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People have a lot of opinions on children and how they behave. They don’t like the inevitable noise that comes from being around kids and they often want them to behave like little adults — seen and not heard. On the other hand, there are some parents who don’t seem to be at all interested in making sure their children aren’t disruptive. Actor Zara Noor Abbas reignited this debate when she took to social media on Tuesday to talk about an argument she had with diners at a restaurant.

Sharing details of the incident on Instagram, the actor said her daughter was “screaming out of excitement” when a woman from the next table “stood up and gave [her] a dead stare”; a second scream led to a man from that same table shushing the child, which is when Abbas felt the need to intervene.

The actor said the group at the other table said “[her] child was disturbing them”, that “[she] should not have brought her to a restaurant”, and that “[her daughter] should be taught basic manners”. Abbas said she asked the diners if they had children, and upon their denial, tried to explain that the child was not doing this on purpose and that going out with toddlers is tricky. The group, she said, replied that she should get up and leave the restaurant when the baby screamed.

The Ek Jhooti Kahani star said the back and forth continued for 15 minutes, after which the restaurant manager came and apologised. The other group eventually left the restaurant. Abbas lamented that other patrons dining at the establishment turned their heads to look, but none stood up for her during the argument. She said this indifference was why we were “dead as a community”.

In a concluding note, Abbas warned people who don’t have children and want to eat at ‘family restaurants’ that “children are children and toddlers [are worse]”. She asked such people not to “argue with a toddler’s mother over manners” as “this might just trigger the mother to also forget hers”.

Children are adorable, messy and even loud at times; allowances must be made for that. However, compassion is a two-way street, and parents have a responsibility to at least try to ensure their children aren’t disturbing the people around them.

We’re not sure what “family restaurant” Abbas is referring to, but all patrons of any restaurant deserve to be able to eat their food in peace and be able to have a good time. That goes for people with kids, as well as those without.

While we understand that moms have it rough, that doesn’t mean other people have to listen to a screaming child. The other patrons did not need to lecture Abbas on her child’s ‘manners’ — toddlers really aren’t equipped to have manners — but that doesn’t mean they were wrong for not wanting to listen to a child scream while eating their meal.

Maybe the real lesson here is that everyone needs to be a bit more considerate of each other. If your child is screaming, perhaps try to distract them and make it easier on other patrons who don’t need to be subjected to a child’s yelling. If you hear a child screaming, perhaps try to bear with it for a while, because we all know that kids make noise and it’s not always something parents can control.