Eating in restaurants with young children is often a pain in the neck in the UK for precisely the reasons that Stuart Heritage lists as strategies for coping (10 rules for eating in restaurants with young children, Family, 21 May). In France it is a joy to see how small children behave, eat and are treated in many restaurants. They order what they want from the same menu as everybody else, they are keen to try new dishes, and they wait politely and quietly while the food is cooked.
I have long puzzled about why this is so and have concluded that it is because, from birth, they are not treated as an alien species but as discerning customers in the same way as the adults in the party are, often late into the evening. They are respected, talked to, titbits are swapped and tasted, and they are not provided with piles of crayons and toys. Generally, such children respond by behaving in a decorous and acceptable way.
Jude Anderson
Cardiff
• Stuart Heritage has missed the most important rule for eating in restaurants with young children. Don’t.
David Harper
London
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