One of the many afflictions of parenthood is the delusion that your child is particularly cute and/or 
unique to everybody else in the world. When you are in a conversation with a parent and their child is somewhere near and they pause the conversation to talk to their child what they really want is to direct your attention to said kid and for you to compliment them on it. Parents seem to have no clue that there are many people in the world who have no interest in reproducing and even less in their offspring.
They think that all adults are as used to the noisiness, the shrill, nerve-wracking screeches, the giggling and the endless dumb questions because they are. Basically their attempt to pass on genetic material is supposed to be as prized by you as it is by them.
Parents need to know that there are lots of people in this world who chose not to have kids precisely because they don’t like them. They need to teach their kids not to be annoying to those people and to keep their little mouths shut in public because one of them might be around. They should also know that it is somewhat insulting to introduce an acquaintance to a 5 year-old child. The assumption is that the person has nothing better to do than to shake their kids’ sticky, germy hand. It is, in essence a worthless gesture of no value to the adult.
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