At the Mass I attend every Sunday, one family brings their two loud boys who whisper, laugh, and fight the entire time. Their parents are no help at all: they try to control their children with whispered threats that verge on what my daughter’s pre-school teacher used to call “outside voices.”

Watching a child run a small car up the arm of the pew and along the back, just behind people’s heads, makes me want to whisper a few threats of my own. But I like the Mass I go to, so how do I convince the parents to make use of the children’s room or attend Mass at a different time?

— Feeling Crotchety