Step 1: Consider where you might like to go. Pick someplace child-friendly, with kids’ menu options, readily available high chairs, changing tables in the restrooms, dishes that can be thrown frisbee-style without shattering, soundproof booths, and strong adult beverages. How far is the establishment from your home? Will anyone there recognize you? At the same time, you want the area to be familiar enough for a child to find her way home on foot, should she wander off. There are many factors to take into account when choosing a restaurant that will please all members of the family.

Here’s a great example of a place to go with kids. It’s under a bridge, and you can tell them to go look for trolls. Hours of entertainment.

Step 2: Before entering the restaurant, set behavioral expectations for your children and communicate these clearly to them. For example: Sit up straight. Be polite to the wait staff. Every once in a while, pick up a utensil and make some kind of attempt to use it. Speak in indoor voices. Don’t stare at other people while they eat. If you embarrass us, there will be no dessert. And we will never take you out in public EVER AGAIN. Be as specific as possible; children do best when given very explicit parameters within which to function.

Step 3: Ask to be seated somewhere unobtrusive, where the children won’t bother other customers. But maybe close to the restrooms? Because the two-year-old is working on going tee-tee on the potty. But not so close to the restrooms that that’s all she wants to do, because we’re not paying for a nice meal just to spend the entire time in the restroom, are we? A corner, a dark corner, somewhere in the vicinity of the restrooms, would be just fine. But not so isolated that we can’t signal our waitress for help. And perhaps with a direct line of sight to the bartender?

Thanks, that would be lovely.

Step 4:  Order a margarita.

Step 5: Settle the children in their seats. Oh look!, tell them, in your most enthusiastic voice, how NICE it is that the restaurant provided them with children’s menus that they can color, and two crayons each. Exude positivity; children take cues from the adults around them.

Step 6: Take the yellow crayon away from the baby, who has started to eat it. Hand it to the two-year-old, who is melting from her chair to the floor, hysterical because she HATES RED!!!!

Step 7: Open the menu. It is time to decide if you’d like to order an appetizer, to keep the children from getting too hungry, or to get your main course in as soon as possible to-

Step 8: Take the two-year-old to the bathroom. Since she has refused your help, watch as she struggles to pull down her pants and underwear, touches every surface of the toilet seat, and then decides that she doesn’t have to go. Patiently suggest that she wash her hands before returning to the table, then patiently respond to her queries as she pokes around the bathroom like she’s Ariel in The Little Mermaid, seeing human inventions for the first time. “That the trash can? That the light? That the soap? Where the paper towels?”

Step 9: Return to the table and apply hand sanitizer to the two-year-old’s hands. Ask your husband if the waitress has been by. She was, but he didn’t know what to order the kids. He got you another margarita, though. Alright, then. Food. You’re here for food. Open the menu.

Seriously though, send them out to eat with the grandparents. For some reason, grandparents like that sort of thing.

Step 10: The two-year-old says she has to poop. And the five-year-old needs to go, too. Sniff the baby just in case; on the bright side, here is a chance to cut out one future trip to the restroom! Give your husband instructions to order the children hot dogs and to choose something for you, something with cheese and salt, maybe a leaf or two of lettuce. As you trudge toward the restroom, exude positivity. They are children, after all. Sometimes children need to potty.

Step 11: As you change the baby’s diaper, watch as the two-year-old struggles to pull down her pants and underwear, touches every surface of the toilet seat, and then decides that she doesn’t have to go. Even though you can see her literally squeezing her butt cheeks together in an effort to keep the poop from getting out. Attempt to explain, calmly, to the five-year-old why she shouldn’t use the automatic hand dryer for entertainment. Because other people are eating their dinners and don’t want to hear gleeful child shrieks and explosive air pressure coming from the bathroom. And also it hurts your ears. And is making the baby cry.

Step 12: Return to the table. Settle the children in their seats. Drink a healthy sip of margarita. Feed the baby the backup Cheerios that you had the foresight to pack. Learn from your husband that he has ordered you a fish sandwich. Ask him when, in the eight years you have been married, has he ever seen you eat a fish sandwich? Apologize for your tone; it will be fine. It will be great. Is there cheese on it? Okay then. Exude positivity.

Step 13: The two-year-old has pooped in her pants. Send your husband to the bathroom with her. Take a healthy sip of margarita. Motion to the waitress for to-go boxes. On the bright side, you’ll get to eat your fish sandwich on the couch while watching last season’s episodes of Game of Thrones. On the bright side, you’re never taking your children into public, ever again.

Wooooo! No kids! But I still haven’t decided if I can take HIM out in public again…