Excuse me sir, do you know where your kids are?

On our way to El Paso to see my beautiful nieces.........................

We stopped to eat. When we travel through Texas, we usually look for a Whataburger because that seems to be the only place we can all agree on.

We found one and were sitting there eating when a man with two little ones walks in. The little boy must have been about three and the little girl about one and a half. They sat down in a table/booth acroos from us. The kids each had a ketchup container and were eating that as if they were really hungry. None of the kids had any shoes and the little girl had clothes on that were way too big for her.

We all watched them while we ate. The dad got the paper and proceeded to read it while the kids ate the ketchup. Hubster and I thought that the man would eventually get up and order the kids something, but we were wrong.

The kids finished their ketchup and while the dad was still reading the paper, they ran around the restaurant. They were crawling on top of the tables, all the way to the top of those fake flower holder containers. The dad wouldn't take his eyes off the paper, he would just quietly call out their names and tell them to get off the tables. Neither kid listened.

At one point, the little girl was nowhere to be seen and the little boy was outside. Outside all alone and the dad was still reading the paper and had no clue where his kids were. Astonishment is one word to describe how we felt. Even the boys were sitting there in amazement while watching the events unfold.

When the dad, without looking up from his paper, started calling out their names and the kids wouldn't answer, he finally put the paper down and went to go look for the kids. He brought them back in and he sat down again.

They both started to push around the high chairs through the restaurant and even the big yellow wet floor signs. After a while, the dad put his paper back down, got the kids, sat the little girl in a high chair, sat the little boy in the booth and gave them each another pack of ketchup. He then told them that they were giving him a headache.

We left and didn't finish watching the show.

Parenting from a chair. I've seen that several times before. I've also seen that it never works.