I was standing in queue at the checkout counter at the local departmental store the other day when I noticed that the lady in front of me had a child in her shopping cart. This child, about two years old, was clinging protectively to the four or five things that they had shopped for. When they reached the counter, the lady, instead of taking her things and putting them on the counter or asking the clerk to do so, started indulgently asking the child to take the things and put them one by one on the counter. The child was reluctant to do this and continued to play with them. After a few minutes of this, the clerk could not restrain himself and reached out and took the things himself. At which the child started crying at the top of its lungs. The lady looked half accusingly at the harried clerk while trying to comfort the child.

This is not an isolated incident. Today's department stores are filled with kids gone berserk with the shopping carts while their parents indulgently look on. Step into any "Family Restaurant" and you find kids running around the place making a nuisance of themselves, all the while looked at by admiring parents. The main reason for kids' unruly and offensive behaviour seems to be the parents' inability (or refusal) to parent. We have too many people who get into the business of being parents without the slightest inkling of the responsibilities it entails.

Which got me wondering - what would my parents have done if as a kid I had run around a restaurant screaming at the top of my lungs? They would have given me a stern warning, which if I continued to ignore, would earn me, as Jerome so elegantly puts it, "a clot on the head!"
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