Ever Had Your Child 'Lose It' in a Restaurant or Store? When This Dad's Little Girl Threw a Tantrum in Red Robin, His Parenting Post Went Viral

Aimee Herd : Mar 14, 2017
Clint Edwards/Facebook.com

"I get it. Kids are irritating when they are loud in a restaurant. I know. I'm living it. But before you get angry and judgmental, realize that what you are witnessing is not bad parenting, but rather, parents working hard to fix the situation. You are looking at what it takes to turn a child into a person..."

Those of us who are or who have been parents of toddlers know the feeling well: your child begins to pitch a fit for whatever reason—often unknown to you at the time, or ever—and as the crying or screaming escalates, you realize your only option is to remove them from the many onlookers that surround you. (Photo: Clint Edwards/via Facebook)

Clint Edwards, dad and author from Oregon, recently experienced this with his two-year-old daughter, who was insisting on throwing her chicken strips in the Red Robin restaurant where they were eating.

As Edwards explains in his Facebook post, he finished eating first and so it fell to him to deal with his daughter so his wife and other children could enjoy the rest of their dinner.

"She's two and it's going to take years to teach her how to act appropriately in public, and the only way I am ever going to teach that is to take her out and show her what's right and wrong," Edwards wrote in his post.

As he brought his screaming toddler out of the restaurant he noticed the icy looks given by patrons in the bar as they passed, and he had some words of wisdom for them as well.

"I get it," Edwards wrote, "Kids are irritating when they are loud in a restaurant. I know. I'm living it. But before you get angry and judgmental, realize that what you are witnessing is not bad parenting, but rather, parents working hard to fix the situation. You are looking at what it takes to turn a child into a person."

Edwards writes a parenting blog with the likable title: "No Idea What I'm Doing: A Daddy Blog," and has documented many of the lessons learned in the e-book: "This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things."

Shortly after posting about the Red Robin experience on Facebook, with a photo of him sitting in his vehicle with his screaming daughter, it went viral, garnering over 380,000 likes and more than 160,000 shares.

Read his full Facebook post here.