Dinner Games with Toddlers

Ah, dining out with toddlers. I remember it well. I had twin boys, so this was always risky business. In the 80's we were lucky if the waitress gave us placemats to color and slapped down a cup of used crayons. If they had grilled cheese sandwiches on the menu, we were golden. Then an agent of the devil invented Chuck E. Cheese. I am certain someday they will have a study linking visits to Chuck E. Cheese to eventual deafness, dementia, or erectile dysfunction. Hopefully the latter, for that will certainly pull the plug once and for all. And for the generation raised on Chuck E. there is now an adult version, Dave and Buster's. I suppose the primal need for entertainment while eating dates back to the invention of TV dinners in the 50's. Blame it on Swanson.

Theoretically, when you go to a "kid-friendly" place, you don't have to worry about icy stares from people when your children start acting like, well, children. But if you want to take them to a place where you can order arugula and butternut squash with ahi on the side, you had better be prepared. You can bring portable DVD players, iPods and hand-held computer games, but those are not in the spirit of "family dining." And certainly you have read that the family that eats together has smarter kids. You don't want your child's college essay to read that he/she grew up in a home with emotionally absent parents, as exempfied by their dependence on digital diversions rather than face-to-face conversation.

That brings me to today's catalog pick, Beginner Dinner Games for Ages 3 and up, which I found in Young Explorers, page 30E. "Play with Your Family...Not with your food!" For only $18.95 (plus shipping and tax) you are promised a box of cards containing over 50 games that "...encourage quality time spent talking and interacting. Short and easy-to-play games like, Pass the Pepper, Get to Know Ya Trivia and so much more..." It comes with a tin carrying box "perfect for toting to restaurants." I like the concept a lot. If you have kids (and there is another version for ages 5 and up) maybe you can try it out and let me know how it works. When I think of family "get to know ya" trivia, I can't help but jump to gems like, "Which uncle always smells like Manischevitz Concord Grape?" or "Which grandma's teeth flew into the cranberry sauce last Thanksgiving?" or "Which cousin always goes to the bathroom when the check arrives?" But that would be a do-it-yourself family trivia game. Maybe they can throw in some extra cards for those.

This Dinner Games Box sounds as if it should keep the kidlets involved and out of trouble. I am by nature an optimist, but my experience makes me skeptical. I am haunted by bad memories, such as the time I took my five-year-old twins on a cross-country flight to visit my sister in Baltimore. I was an educational writer, so I was PREPARED. I had brought a 50-pound backback full of Mad Libs, Transformers, He-Man action figures, coloring books, paint-with-water books, dot-to-dot books, Scratch and Sniff stickers, magnetic checkers...you get the picture. My boys went through the entire contents in about six minutes. For the rest of the flight, they kept pressing the flight attendant button and going to the bathroom every 15 minutes. I had to smile and try to keep the flight attendants from killing my kids by sticking them with those little "aviator pins." (Do they give those out anymore? Probably not.) They also brought lots of peanuts, probably hoping the boys had an undetected nut allergy.

But what I recall most from this flight was a little girl sitting in the row across from us. She was about six. Her father was sitting next to her, and he didn't have a backback. "He didn't even bring her a coloring book," I thought smugly when the flight began. But did you ever hear a peep out of her? No. She spent the five-hour trip reading and re-reading the safety information card.


So let me know if the Dinner Games work for you. Personally, when I was a kid my relatives had low-tech tricks that kept me mesmerized. Do you know how to slide your thumb so it looks like it was just amputated? Can you take a cloth napkin and fold it into a bra? If the box of Dinner Games don't work, you can try these. Or just stay home with grilled cheese sandwiches.