That said, there are still times when I will see a child acting up or running around the restaurant where I will want to go smack the parents.
I remember the time a child was running loose in a restaurant, and came up to my wife and bumped her while we were eating. My wife looked down and calming said "where are your parents?". The kid ran immediately back to the family's table.
In this instance, it is hard to gauge the "noise" based on the article.
Some parents are oblivious of the problems their children might cause. They allow them to run around and be destructive.
One night at our neighborhood restaurant some parents who were runners left their three children alone in the restaurant while they went out to take a run! Can you imagine. All three kids were under the age of 6.
I am less so; because we trained our child and I know it can be done. We prepared for any restaurant excursion by making sure he was not so ravenous that a slow waiter would have pushed him over the edge; we took an entire tote bag of soft and quiet toys and soft books which we switched out one at a time the moment he got bored, and seated him with his back to the crowd whenever possible. We also explained clearly and simply what behavior we preferred and rewarded him with praise and smiles for good behavior. As he got older, quiet word games and drawing with soft pencils were favorite pastimes while waiting in public.
Importantly, if he made noise, we took him out of the room until he calmed down; we and did not inflict it on others, especially when traveling far from home.
Especially with music performances, we used a pacifier, pinned to his clothing so there would be no dropping or searching. (No, the pacifiers didn't misalign his teeth nor the habit persist into adolescence.) He was so well trained that he was able to sit quietly through an entire classical guitar performance in the music academy hall at age 3 -1/2, with the aid of a pacifier. He asked for and started classical music lessons at age 6.
Children tend to do what is expected of them if they are loved and encouraged, but also disciplined clearly and fairly. Parenting is a lot of disciplined work; but if you do the work and make it fun, good results become evident.