A very hard situation to be in. Not quite sure how I would have handled the situation. Maybe asked if they were 'control crying' or somehting so I could understand the angle they were taking.

I think parents are judgemental. I know I am, only because I am comfortbale with my parenting style. But that being said I live by the 'each to their own' style of being judgementaladn don't say anything in public unless it is a matter of safety.

A friend of ours' daughter has just split with her bf and moved back home and I don't agree with some of the things she does with her son (14 months). But I bite my tounge when we are with her (I vent to DBF later, and he does to me lol). However, the other day they came around and she mentioned that our house is no where near baby ready. I thought the cheek of her! Just because she has a toddler she knows how to parent better than us! (our other kids are 12 and 15 now). I said of course it isn't. I'm not due until August and the babies not going to be on the move unitl christmas at the earliest, so why do I have to have safety gates, etc in place now?! She thinks we need to have every safty device known. Rather than let is parent our way, which is to have certain safety devices in place for sure (under the kitchen sink, cords, power plugs, etc) and teach the kids not to touch the other things. We have two other kids, not like we don't know what we are doing! Anyway enough of a rant there lol

Bathsheba - I wouldn't have been able to say nothing there.lol. I respect other peoples choice to parent the way that they do, but there are rule in our house. Like it or lump it. No-one runs a muck in our house. In our house we do not point a gun (no matter how it's formed) at other peoples faces. This may offend some visitors but it is our house and we also have a parenting style that needs to be respected. I'm probably sounding quite tough here but I do say things tacktfully.
I guess I don't have much of a problem telling other kids 'off' as I ran a Family Day Care business when my son was very small (started when he was 5 months old and ran for 4 years). So we had house rules, which were not only based on my personal beliefs but those of current psychology and child rearing practices. Parents new in advance what my beliefs were and what consequences there were for so called 'misbehaviour' (usually time out).

Anyway I'm rambling now. lol