Written like a childless person, all us parents already know to add a little something to junior's Roy Rodgers.

Damn. A whole pack of 24 cheapo crayons cost me a quarter a couple of weeks ago. I know that small expenses add up when you're talking about millions of customers, but I would think they could choke down that $.01-.02 cost.

How long before they drop them completely, forcing parents to - gasp - hold conversations with their children instead of letting them color images of popular menu items

Spoken like someone who has never been to a restaurant with a 2 year old.

Conversations? I'd say that's about the LAST thing a little kid wants to do while waiting for their food. Either way, it's not hard to bring stuff like that along. Be prepared. If you want a peaceful meal that is.

"Force parents to -gasp- have conversations with thier children while mom and dad knock down thier pre-meal cocktails"

Can this be any more condescending, clueless and snotty?

I'm in agreement with the mascot though-my three year old daughter wants nothing to do with....it, whatever it is.

"forcing parents to - gasp - hold conversations with their children"

Spoken by the worst type of person, rude and completely fricken ignorant. Exactly when was the last time you spent an hour talking to a three year old?

Why is it a restaurant's responsibility to provide this? Granted, what kind of toys or what not are included may influence parents on where they go, but seriously... what (informed) parent of young children doesn't have some form of backup with them at all times/ What if they ran out?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "hold conversations with their children" ...from all encounters with children I've had, what is exchanged between adult and child is not so much a conversation, but a string of words that can probably pass as bad spoken word poetry in a dimly lit coffeehouse.

The last time I talked to my 5 year old cousin, he went from saying actual words (that didn't make sense in relation to one another. They were like bowl, hi, wheee!) to just making shrieking noises and monster noises while making a scrunched up face. There was no discussion about Iran-US relations, or how to properly cook butternut squash, or anything else that was on my mind. When we got to a restaurant, we couldn't even talk because he was so busy tipping over every drink within reach and making everyone else at the table leap to him with napkins.

He's a good kid, really. I just don't expect to ever have a conversation with him until he turns 8 or so.

Once I saw a dad and his young son, maybe 5, at a Cici's Pizza. The dad sat and ate in silence while his son watched a movie on his portable DVD player.

Now THAT'S family time...

You kinda get 3 crayons. Combine the red and blue to get purple! I think Red Robin is just being pragmatic and encouraging creativity. (I don't need to qualify this statement as sarcastic, do I? Ooops...I just did)

@heybtbm: Not to mention it's impossible for a 2 year old to keep more than one crayon on the table anyhow. This just cuts down on crayons lost on the floor.

@pecan 3.14159265: Wow, my 4 year old doesn't do that and I consider her a handful.

You really can't hold a conversation with a kid until they are 7 or 8. Even then it's mostly about crap they want or crap they own. No juicy gossip about who's doing what.

Wtf, Red Robin?!? I'm 23 and I still love coloring on your placemats/plates/food/walls/managers...

@pecan 3.14159265:
I dunno, my 2 year old godson can have a pretty solid conversation with me about how Batman belongs in the Bat Plane and not in the fire truck.

Totally OT: I am in a typical DINK relationship, and I generally do not like to be around kids for extended periods of time. That said, I do eat out a lot, and I really like it when parents bring their kids to nice restaurants. I think if you do it often enough, most kids behave perfectly well and get exposed to a lot more culture than being allowed to eat at McDonald's and run around the restaurant screaming (though I suspect I would be running around too if I had a HFCS and sodium-laden meal as well).

I think the "dinner" experience should be seperate from the "playtime" experience (I don't mean crayons, I mean running all around the place) because THAT is what causes kids to misbehave in nice restaruants.

And parents should remember that there are rules of etiquette too when bringing the little ones. Breastfeeding a baby: fine by me. Changing his diaper ON THE TABLE: not so much.

@The Cheat: He's a great kid, I swear. There were only a few cups within reach, and they didn't have much water in them. He just likes water. He could be a fish, he spends so much time at the pool. That might explain why we can't have a conversation. The adults were just worried he'd get all wet and they'd have to haul him to the car to get him changed, which is more trouble than they care for.

