That event that I blogged about a few days ago about a café owner on the North Side that asked via a sign on his front door that all children behave and use their "inside voices", has created an awful lot of exposure in print, radio and TV around town.

Two Chicago Tribune columnists wrote about the situation and both came down squarely on the side of the café owner.

John Kass compared café owner Dan McCauley to Mr. Belvedere just looking for some level of decency and common courtesy. This just pissed-off a whole bunch of moms to the point of boycott. And they took their rants to the local airwaves. Then the backlash started, with other parents putting the malingering moms in their place.

And A Little Taste Of Heaven's business TRIPLED.

Eric Zorn replies to a quote in the NYTimes article:

"kids scream and there is nothing you can do about it. What are we supposed to do, not enjoy ourselves at a café?"

by basically saying "What you're supposed to do is place proper supervision of your little curtain-climbers above personal enjoyment when you take them to a restaurant, movie theater or any other public accommodation. What you're supposed to do is be mortified when your best efforts at supervision fail. What you're supposed to do is translate this mortification to your children so they learn proper behavior in such settings. What you're supposed to do is pack up and leave immediately if your children don't obey such a simple, obvious, necessary demand as "use your inside voice."

He also included replies from readers, including: "When you have children you lose at least some of the ability to come and go as you please. Your freedoms are largely in the hands of a small, unpredictable person. And because your small person is unpredictable, that means either you have control over their public behavior, or they have control over your ability to go where you wish to go."

And

"There are many other places to eat and shop, so those of you who protest the establishment of behavior norms should pick up your misbehaving kids and take them to a place that will welcome you. The rest of us, who actually parent and try to teach our children how to act in public, will enjoy the relative calm created by your absence."

Then there were the polls:

At the Chicago Tribune website, 88 percent of more than 3,000 respondents to an unscientific click-poll said the complaining parents are off base.

In a WGN-AM click poll, 81 percent said they wished more restaurants and coffee shops would post signs asking parents to keep their kids quiet.

At the Channel 5/Daily Herald site, 97 percent said they thought McCauley was right to post his sign.

Hurray for somebody to stand up against unruly kids and bad parenting!