I made a promise to myself a long time ago to not let the behavior of children in public wig me out. Most of the time the parents are doing the best they can & kids are kids....life is too short.
It’s usually easy to tell whether an out-of-control kid has problems or if the parents just don’t care. I saw the former the other day at the grocery store. A boy that had to be about 8 or 9 who was leaping around yelling very loudly like my 19-month old does. His dad was trying desperately to keep him under control, but it was a real battle. My heart goes out to folks like that. It can’t be easy for a single second.
In this particular case, none of us was there, so radical assumptions about the kid being a brat who needs a spanking or disinterested/uninvolved parents is just stupid.