I also like what Smalltowngirl said. It shows compassion and love. BUT….
This is a particular hot-button issue with me. I really get upset by parents who shuckel away, oblivious to the fact that their little Soraleh or Dovid’l is disruptive to the rest of the people who are trying to daven. Too many people think of Shul as a babysitting service (i.e. moms who send the little ones with the father, so they can get some much-needed rest). One cannot do a mitzvah such as davening, on the backs of other mispallelim. I never brought or sent my children to Shul to sit there without zitzfleish and be disruptive. I took them to Hakafos, and when they were old enough, to the Megillah Leining. Then I brought them to Shul for short periods of time to acclimate to being in Shul, until they were old enough to actually daven. My neighbor either blew shofar for me, or I went to a specially-arranged shofar blowing after the davening, when my husband could watch the small children who were not old enough to be quiet during the shofar blowing. It seems so obvious to me, that this is what young women should be doing nowadays. Understandably they feel confined to the house and they want to get out, so they go to shul. But on whose cheshbon? What mitzvah are they getting? More important, what aveira might they be getting for preventing other people from davening? Some children are too young, too immature, and too antsy to be “shown the beauty of davening” until they are much older. And that is not a crime. They are, after all, little kids.
I believe that the test of Rosh Hashana is not how tolerant we are of other people’s wrong behavior, but of trying to make this world a better place. Maybe the FATHER of the child was the one being tested, to see if he would use the opportunity to teach his child derech eretz in front of the Aron Kodesh. It is so amusing and a little sad to me, that when someone is clearly in the wrong, it is always the OTHER guy who is supposed to be changing HIS behavior and reactions. And noch di tzee, he is further accused of failing to pass the nisayon! Put the responsibility squarely where it belongs, on the errant father and his ill-behaved child. If the child is too young to understand and behave, he is too young to be in shul,and that is NOT his fault, it is his parents’ faults.