It’s always refreshing to see another story about a restaurant that is thinking about banning children – if there’s one thing we don’t get enough of these days, it’s people whining about other people’s kids.

In this case Chicago chef Grant Achatz, who runs a three Michelin-starred restaurant called Alinea, was distressed by his patrons' crying baby. Taking to Twitter, he asked whether maybe it was time to tell people they can’t bring their offspring to his eatery. And he seems to have gained quite a bit of support for the suggestion.People inconvenienced by littlies in their place of digestion bellowing that said littlies need to be barred from the premises is not an uncommon refrain. And I know just how high passions can run on the subject: I once came very close to being assaulted by an enormous slab of a bearded South Australian after I called him a rude name because he had sworn at my son while we were eating out (my son was not, for the record, crying – he was just prancing about like a lunatic because he was seven). And I could see his point – it must be just awful having your meal interrupted by our, you know, avoidance of our species’ extinction. Pardon us for propagating.But seriously, I get it. A crying baby is annoying. Incredibly annoying. And much more annoying than a crying baby is a crying baby belonging to parents who simply sit serenely and ignore the wailing, as if they've been fitted with special post-natal earplugs, doing nothing to address the issue. The same goes for kids who yell or scream or run around stealing bread from your table. And let me make it clear – if your kid is a jerk in public, and you do nothing about it, then you’re a bigger jerk and I hope your kid vomits in the car on the way home.But I beg of you, when it comes to devising official policies for places of dining, whether fine or low-end, let’s not make the jerks the determining factor.Because believe it or not, after you have kids, you don’t automatically develop a lust for staying home every night. Sometimes you want to go out and have a nice meal like a normal human being, the way you did before you embarked on the insane escapade of reproduction. Sometimes, you’d even like to have that nice meal in surroundings more elegant than Hog’s Breath Café.Fine, say the kiddie-banners. Then hire a babysitter. Go out without the kids. Excellent. But guess what? Sometimes you can’t get a babysitter. Sometimes life happens and you’re stuck holding the nappies. But more than this – sometimes, believe it or not, we want to take our children to a nice restaurant. We all know that in general parenthood is a lifelong struggle to avoid spending time with the kids, but every now and then, incredibly, mum and dad might enjoy their children’s company and would rather have them around than dump them and run.And perhaps most importantly, if you don’t allow kids in restaurants because of how they behave, what you’re doing is raising a whole bunch of kids who’ll never know how to behave in restaurants. I consider taking my kids out to eat an educational moment: teaching them while they gorge.Don’t get me wrong: if you’re a restaurateur confronted by parents who simply refuse to consider the comfort of their fellow diners, I’ll support your right to order them to take it outside. But when it comes to who you will or won’t let in the door, please take into consideration that having kids really works up an appetite, and that parents are people too. In fact, there are rumours that even children are people. I’ll let you know when I find out for sure.(theguardian.com)ANN.Az