There are places in restaurants, places you’ve probably never seen.

They’re back behind walls. They’re right next to a rowdy bar. They’re right next to the kitchen.

You know these areas well if you walk into some restaurants with young children, though. They’re not saying you and your children are unwelcome, but they show it.

When it comes to entertainment, my family likes to eat at restaurants. It’s the only way each of us gets to eat what he or she wants, and we enjoy the quality time spent laughing and telling stories in a way we can’t match when making meals at home.

We start every outing with a discussion of whether we’re looking for a lighted board (fast-food restaurant) or a printed menu (sit-down restaurant). Whenever possible, I like to push for a sit-down restaurant.

I know there are people who see a young family and assume we love every place with a kids’ combo meal and a toy. Maybe I’m being a food snob here, but I just don’t like fast-food that much. The flavors are intentionally bland, and I’d rather not pay $5 for cardboard I could eat at home.

I think you’re doing your children’s palate a disservice if you only serve them dull foods. How will they ever learn they enjoy Creole cooking if they never get to sample it? How do you learn you enjoy garlic mashed potatoes without tasting them? A restaurant taught me I don’t hate spaghetti nearly as much as I thought I did; I merely disliked my mother’s sauce. (Sorry, Mom.)

Besides, where else will your child learn how to behave politely in public? My children certainly didn’t learn to say “please” and “thank you” to a server at one of those lighted-board restaurants.

Unfortunately, not every restaurant is as thrilled to see our happy family as we are to see them. Don’t worry. I’m not going to call your establishment out by name. You know who you are. You’d be surprised how many places promising family dining don’t seem to like seeing a young family walking through the door, though.

They seem to expect the worst when they see a pair of children under the age of 5 walking through the door. These aren’t exactly five-star gourmet restaurants, with some of them offering a children’s menu that suggests they welcome families.

My daughters aren’t angels, but they’re not devils, either. Trinkos are known as good eaters, and they live up to that. Very little food ends up on the floor. They’re not terribly loud. They’re good at sitting patiently in a seat for 20 minutes or so awaiting their food.

That’s not what people seem to see when we walk through the door. As they lead you to your table, you often feel as though you should be dropping breadcrumbs in some places, as they guide you to some remote area where they don’t think you’ll bother other guests.

You end up behind some wall where you previously assumed they kept a pop machine or extra plates. You might land next to the rowdy bar area. Perhaps you find yourself by a kitchen, learning how much yelling happens in some places.

I’d like to believe I’m being paranoid, but experience tells me otherwise in these places. You march past plenty of empty tables that could accommodate you. You often end up at the exact same table or area if you return to the place. The real clincher was one waitress admitted they try to put families in a certain area at her restaurant, so we “don’t bother” everyone else.

Admittedly, families with children are on the clock. You can only expect children to wait patiently for so long. Then again, I’ve seen my children wait more patiently than some adults, who become angry if their food isn’t ready instantly.

I understand people go out to dinner without their children on occasion, and they don’t want to hear the whines and screams of children. Trust me, neither do most children’s parents. Segregating the families with young children off to the dark corners of a place are taking the parents off the hook from doing what they should be doing, parenting.

The parents need to tell their children it’s inappropriate to run around a restaurant. They need to hush a child who starts yelling or crying. They need to provide that guidance so their children know how to behave in public.

If the parents don’t provide that, don’t just guide them to a far-flung place. Guide them right to the front door, and tell them they’re welcome to return when they’re ready to parent their children properly in public.

That’ll just make the dining experience better for all of us, even the young families with children still learning proper etiquette who just want to sit with everyone else.

Several times recently, I’ve stepped out of our office to leave work for the day and couldn’t find the vehicle I drove to work.

Was it theft? Was it repossessed? No, it’s just a change of duties, and it’s just part of playing an active role in my children’s lives.

My family has two cars. One is an extremely fuel-efficient small car. In our family vernacular, that’s “Dad’s car,” because I tend to drive it back and forth to work and around town on errands when I’m by myself.

The other is the minivan, designed for the comfort of our three daughters and whatever stuff happens to come with them that day. According to our children, it’s “Mom’s car.”

I’d like to propose calling it “the children’s car,” because they’re really the common denominator.

