Hmm.

My son turned 11 this spring. He's just starting to explore a variety of music: started with Bach, then on to the Beatles. :-) He's been a percussionist in his elementary school band, and this past year started taking private lessons too. At the local university, there are many concerts and recitals that are free. We have gone to some with the understanding that we don't feel badly leaving at intermission if that's as long as our interest/patience persists.

One of the concert opportunities consists of various percussion ensembles. The first one that we went to had the orchestral-type percussionists doing a long, weird, very modern piece for the entire first half. It was hard to sit through it all, and unfortunately Dan was so burned out that he didn't want to continue through the second half when some other groups that might have interested him more were coming up.

We learned from that, and the next time brought along his Harry Potter book. That way, he listened some, read some, and didn't squirm or require whispering or note jotting or other attention that would have been more distracting to other audience members. And, he was up for the second half, which concluded with the marching band drumline, whose performance he found really exciting and inspiring.

So, I'd say, cut the parents some slack. Yeah, maybe they had no babysitting money. Or, maybe the kid wasn't playing his game the entire time. Maybe, even if he was playing his game the entire time, he still absorbed something of the show -- he may have attention issues that would otherwise have made his attendance impossible.

This is not to say there's not a lot of rude audience behavior nowadays -- we're too used to having our in-home entertainment where we can behave without regard to other audience members. But, if it's a kid (or maybe a spouse ;-) with some quiet supplementary entertainment, maybe that's not so horrible.

I'd also temper this with consideration for the venue and the style of music -- personally, my standards would be somewhat higher in a hall where people were paying good money for a show.

~ Becky in Tucson