> eyes and announced for all to
hear, "We've got a<BR>> screamer!"<BR>><BR>> Kim Cavitt recalled
having coffee and a cookie one<BR>> afternoon with her boisterous
2-year-old when "someone<BR>> came over and said you just need to keep
her quiet or<BR>> you need to leave."<BR>><BR>> "We left, and we
haven't been back since," Ms. Cavitt<BR>> said. "You go to a coffee shop
or a bakery for a rest,<BR>> to relax, and that you would have to worry
the whole<BR>> time about your child doing something that children
do<BR>> - really what they're saying is they don't welcome<BR>>
children, they want the child to behave like an<BR>>
adult."<BR>><BR>> Why suffer such scorn, the mothers said, when
clerks<BR>> at the Swedish Bakery, a neighborhood institution,<BR>>
offer children - calm or crying - free cookies? Why<BR>> confront such
criticism when the recently opened Sweet<BR>> Occasions, a five-minute
walk down Clark Street,<BR>> designed the restroom aisle to accommodate
double<BR>> strollers and offers a child-size ice cream cone for<BR>>
$1.50? (At A Taste of Heaven, the smallest is $3.75.)<BR>><BR>> "It's
his business; he has the right to put whatever<BR>> sign he wants on the
door," Ms. Miller said. "And<BR>> people have the right to respond to
that sign however<BR>> they want."<BR>><BR>> Mr. McCauley said he
had received kudos from several<BR>> restaurant owners in the area,
though none had<BR>> followed his lead. He has certainly lost
customers<BR>> because of the sign, but some parents say the
offense<BR>> is outweighed by their addiction to the scones, and<BR>>
others embrace the effort at etiquette.<BR>><BR>> "The litmus test for
me is if they have highchairs or<BR>> not," said Ms. Dehl, the woman who
scooped her<BR>> screaming son from his seat during brunch, as
she<BR>> waited out his restlessness on a sidewalk bench. "The<BR>>
fact that they had one highchair, and the fact that<BR>> he's the only
child in the restaurant is an indication<BR>> that it's an adult place,
and if he's going to do his<BR>> toddler thing, we should take him out
and let him run<BR>> around."<BR>><BR>> Mr. McCauley said he would
rather go out of business<BR>> than back down. He likens this one small
step toward<BR>> good manners to his personal effort to decrease<BR>>
pollution by hiring only people who live close enough<BR>> to walk to
work.<BR>><BR>> "I can't change the situation in Iraq, I can't
change<BR>> the situation in New Orleans," he said. "But I can<BR>>
change this little corner of the world."<BR>><BR>> Gretchen Ruethling
contributed reporting for this<BR>> article.<BR>><BR>> Because of
an editing error, an article on Wednesday<BR>> about rules for children
and parents in restaurants<BR>> and other businesses misstated the site
of an incident<BR>> in which a woman was asked to stop breast-feeding in
a<BR>> store in Chicago. It was not the Women and Children<BR>> First
bookstore but another business in the<BR>> neighborhood. The article also
misstated the<BR>> bookstore's policy for children who break rules
for<BR>> story time. Parents are asked to take them away from<BR>> the
reading area; the children are not ejected.<BR>><BR>><BR>>
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/09/national/09bakery.html? <BR>>
ex=1131944400&en=f276d61b16497954&ei=5070<BR>><BR><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
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