Kids Today Don’t Know How to Behave

The article by Valerie J. Nelson on children who “suddenly’ behave badly when visiting friends or families rattled my cage (“The Road Best Traveled,” Nov. 17). The kids I see today always behave badly. It’s just that parents finally take the trouble to notice, and be defensive, when their relatives have the nerve to comment.

Today’s kids are absolute nightmares in public. They make shopping in supermarkets and drugstores torture for everyone. Everyone except their parents, of course. They couldn’t care less what their kids do, how loud they bellow, what they break, or who they injure running and rolling balls down aisles. And let’s not forget the IQ 40s who allow their small children to race between the tables in a restaurant, threatening injury to themselves and others.

I get really furious at parents who make potentially lovable children into monsters simply because they are so lazy and unconcerned. It just makes children unwelcome in more and more places with more and more people. And doesn’t give them any sense of rules and limitations they will need to deal with the temptations and choices they will face when they hit their teens.

KAYE KLEM

Los Angeles