Wow, some people are so rude when it comes to other people's kids. This kind of crap really annoys me when people are so against having people bring their kids to the movies yet most teenagers and adults aren't even able to sit through a show without talking too. You must have had a really depressing childhood if all you were taught is that kids should be seen and not heard. My two year old probably has better things to say than most of you on here.

I doubt that.

#29 has a point. If you can't control your child in a public place, it's best to leave the child at home. I go to the theater to watch a movie, not to hear some brat screaming for two hours straight. If you know your child is cranky and won't be able to sit quietly through the event, you should either stay home yourself or find a babysitter. If your child is normally well-behaved but throws a fit in the middle of the show, excuse yourself and take the kid somewhere outside to calm down. DO NOT just sit there and pretend nothing is happening. I HATE it when parents do that. It's even a huge problem in my church. Babies and young children start wailing and screaming, and Mom and Dad just sit there and smile instead of taking the problem out into the common area (and it's not like they couldn't hear the services out there, my church has a speaker system). But then, that goes for anyone of any age. If you can't keep your mouth shut when others around you are trying to listen to something, you need to get up and leave. I'm all for allowing WELL-BEHAVED children into events with their parents. If they're polite and quiet, I have no problem. It's the noisy ones I can't stand.

@dwardo: You decided to have a child and you enjoy being a parent. You love your kid so much that it doesn't bother you when he/she talks loudly, cries, screams and whatever else kids that age do. The rest of us: we decided not have kids, so we would very much like if parents like you gave us a chance to enjoy our lives without having to deal with undisciplined children. If your kid starts laughing loudly in the movie theater, for you it's adorable, for the rest of us it's just annoying. I had the happiest childhood and was in no way "traumatised" by the fact that, ever since I was about 3 or 4 my mom established the rule that, whenever we went out, if I missbehaved, we would return home right away and I was grounded for at least a couple of weeks. So she basically gave me a choice: I was either well-behaved (which ment no screaming, keeping quiet when I was asked to, being polite) or we wouldn't go out. Guess what? I decided to pick option number 1. So I got to go to a million different places, from movies, to concerts, to social events WITHOUT annoying the s*** out of the adults around me.

Huh, that's the same thing my parents did with me. If my brother or I misbehaved, we'd be taken home and punished. They took the old threat of "don't make me turn this car around" very seriously. My brother threw a shit-fit when we were at my grandmother's house. We ended up driving the three hours home because of him. Dad scolded him the entire way home. And my brother never threw a tantrum again after that night.