I was in the grocery store the other day. A woman with two young children (I’d guess a 5 year old and 3 year old based on their motor and verbal skills) was also shopping. Her children were acting like shit flinging howler monkeys. They were running around the store, screaming, and, I kid you not, throwing fruit at each other. The woman seemed utterly oblivious to this wild behavior. An older woman said, “Oh they’re so adorable!” To which the mom replied, “Aren’t they sweet?”

In what are known in my family as visits from Frances, I said, “No, your kids are not adorable at this moment. They are not sweet and this behavior is not acceptable behavior in public. You need to act like a parent.”

The silence that followed was deafening, followed by a lame defense that “They’re just kids.”

“Who are endangering themselves and others with this behavior.” The woman managed to more or less contain the childrens’ out of control behavior until she left the store – at which point one of her little ones ran in front of an oncoming car (no one was injured and the car was moving very slow since it was in a parking lot but the child got a serious scare).

Some days, being right is depressing.

A few years ago, in a similar situation in a restaurant, I didn’t say anything. A couple were allowing their young child to run in between the tables and around the restaurant. Despite a warning from the manager, the parents took no action. The child ran into a waiter carrying a full tray of food from the kitchen. Tray and food crashed. A full plate of food spilled on the child’s head. At a minimum, it was good that the it wasn’t a tureen of hot soup. I think the child was more startled than hurt, but it was hard to say since he was covered with food. The restaurant added the cost of the spilled food to the parents’ bill. In high dudgeon they marched out declaring they would never again eat there.

In other instances, I’ve heard of children having hot soup spilled on them or who pull hot items off buffets onto themselves. I’ve seen children running in stores, trip and crash head on into displays or face plant and give themselves bloody noses. In just the last seven days, I’ve seen at least two children dash into oncoming traffic on the streets of Salt Lake City. A few months ago, I was grocery shopping and watched a very small child wandering around the vegetable aisle without an adult nearby. The child was obviously daydreaming. I would guess in the time I was paying attention, this small girl was unattended for at least 5 minutes. At least once a summer, we hear a story about some dumbass parent leaving their child in the car for hours during the middle of the day.

We live in a world full of dangers that children can’t comprehend. Adults have an ethical responsibility to be aware, especially if the children in question are their own. The carelessness of some parents and caretakers astonishes me – their utter obliviousness to the dangers around them. I’m often unsympathetic to the parents’ distress when I see a child injure him/herself in public. It often seems to me that if the parent had been actually paying attention the incident would not have occurred.