A toddler darted through diners and stopped before a toy box. He grabbed a handful of plastic dinosaurs, bolted outside, threw the toys on a well-kept patch of grass and began urinating on the T-Rex. The morning was balmy and a crowd of locals had rolled out picnic rugs to drink their coffees on the very grass the child was now soaking with a steady yellow stream.

“Oh my god, Cale!” his mother cried before dissolving into laughter. A dozen heads swivelled. He returned a cheeky grin then began waving around his todger like a broken sprinkler.

“He does this sometimes,” the mother added to her friend, clearly unphased by her son’s antics. “I think it’s the babycinos.”

Children are often the most menacing customers. I once worked at a well-known cafe in Perth’s northern beaches where one corner was roped off for kids. It was less of a play area and more of the 21st-century equivalent of Lord of the Flies—that book about a group of children stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves.

One busy Saturday, I watched three mothers in heavy make-up and gym wear muscle through the crowd, pushing their toddlers in absurdly large prams.

After ordering, the women sat down, positioning the prams in the middle of the main thoroughfare to the bathroom, and became engrossed in conversation. The toddlers, meanwhile, wolfed down their babycinos, then, presumably on a mighty sugar high, they sprinted to the play area.

I only turned my head for a few moments, but in that time, they managed to upend every toy box and were now using lego and timber blocks as Exocet missiles.

Only then did the mothers realise the play corner was now the Gaza Strip and rush over. “Darling,” said one, “do you think it’s a good idea to throw toys around?” The little girl answered by spearing a barbie into the carpet. The mother bent down and held the girl’s hand, looking intently into her eyes. “Why are you throwing toys?” she asked again, the same way a therapist might while trying to draw out the fundamental underpinnings of a patient’s behaviour. For god’s sake, I thought. She’s bloody two and she just ate four marshmallows. What did you expect?

The other mother, hell-bent on ignoring her child’s misbehaviour turned to her friend: “You sorta have to admire their ability to turn all those heavy boxes over by themselves.” Overhearing this, I was reminded of a scene in the film Anchorman when Will Ferrell says to his dog: “You pooped in the refrigerator? And you ate the whole wheel of cheese? How’d you do that? Heck, I’m not even mad—that’s amazing.”

Yes, I was confounded by the children’s romping, but the behaviour paled in comparison to what the mothers did next. They picked up their gear, hoiked the children into their prams and left, leaving me to crawl around on my hands and knees collecting every last lego and timber block sprawled across four square metres of floor.

If kids are around, there are always going to be casualties, especially after babycinos. But you have to question some of today’s disciplining techniques—or lack thereof—when a child can, without consequence, ditch other people’s belongings around a public space or, in Cale’s case, soak them in urine.

I can’t say what I would’ve done if Cale was my son. Even though I’m a fan of liberating children from many of our social norms, I think I’d draw the line at urinating in a cafe, as opposed to Cale’s mother who seemed to be part of the my-son-can-do-no-wrong school.

“Cale, can you pick up the dinosaurs, please?” she said after he’d finally emptied his bladder, drowning the T-rex for good. Cale dutifully collected an armful of wet plastic, tottered back inside and dumped them back in the toy box.

“Good boy,” she said. “Want another babycino?” He clapped his hands. “An almond milk babycino, please,” she said to the waitress. “Oh, and can he have an extra marshmallow? I know he shouldn’t,” she confessed, scruffing his hair. “But how do you say no to that face.”