While we live in Putnam County, my wife and I both work in Lima. Our eldest daughter attends school in our town, but our youngest two attend day care in Lima. That means every day, someone’s driving them the half-hour to preschool, then another half-hour home.

And it’s not the same person every day. Some days my wife’s work may require her to be in early or stay late, and my schedule isn’t terribly stable either. We’re flexible about who might take the children and who might pick them up. (The second-place finisher, by the way, makes sure our 10-year-old finds her way to school and home from her after-school baby sitter.)

Unfortunately, the back seat of our economy car is so tight, even our 4-year-old finds a way to complain. We’ve realized the minivan must go with the girls.

Whenever we can, we like to have the same person drop off the girls and pick them up. That means if you see my minivan in the work parking lot, there’s a good chance I’m dropping off and picking up the girls. The same goes for my wife.

Life isn’t always that simple, though, and that’s when you do something that feels a lot like stealing your own car.

If I happen to be near my wife’s work and need the other car, I’ll park as close to the one she drove as possible, lock it up and then hop into the other one to drive off. She does the same if she needs to switch cars.

It can be a little disorienting when you leave the office, to not see the car you drove parked where you left it. It’s especially confusing at my work, as two other employees drive cars that look very similar to our small car. I’ve been caught fiddling with the door handle on a small gray car before when someone in the lot directs me to my actual car, not its doppelgänger.

It’s all so foreign to me. Growing up, my mother didn’t work outside the home, so we had no child-care issues. We lived in a town small enough where we could walk everywhere we needed to go, so delivering the children to a certain place at a certain time wasn’t much of an issue.

After spending a dozen years as a single adult, I really became accustomed to everything being where I left it and not planning out trips as though I were filing a flight plan for an airline pilot.

That having been said, I wouldn’t trade that half-hour in the car with my youngest daughters for anything. I know a day will come very soon when they’ll both graduate to elementary school in our town, and those daily trips into Lima will fade away. All I’ll have are distant memories of my girls singing and chatting in the back seat, reminding me why it’s worthwhile to go to work in the first place.

When you’re feeling ill, you don’t call out for your accountant. You don’t ask for your pastor or your lawyer either.

You want your mom.

Every Mother’s Day, we hear so many tributes to the wonderful qualities of moms. And while they’re all true, we seldom hear about her role as chief wellness officer in most households.

I’ve seen it firsthand in our household. Between having one daughter with Type 1 diabetes and another with respiratory problems, the doctors at the pediatric office know us well. And they know how well my wife manages all these ailments.

We have some nasty ailments going through our house now, with the youngest’s asthma inflamed to bad levels and the eldest with a strangely infected finger to complement her diabetes. It doesn’t help that I’m fighting my third or fourth ear infection of 2012. (Sometimes it’s hard to tell when one ends and the next one starts.)

Somehow this nurse in a mom’s outfit can remember to give breathing treatments every four hours, talk a stubborn 10-year-old into taking her pill, all while remembering to change out the diabetes pump insulin every couple of days.

Quite frankly, I don’t always remember to take my own medications, much less someone else’s. I try to help, but the medical side of things is certainly her strong point, not mine. My best skills involve the grill and the garbage.

It comes at a cost. She missed nearly a day’s worth of work this week as she ran people to various doctors appointments. But I know she wouldn’t have it any other way. She wants to hear a doctor confirm what she already knows is wrong with our children.

She does this while pushing an equally stubborn hubby into seeing the doctor before he loses his hearing altogether.

My wife works in health care, but I don’t think that fact alone helps her keep track of our family’s health. I see the same attributes in my own mother.

On Friday, I visited the doctor in my hometown to look at my ears. I’ve had the same doctor since childhood, which either means he’s a great doctor or I’m too lazy to search out one that isn’t 45 minutes away. I prefer to believe he’s just that good of a doctor.

Afterward, I stopped off at my boyhood home to say hi to my parents. I wasn’t in their home for two minutes before my mom started diagnosing me. She used her mommy senses to check my temperature and how inflamed my throat was. She wouldn’t let me leave without sending me with a clear, cold liquid.

After all these years, she still worries about my health. After all these years, that still comforts me.

That’s why we want our moms when times get tough. They never stop caring. They never stop worrying.

That’s why we celebrate Mother’s Day each year, because they celebrate Children’s Day for the other 364 of them. We’re so grateful they do.