Act of Negligence or Teaching Independency?

It bothers me when parents here show some "neglect" to their child. I don't want to judge nor talk parenting skils because I'm not a parent myself and never been a parent yet. I'm just basing how my parents or most Filipino parents treat their children.

Long time ago, I was having dinner with my sister and her hubby at Chilli's when suddenly a little girl kept on coming to our table, tapping it with her crayon, screaming and trying to play hide-and-seek with us. Her parents, sitting next table, were busy enjoying their food. They didn't even bother to call the little girl to join them nor feed her. I don't know how could parents -especially mother- enjoy the food when their daughter is running around? I can't help but compare them to Filipino parents. In our culture, the mother will attend to her daughter/son first and spoonfeed her/him (if needed), before she starts eating. It is a MUST to make sure that her child is well-fed before herself. Most Filipino mother would choose to be hungry than seeing their child not eating. That's the difference.

Then one weekend, we were in the cinema, a kid was playing and running back and forth the stairs. So the cinema guy/attendant told the kid not to run/play there because it's dangerous but the kid kept on doing it. He almost tripped but the cinema guy was fast to catch him. While he was holding him he again told the child to stop running. The dad came shouting, asking why the cinema guy is stopping his child from playing. The cinema guy explained that he's only concerned to the safety of the child. The dad said still shouting "It is not your problem if something happened to him. Where is your manager? I want to talk to him. You have no right to scold my child." O_O WTF! What kind of reasoning was that? Again, in our culture in a situation like this, you will always see Filipino parents holding their child's hand. Most Filipino parents are over-protective. If they let the child plays, they will follow the child anywhere he/she goes and won't take their eyes off from him/her.

And just recently, while getting off from the Metro underground station walking to the escalator going up, a family of four walked ahead of me. First was the father, then the mother, followed by 2 kids (son and daughter, around 5 and 2 years old, respectively). The cute little girl was walking like a baby duck, she was obviously still learning how to walk  and I was shocked when the parents stepped on the escalator without looking back, seriously!?!. The little girl started crawling to get on to the escalator!! I ran hurriedly to assist the little girl but she crawled too fast. She was literally crawling to get closer to her mother on the escalator. The mother only looked back when they were already in the middle of escalator and she did it only ONCE maybe just to see if her kids are following them. When the parents were about to step out of the escalator, I was expecting she will hold the little girl's hand but she didn't. She stepped off the escalator and continue walking without looking back. She was busy following her husband. Apparently, she doesn't care for her children :-| I was standing behind the little girl and was happy that she once again managed to step out from the escalator.

I am not sure if the "exhibits" above is just how they do thing. I don't know if the parents' behavior towards their children is one of the many ways how they teach their kids to be independent and strong. Not sure either if it's really a good parenting skill or not. I also don't know if these "parenting skills" are acquired because MAYBE this is the same way how their parents raised them. I'm just kinda sad because kids are kids, parents should be the first ones to give protection and care to them.