I get children. I don’t have any, of course, but I do understand the makeup of a growing child. I’m in my late 30’s and have yet to really break away from wanting toys, playing hide-and-seek and leaving the adult stuff to whoever prefers that moniker. Like I said, I get children, but often the people who actually have them don’t. Let me break it down.

Children have a better imagination than you do.

They are in a stage of development where everything is new and wondrous, as yet untampered by cynicism, politics or the feeling of paying taxes on an ever shrinking paycheque. When children have an idea, then it’s a course of action they want to see through. The sense of curiosity that wonders what happens if that button is pushed; the devotion to exploring the world around them; and, above all the wide-eyed desires that flame up like atomic explosions.

The understanding that this thing here right now, is the ‘most amazing thing in all existence’ and I want it now, I need it to complete me; whether it is a specific toy, a dessert or a rubber nipple. This desire is usually expressed by screams and crying. I am like that with Ebay, though the tears tend to show up with my credit card bill.

Now, the thing is parents tend to resolve the hysteria by ineffectual hushes, by surrendering to the terrorists and giving them what they want. This is the equivalent of hitting the snooze button before the next great idea comes along.

The only way you’re going to stop a child getting bored of their latest distraction is to make the distraction last. This is why the ‘stick-them-in-front-of-Frozen-the-movie’ buys you an hour and a half.

I never blame children for being happy to be alive, Lord knows that’s a state of being that will change soon enough

If you want the ultimate pacifier, try get your kids into reading at a very young age. Books feed the imagination, but also distract the reader from the outside world. They are calming, unlike say, iPad apps that give kids buttons to push that make noises and encourage more rumbuctious behaviour.

The other option is to expand on space. We live on a busy island, but there are many open areas. Want the tykes to burn energy? Then take them outside and let them run around, bumping into things, climbing trees and having adventures. They’ll sleep more soundly for it later on: fresh air is soporific. You can just as easily sit on a bench and relax while your five-year-old runs around in circles pretending to be a superhero. It’s cheaper too.

As you can see by now, I really do get kids. But I completely understand you – and by you, I mean the parent calmly ignoring the tantrum to end all tantrums that is holding everyone hostage at the other end of the supermarket aisle – too. And this is where my gripe begins.

I know children have buckets of energy, and the need to express this before implosion. All adults in the modern age are, to some extent, running on fumes and parents even more so. You work all day, then you need to pick up the kids, do some housework, then you need to take Offspring Number One to private lessons, and Offspring Number 2 to piano class, then pick them up, fetch something from the supermarket and cook dinner.

Then it’s late and you have yet to have some me time, so you stay up some more to watch a movie or mainline a few TV shows. Now you’re asleep on the couch, remote in hand with a little drool sliding off your slack jaw. Yes, that’s you. I get you too.

In short: children have energy and you don’t. This is not my problem. I know one way of quietening a child’s shrill demands for attention is to deny it to them and parents have developed this into an art.

However, I don’t understand why you allow this to happen in social public areas, like cafés or restaurants or any retail outlet. This is not okay. It’s also not okay to bring your kids to a house party without checking with the host, or to allow children to climb on things and open boxes and rummage through other people’s stuff without chastising them.

We live in a time when an outsider, however close to family they are, is not allowed to voice any sort of negativity towards a child without being labelled a monster. So parents: pick up on the cues when someone is trying to get your offspring to stop doing something, or is wincing from the loud screams.

You have buggies that get in the way and block passages, you have toys that rattle and squeak and bounce all over the place, you have your progeny bumping into other people and knocking on their seats at the cinema. You haven’t got the energy to deal with this – but it’s still not my problem.

I never blame kids for being happy to be alive, Lord knows that’s a state of being that will change soon enough. But we live in a shared universe. If you think it’s okay to raise your child without any discipline or control, then you really need to be okay with the fact that you’re going to anger a lot of people around you. And in the end you’re only going to make it more difficult for yourself in the future. There is no such thing as hands-free parenting. Good luck to us all.