Imagine that you are sitting with your significant other trying to enjoy a peaceful and romantic dinner after a long week of classes. The waiter comes by, takes your orders, and refills your glasses as you stare into each other’s eyes completely lost in the extraordinary moment. As he leans in, just as your lips are about to meet, your romantic moment is interrupted by the bone chilling scream of an unhappy baby sitting at the table across from you. Opening your eyes you realize the moment has been completely ruined by this unfortunate event. Immensely disappointed at a perfect moment being ruined, you and your date simply fall gently back into your chairs and start talking about a completely different topic.
This is a very typical scene which occurs not only in restaurants but in any situation where it is impossible to block out the annoying sound. What is it that you are supposed to do in these situations? You can’t approach the parents and inform them that your night was just rudely interrupted by their annoying screaming child. You don’t have the option since it’s not the parent’s fault that their baby is screaming for no reason at all. So what do you do? You are forced to sit in the awkward situation staring at your date as the child proceeds to scream even louder. You slowly realize the control of the situation has left your hands and is now up to the parents.
The parents have almost as little control as you do sitting across from their table. They do their best to quiet the child which sometimes works, but usually only increases the intensity of the screams. The baby doesn’t understand it is disrupting a perfectly romantic evening; it is only concerned with the fact that it is unhappy. Unless you have the power to know exactly what your child wants at that precise instance, solving the situation is very difficult and annoying for people around them.
Unfortunately this situation has happened to me in many different instances from restaurants, to airplane rides, and even to church. There is nothing worse than trying to pay attention to a preacher giving his sermon with the constant interruption of babies and older children screaming bloody murder. The situation could be solved rather easily if the parents had any initiative to act. The solution I would provide is to pick the baby up and walk either to the bathroom or the nursery until the screaming stops.
In my opinion the situation, which is commonly the worst, occurs when sitting in either a class or a sermon during church and being interrupted by screaming. I am usually deeply interested in the subject matter being discussed during the preacher’s sermon and my concentration is extremely interrupted when the screaming starts. Unfortunately we do not have a nursery to take a child when it is misbehaving to wait out the situation until it stops screaming. My church, however, does have a foyer which is closed off when church begins. It is not a complete sound proof room, but it is better to hear a muffled sound of a crying child rather than the direct ear piercing screams. Sometimes the child screams louder than the preacher can project his voice so he must resort to shouting because the parents don’t have enough respect to remove the child and let him finish his sermon. It is impossible to pay attention and I usually spend the time looking at my friends and making eye contact with the parents of the child.
Another instance which only makes matters worse is when a child is screaming because their toy has been taken away from them and the parent doesn’t remove them from the room, but spanks them in front of the whole congregation. This has happened in my church and it would seem that people would realize that spanking the child will only make the matter worse. It takes every ounce of energy for me to not approach the family and ask them if they realized their child was screaming at the top of its lungs during half of the sermon. I refrain because they obviously know and were trying to listen to the sermon as I was. Sometimes I wonder if people are really trying to do the right thing or if they are that disrespectful among others.
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