My son has been actively involved with meal planning since he as a a year and a half old. "What type of bread today? What type of fruit in your yogurt tomorrow?"
I won't judge kid's behavior, so long as they are acting like kids. Sometimes that means they act out, that is normal.
But, damnit, let them live in the real world and not just try to distract them with shiny things all the time.
I remember going to restaurants in the 90s and early 2000s and kids would be running around playing with each other between tables. That is kids being kids, and it is perfectly acceptable (heck desirable!)
I've decided it's safer to just never judge, that parent you see pushing the toddler around in the cart might indeed be a terrible parent, or they might be going through grief and at their breaking point.
Agreed, I should have clarified that I'm speaking more about friends and family, people's whose situation can be spoken to directly.
I have friends with neurotypical kids who still hand the kids tablets at restaurants instead of actually teaching the kid how to take turns in a conversation, or how to actually go through a menu and order!
Like I get it, it is tiring, but we all signed for the work when we chose to have kids. (At least in my social circle where kids are very well planned for in advance).
On the other hand, no one has ever called the police on me for handing the kid a tablet and melting their brain inside.
When I was a kid either of those people would be practically thrown in a loony bin for saying anything, let alone taken serious by the authorities. Now the CPS investigates almost every accusation and is legally barred from even telling you who made it, so these anonymous shitstains can exercise their cowardice behind a curtain as much as they like with no risk to themselves but every risk to you.
It's difficult to let them live in the real world not because some evil guy with a white van is waiting to offer "free candy" but that the evil person in a white van is actually the Karen who sees a kid on the street or the park as an inconvenience for her or an unacceptable risk and they can be the coward they are and make an anonymous complaint and cause weeks of harassments by CPS with the cell phone they have next to them at the ready wherever they might see a child.
And this is why I pay an arm and a leg to live in Seattle.
Kids here are running around outside playing soccer in the streets with parents watching guard for cars at the ends of the block.
Mixed race is not even noteworthy here.
Kids walk to/from school (up to a mile) all the time. Huge groups of kids walk together every day.