I don't think personal preferences, wherever they stem from, have anything to do with patience, good will and respect when it comes to children. Why should it? Yes, children can be annoying, but so can be adult human beings. Children must get some slack since, unlike adults, they're still learning of the world around them, and one's job as a parent is to teach them the most valuable and most important lessons they've encountered on one's own.

Growing to tolerate adults crying at every of their whims denied is not healthy, because it's accepted that by now, adults should know better. Granted, it doesn't make them know better in itself, but it doesn't make people around them more tolerable towards such an attitude, and I don't think it should. Children, on the other hand, will cry; it's not because they're somehow bad or unruly or any of the other mindless labels - it's because we're all born selfish and we grow to understand that other people's feelings and wishes matter, too. It's a parent's job to teach it to their child.

I know it can be hard, and I know it can be daunting to have your child cry all the time - after all, you've grown to accept crying as a sign of despair, and seeing your child being desperate at all is a troubling picture to first-time parents. It doesn't indicate, however, that one mustn't engage with it at all: leaving it be and hope for it figure itself out will only deepen the problem, whatever it might be.

I'm not saying against children crying at all: they should cry - it's healthy. I will tolerate that if I have to - for example, if the child is in pain from scratching their knee: it's fucking painful for a person who has yet to experience pain, so of course it will ensue an avalanche of emotions in a young mind. What I don't tolerate is parents being disrespectful towards their children by growing numb to their wishes. Tell them to "shut up" is a major sin of parenting, for you don't even care about the child when you do that, viewing them as some sort of organic growing toys to be the best you couldn't possibly hope to be because you feel so miserable. Our children are going to inherit the world we build while we're still capable, and then their children will do the same. Must we not provide them with some sort of good guidelines with our own behavior?