Monday Manners: The Opposite Is Sometimes True As Well

I've written before about parents who really need to keep their children in control on at least one occasion, but for every impolite or incompetent parent who doesn't know how to control his or her child(ren), there are probably a dozen other parents who do. There are also genuinely good children who don't usually need to be reigned in by their parents.

I've recently made a fabulous new friend who has the most adorable six-month-old I've seen in a long, long time. Baby is blonde and blue-eyed and very friendly. Mommy is very good at reading baby's noises and facial expressions to tell when the little one is hungry, sleepy, or in need of a diaper change. Baby isn't fussy, but is very vocal: in that adorable, happy baby way. A few days ago, the three of us went to the Franklin Institute to see the King Tut exhibit (it was pretty sweet), and Baby didn't cry once. If it wasn't for the stroller, you might not have even known she was there at all.

But that doesn't mean that Mommy, Baby, and I didn't get some nasty looks just the same. Unfortunately, and not always wrongly, an assumption exists that, if one brings a baby into a quiet and/or confined space, that baby will proceed to scream its head off and ruin everyone's movie/flight/day at the museum. And so, to prepare ourselves for this, and to let mommies and daddies everywhere know how much we don't appreciate even the idea of an upset baby, we tend to glare at parents and, worse, their helpless children. I know this because I've been guilty of it on more than one occasion: usually a cross-country red eye flight.

But there are two important things to remember here. The first is that babies, like accused criminals, are innocent until proven guilty. Age alone does not a screamer make, and there's a perfectly good chance that that infant across the room is going to sleep through the whole museum tour. The second is that babies are born without the ability to speak, but with the human need to communicate. If they're crying, it may not be their faults. An infant can't say: "Hey, Mom. I'm hungry and a little tired, but before you put me to sleep, can you please change my poopy diaper?" That would be awesome, but neither the physical nor cognitive mechanisms required to construct that sentence will develop for another couple of years. Giving the parent of a crying infant a dirty look could fluster the parent and actually slow the process of getting the baby what it needs in order to stop crying. Giving a crying infant a dirty look isn't going to accomplish anything and might just make you a bad person who wants to starve babies.

Next time you're around parents, try to have a little sympathy. It's not an easy job, and chances are, they're just as frustrated by their crying babies as you are.

But if they're letting their children run amok around a restaurant, or if they won't take their hysterically crying children out of the movie theatre, then by all means, continue to hate on them all you want.

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