Dear Queenie,
There were some relatives we hadn’t seen for a while so we invited them to have dinner at our house. They brought their pre-school-age children with them and the kids ran wild, bouncing on the sofa, climbing onto the coffee table, spilling food everywhere and throwing things around.
I can’t help wondering if the kids act like that at home, but even so, the parents should not let them do it in someone else’s house. It took us hours to clean up after they left and we will not invite them to our house again.
Queenie, how should we have handled this when it was happening?—Angry hosts
Dear Hosts,
These parents should have at least tried to control their children. As they did not, you could have – should have – told the children to stop what they were doing whenever they did something obnoxious and/or destructive, and told the parents to please keep their children under control or, if they could not, to please take them home.
If you ever invite the parents to your house again, make it clear that the invitation does not include their children, and if they ask you why, remind them how their children behaved when they were at your house before.