I'm in agreement with many others on here in saying this is more than douchey.

I'm not sure how keeping a 2 year old happy with crayons has transcended into a loveless family of alcoholics drinking themselves away while their child goes unsupervised.

Way to alienate a major part of your audience.

And for any of you who are saying 'It was a joke... tongue in cheek, get it?' That's BS.

@tungstencoil: "Why is it a restaurant's responsibility to provide this?"

No one said it was anyone's responsibility to do this. The reason they do it, if you took three seconds to think about it, is so that more parents come with their children to the restaurant and buy more food.

If a restaurant wants to be less kid-friendly, that's their choice. And parents can also choose to go elsewhere.

@GMFish: Agreed. Hey Marc, the next time I go out to eat and my two-year-old niece is there you want to come along and have a conversation with her?

Yellow crayons are pretty much useless on white paper anyway.

Last time I went to IHOP I only got 1 crayon, and it was broken in half. Granted I am an adult but I was bored and wanted to do the word search and maze while I was waiting for my food.

@pecan 3.14159265: "from all encounters with children I've had, what is exchanged between adult and child is not so much a conversation..."

Your confusion stems from Marc Perton's complete ignorance about caring for, dealing with, and interacting with children.

Newsflash: Red Robin cuts crayon count and as a result experiences an increase in noise levels from impatient, hungry, small, screaming children. Childless customers now complain that dining at Red Robin is almost as bad as sharing a flight with an upset child.

@pecan 3.14159265: I have conversations with my 2 year old about houses that are sad and crying because they have no roof (yet), horses that are hungry and eating grass, and clouds that look like mountains and you need an airplane to climb them (these are all his own invention, no leading from me). Children can be coherent enough to hold a conversation. I mean, they may not be international politics or scientific discussions, but it is entertaining and he gets to practice his conversation and thinking skills. I guess the hard part is knowing what words he's trying to pronounce if you aren't around him all the time.

Yeah, I'm going to have to agree with the "condescending" tone folks here. Quite frankly, I can hold a fairly intelligent conversation with my 3-year-old son WHILE he colors at Red Robin. Then again, I never really baby-talked him, so he knows real words and can use them appropriately in a sentence.

Before passing judgement in the "forcing parents to - gasp - hold conversations with their children instead of letting them color images of popular menu items while mom and bad knock down their pre-meal cocktails" type of ignorant rambling you seem to be so adept at, perhaps you should realize that kids color not because their parents make them, but because some of them actually enjoy artistic endeavors.

By-the-by, I've also never drank a single cocktail in front of my kids, so take your stereotypes and shove them fully up your ass.

@Ilovegnomes: Childless people go to Red Robin? We try to stay as far away as we can, not only because we're childless, but because of the food and the creepy mascot.

@morganlh85: If it was Friday night, it was probably custody time

@morganlh85: "Now THAT'S family time..."

But if that exact same situation occurred in the privacy of their own home no one would have a problem with it. Why should a family have to put on a warm and fuzzy show for the public?

If my son wants to watch a movie, I let him. If you were his parent, you'd say no and you'd probably both be sitting in silence. God what fun that'd be.

@mrgenius: Macaroni Grill puts a huge piece of brown paper and crayons on top of their tables. The wait staff write their name on the brown paper and you, regardless of age, can doodle on the swath of paper as much as you like.

Marc Perton hates children.

But -- gasp -- he like RR cuisine so much he's willing to dine there regardless. Perhaps he found the secret cocktails that all of us parents know about.

@morganlh85: I once saw a mom happily talking away on her cell phone while her son just sat there eating. Great message to send to your kid. I'll sit here and eat with you, but there are better people I can be talking to.

@cabjf: I think my cousin's issue is that he's shy, and he doesn't see us all too often (once every few months maybe). I think the situation was a problem too. It was pretty boring, and there were no toys because he wasn't allowed to have them at the table. He gets along fabulously with Mr. Pi but Mr. Pi is better with interacting with children than I am.

