...bring little toddlers to school assemblies and bring nothing along to amuse/distract them with?
I have just been to my DS's leavers assembly and had it ruined by two toddlers who variously cried/whinged/whined/yelled throughout. It's not the children's fault - it went on for well over 2 hours as they went through 50 + children so they were bound to get bored. The mothers of these children just kept them on their laps and tried to contain them as they wrigged and squirmed and got ever more impatient and upset - and demonstrated it very vocally!
One woman's partner did take their child out of the hall and into the corridor at one point but it bellowed so loudly for its mother out there he might just as well not have bothered.
I can understand that they didn't want to miss their own child being done by either not attending or taking a bored toddler outside to allow everyone else the chance to enjoy it but these women didn't even have the courtesy to leave after their own children had been done. They made sure they stayed until the bitter end and ruined it for everyone else!
Don't most sensible people take a few bits to keep a child amused if they know they are going somewhere where a child needs to be as quiet as possible and may become bored and/or a nuisance?
All these women seemed to do to keep their children quiet was to try and keep ramming food into their mouths and doing this seemed to anger and frustrate these children all the more!
Having said that, there was one little girl there who looked about 2 and she was as quiet as a mouse the whole time, she spent some of the time on her mum's lap and the rest in her buggy.