This dad's restaurant 'incident' is all of us when out with the kids

If you have ever had the joy of taking the kids to a restaurant, you've no doubt had the pleasure of taking them out of said restaurant usually kicking and screaming.

Whether it's because you wouldn't let them eat the ketchup with a spoon or they wanted dessert before dinner, kids and restaurants don't go hand in hand – something this dad knows about all too well.

Dad-of-three Clint Edwards was out for dinner with his wife, Mel, and kids – Norah, Tristan and Aspen, recently, but the meal did not quite go according to plan.

In fact, Clint had to leave the restaurant early because two-year-old Aspen was giving out that her mum wouldn't let her throw her chicken nuggets.

However, it wasn't the having to leave bit that riled the daddy blogger up, it was the stares he had to endure as he walked out the door. 

"We went out to dinner as a family, and she had a meltdown because mom wouldn't let her throw chicken strips. So she screamed, and screamed, and kicked and kicked, and since I was the only one finished with my meal, I had the pleasure of dragging her out of Red Robin," he wrote on his Facebook page. 

"I carried her past the bar and everyone stared at me, most of them childless, I assumed. No one with children would give me that straight faced, lip twisted, look that seems to say, "if you can't control your kid, then don't go out.

"Well… no. I can't control her. Not all the time. Not yet.

"She's two and it's going to take years to teach her how to act appropriately in public, and the only way I am ever going to teach that is to take her out and show her what's right and wrong. By saying no a million times, letting her throw a fit, and telling her no again."

Apologising to those he passed on his way out of the diner, he urged those who have never been in a similar situation to not pass judgement. 

"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 [sic]," he continued.

"Your parents did the same with you, and that’s how you now know how to recognise 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.

"I get it. Kids are irritating when they are loud in a restaurant. I know. I’m living it. But before you get angry and judgmental, realise that what you are witnessing is not bad parenting, but rather, parents working hard to fix the situation.

"You are looking at what it takes to turn a child into a person."

And his Facebook followers were quick to share their own experiences:

"Not just toddlers. We are trying to teach our mentally disabled seven-year-old who is mentally three-years-old how to behave in a restaurant. I get the rude stares and the horrible comments about my parenting. Like I don't have a hard enough time at the moment someone thinks it's OK to put in their two cents. What we all parents need is support, understanding and patients," wrote one. 

Another said: "I'm impressed you got the straps on her in the car seat. That can be so hard for me when my two year old son loses it. I've hurt my back more than once, gee they're strong! Thanks for your post, it's so hard sometimes."