@cabjf: I can't tell you how many crayons I've gone looking for under dark tables. Restaurant floors aren't necessarily on the top of my list of places to blindly paw around looking for something, either. That said, 2 crayons seems to be pretty standard. Those entertain my 3-year-old son for all of 10 seconds, so we're accustomed to bringing a variety of small things to play with.

My son recently informed me that, "Restaurants are boring," but confessed his toy motorcycle make them tolerable.

Ths s stry?

@pecan 3.14159265: I've never been a big fan of "Hi my name is X" from the server. I say this as a former server too. Just a pet peeve I guess.

Also, I am not a grammarian, but I came across this today regarding the usage of "swath." The more you know... :)
[topics.blogs.nytimes.com]

Boy, everyone is all sorts of cunty here today. I thought it was kind of funny myself.

conversation with child thing aside.. I actually enjoy coloring WITH my children, especially my daughter. We are occasionally lucky to find place mats with word searches on them and we do them together.

Granted my 9 year old son has been carrying on actual solid conversations since he learned to talk.... mostly about tractors in the early years.

@kalaratri: And the crayons that most restaurants use are hardly "Crayola" quality. You can't tell me those things cost any more than 1 cent. Even so, two per kid seems plenty to me. Just make sure that one of them is not yellow - that's the lamest.

@kalaratri: Customers will find a way to complain about something. If food prices went up, then we complain. If portion sizes decrease, we complain. If the number of crayons decreases, we complain. But you are right, crayons are pretty cheap!

Plus, just TRY to get crayons as a childless 28-year-old.

hey, i use the crayons to play games with my kids while we wait for food--like I draw the head, you draw the arms, she draws the body, etc.--thereby keeping them from disturbing anyone else AND having good conversations with them at the same time. If you're eating in a place that provides crayons for kids, you can hardly expect it to be fine dining experience, so you have very little room to complain about noisy kids.

If they stop providing crayons, I'll just bring my own, but seriously what does it cost, a few cents a kid?

This post's title plus the accompanying photo made me think for a moment that Red Robin was actually physically cutting crayons in two to spread them around a little more.

Perhaps that would have been a better solution..

Ever tried to hold a conversation with an eighteen-month-old? At that age, the crayon isn't just a diversion, it's an appetizer.

Damn, I have the fondest memories of places like The Ground Round (I don't think we have Red Robins) from when I was little because they had crayons. I suppose we could've brought our own to other places, but the ones at The Ground Round were special, and The Ground Round was special because they had those crayons. (Also because my Aunt Becky once snorted root beer out her nose there, but that is neither here nor there.)

Also, crayons can be a prop for starting a conversation with kids and drawing with them as much as it is a tool to keep them busy. (AKA I didn't much enjoy the snarky tone here, either.)

@Cruc:
This is one of those statements that only offends the people it is about.

It's right, people consider spending time with their family to be sitting in silence tossing back cocktails while the kids either watch the tv in the restaurant or play with some form of entertainment provided to them.

God help the people that don't have their demands for constant sensory satisfaction catered to. Or maybe even worse, a mother might have to dish out 25 cents for a pack of crayons to keep in her purse.

@hoi-polloi: In the mom's defense, she probably does that to all her dining companions.

@Scrutinizer: hahahahaha

Particularly absurd as the cost of the paper and crayons is undoubtedly already factored in to the price of the kid's meal selections.

We take the kids to restaurants very frequently so they know how to behave even if they don't have crayons to keep them occupied while waiting for their food, but it is nice to have them available. Plus my wife and I love coloring with them as well.

As others have noted, the condescending tone is something I expect from some of the children-shouldn't-be-allowed-in-public commenters here, but not from the editors.

@GMFish:

It also makes the dining experience more pleasant for those without young kids, who don't have to listen to the screaming/kicking/biting kids at the table next to them.

@heybtbm: I usually find myself drawing with my kid.