New parents want to be a ‘coloring book family’ in restaurants

Podcast host Dave Neal and his wife, Tasha Courtney, are new parents, enjoying the newborn stage and posting about it on social media as they experience all the joy their 8-week-old son, August, is bringing to their lives. But one of their recent videos sparked a little backlash.

“I don’t mean to ruffle feathers with the moms of Instagram—or the dads,” Neal began in his now-viral video, which he shot while he and Courtney were eating out at a restaurant.

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“I have that opinion that if you let your kid use a tablet or a screen while out to dinner, you’re not a bad parent, but it’s bad parenting,” he continued. He then panned the camera to Courtney, who was nursing August under a cover in the background, and asked her, “Thoughts?”

Before she could answer, he added, “Now, we’re only eight weeks into the parenting game, so we can be very cocky, but…”

As he trailed off, Courtney weighed in, “I think I want us to be a coloring book family.”

“We’re going to be a coloring book family,” Neal confirmed.

Courtney added, “I had to color on the tablecloth when we went out.”

In the comments, though, other parents got a kick out of the naivete of these newbies thinking they have the whole thing figured out.

“Give it 10 years and you’ll be mourning the ideal parent you thought you’d be, too,” one wrote. Ain’t that the truth.

Another added, “If you have the mental toughness to exist in a restaurant with young ones squirming and crying then you should be fine. If you can’t handle the looks and pressure from other people, welcome to the bad parenting club!”

“Come back in 18 months and tell me how that’s working out for ya,” another commenter said.

“Lol. You’re a newbie. You got no clue what’s coming my guy,” yet another commenter wrote.

Can we all just accept the whole ‘iPads in restaurants’ thing, please?

It’s a thing. Period. Many, many parents have relied on technology as a distraction for young kids when out in public—specifically in restaurants. You don’t have to love it. Heck, you don’t even have to do it yourself! Be a “coloring book family” if you want to. Be both, even. The point is, we need to stop judging how other people parent when it doesn’t directly impact or harm anyone.

If you occasionally prop your phone against a bottle of ketchup and let YouTube Kids (quietly) play while your young kids watch it for a bit, you’re not engaging in “bad parenting.” You’re doing what you need to do to enjoy a meal outside of your house with your partner/friend/relative as well as your kids. If they need 10 minutes of Daniel Tiger to not dump 30 packets of Splenda on the table or shoot spitballs at each other through straws, so be it.

Before we’re parents, we all have ideas of grandeur on how we’re going to raise our children. (Raise your hand if you thought you’d “never make separate meals” for your kids at dinnertime, for example.) And when we’re newbies at the whole parenting thing, we don’t know it all. (Like, for example, the requisite crayons and placemat combo many restaurants hand out to families with kids only sustains our kids for so long.)

Before you know it, your kids will relish going out to dinner with you and will regale you with their own stories, jokes, and “how was your day?” tidbits and won’t need Ms. Rachel to calm them down.

Maybe Neal and Courtney will stick to coloring books—but years of experience and the desire for a quiet meal makes many parents give in to iPads, and that’s OK too.