Diners Deliver Nasty Note About 10-Month-Old 'Ruining’ Their Dinner

A mother who took her 10-month-old to a restaurant received a nasty note from fellow diners who didn’t appreciate her son’s company during dinner.

Katie Leach was eating at a Texas Roadhouse in Idaho with her family on Saturday, and brought along her young son, Drew. “His new thing is yelling. He honestly sounds like a [Pterodactyl] kind of dinosaur,” Leach wrote on a Facebook message posted to the KTVB Facebook page. “He will yell when I tell him no, when he’s super excited and happy or just for no reason at all. I’m doing my best to teach him indoor voice and to not yell back at me when telling him no, etc. But he is only 10 (almost 11 months) and LEARNING.”

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Leach wrote that her family chose Texas Roadhouse because it’s a loud, family-friendly restaurant, so even though Drew yelled from time to time, she didn’t think it was bothering anyone. “We all tried quieting him down which a majority of the time he did but he also was so excited to be around all the commotion. He was not yelling to be mean or because he was mad, it was purely from excitement and being happy,” she said. “Not ONE TIME did we get any angry stares from people to quiet him down or anything like that.”

Diners at an Idaho restaurant left this note for a mother whose baby was yelling during their meal. (Photo: Facebook/Katie Leach)

Not until she’d been served her meal, that is. Shortly after Leach’s family started eating, she says a woman seated nearby approached her table. “There were little pink flyers on each table,” she explained in the Facebook post. “The [woman] sitting directly behind me got up [and] slammed the pink flyer in front of me next to my food and next to my son and went and sat back down while [she] and her friend were chuckling. She had written on the back of the flyer ‘Thank you for ruining our dinner with your screaming kid! Sincerely, the table behind you.’”

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Leach, who didn’t respond to Yahoo Parenting’s request for comment, wrote that she was appalled by the note and immediately confronted the woman who gave it to her. “I turned around and told her ‘I am sorry but my son is 11 months old. I am trying to get him to keep it down but he is still learning and he is only a baby. He is learning!’” Leach explained. “She then said ‘I have kids and grand kids and let me tell you none of them ever behave like THAT.’”

Diane Gottsman, etiquette expert and founder of the Protocol School of Texas, says both parties made lapses in judgment. “A 10-month-old baby is not going to learn an indoor voice. It’s not the baby’s fault that he is crying, that’s what babies do,” she tells Yahoo Parenting. “Before taking a baby to a restaurant, a parent needs to think: Is it naptime? Are they fed? Is the parent prepared to walk out of the restaurant if the baby yells for a long time, so as not to bother other guests? Patrons go to a restaurant to relax, and they are paying money to enjoy their meal — even if it is a loud restaurant. So, when it becomes excessive, a mother needs to stand up and remove the baby. Take a walk away from the table.”

Still, Gottsman says the woman who delivered the note, and her friend, were out of line. “Leaving the note at the table, that’s just rude and impolite,” Gottsman says. “Whether their grandbabies are quiet are not — and I doubt seriously that their grandbabies don’t cry — leaving a note in that way is just bad manners. They are as guilty as the person they were chastising, if not more.”

For patrons who are disturbed by a loud baby in a restaurant, Gottsman says it’s best to let the staff deal with it. “Talk to the manager and ask to move or voice your displeasure, and let the management handle it in a professional manner,” she says. “Perhaps they will have another table you could move to, or perhaps they will invite the family to come back when it’s a better time for the baby and offer a free meal that time.”

But for the woman who left the note to call a 10-month-old baby disrespectful isn’t right, Gottsman says. “It sounds like the baby was behaving like a baby behaves when he is tired or hungry,” she says. “We all understand that it’s frustrating and annoying, but there is a better way to handle it. And for the woman to say the baby is disrespectful is funny, since what she did is the height of disrespect.”

After the incident, Leach approached the restaurant manager, who ended up paying for her meal, she wrote. He also approached the two women, telling them that “they could finish their dinner but then had to leave quietly,” she wrote. “He seemed a little speechless himself.”

Leach wrote the Facebook post, she explained, in hopes that the two women might see it. “To those two extremely rude, disrespectful women who think they have perfect children and grandchildren, I really hope you see your note on here and know I am speaking about you,” she wrote. “I hope you feel embarrassed and you learn to not judge others as [horribly] as you did to me tonight.”

(Top photo: Stocksy)

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