We have a lot of very young visitors who use high chairs. And, I would say, 3 sorts of mums who put them in the high chairs. Now, I'm on the other side for the first time and I've no idea which category of mum I was when my kids were very little so this is an observation rather than a pointing finger. Category One mums (common) are paying for a lunch away from their home where they have to do all the clearing up, so part of what they're paying for is to be able to walk away from the mess: grated cheese on the floor, beans on the chairs, baby wipes on the plates, and not to worry about it. Category two (rare) can be best explained through an example from yesterday. She fed her daughter a tub of rice salad she'd brought from home having ordered lunch for herself from us. The little girl threw much of the rice on the floor. Mum apologised and asked for a dustpan. Which I didn't give to her. It was lovely to be asked. Category three (endangered species) came in this morning with husband and 17 month old son, James. On holiday from somewhere in the south east judging by the accent. Jimmy ate his jacket potato with his fingers and dropped cheese and bread onto the carpet. Mum told me I wouldn't even know they'd been there. Next time I looked dad was on his knees under the table picking up every crumb. They left the table with their plates stacked and even put the high chair back.
This afternoon my own son sliced off the top of his finger in a DT lesson. No idea who cleared up the blood.
Brilliant! You should have offered them a job or at least asked them to write a manual on "How to be the perfect customer" which you could have left on each table! Here's to lots of those type tomorrow - I shall look forward to meeting everyone of them! Shouldn't take me long!
ReplyDeleteha ha. i've often wondered about this, i'm (mostly) a wipe the chair down and pick up the worst and encourage girls to tidy up too on grounds that it's a bad lesson for them to learn to leave mess for someone else to tidy up (as that person is usually me, i admit my motivation is selfish!). but sometimes i feel a bit shifty doing it - like i'm being weird, ocd or summat - so good to know not everyone leaves a mess!
ReplyDeletelove the blog, always read it with my breakfast tea and look forward to monday when i can catch up on weekend. xxx
lol, nice to know I'm not the only one!
ReplyDeleteI'm of a 'make it look like an adult ate there' school of thought. a few crumbs fine but I'm frequently found on the floor picking up discarded salad and grated cheese *blush*
I figure that at least it buys me a get out of jail free card on the thankfully rare but awful days when the baby is screaming, the toddler is being *creative* with cake and I have to leave quickly without tidying.