Over the weekend, DH and I and our twin boys (4yo) had lunch at a restaurant with a bunch of people. Another family sitting with us had their 4yr old boy too (I'll call him Johnny).
We were all at a round table and I was sitting on twin2's left. Johnny happened to be sitting at twin2's right. The kids don't know each other very well as I only see these people when my brother has get-togethers since they are his friends.
As soon as Johnny sat down his mother pulled out some cars for him to play with which he did for about 5 minutes after which he asked for his iPad and they pulled that out and he watched videos while we waited for the food to arrive. Twin2 of course was curious and got closer to Johnny and was asking him questions like, "what's that?", "who's that?", and just being generally friendly. Johnny didn't answer and his mom told me that he's usually shy and she was impressed that twin2 was being so friendly.
As soon as the food arrived I got my kids set up and put food on their plates but to my surprise, Johnny still had his iPad out. I gave twin2 his fork and had to ask him twice to face his food and eat his lunch. The second time I did that I told him that if he didn't focus on his food I would have to switch places with him. Well, after another minute he was still distracted by Johnny's iPad (as all 4 yr olds would be), so I just said, "Right, twin2, we need to switch places". To his credit he didn't make a fuss and, after the switch, he happily started munching on his food. As I sat in his chair the other mom said, "I'm so sorry, but Johnny won't eat if he doesn't have his iPad in front of him." I just said a friendly "oh, that's okay" and gave a kind of "kids... what can you do?" shrug.
But in my head I was thinking, "really??! I don't see Johnny doing much eating". He had a full plate of food beside him which his mother had to spoon feed him after much cooing and cajoling.
I just want to know if what I did was okay. As I said, I don't know these people well and didn't want them to think I was blatantly criticizing their parenting. When I told twin2 to turn around and face his food I did it in a light conversational tone and said something like, "it's lunchtime and we concentrate on lunch, please. Not the videos."
After twin2 was done eating I did let him switch back with me as Johnny was still, you guessed it, watching his iPad.