Actress Zara Noor Abbas reignited the debate around how children should behave and should be raised, when she took to social media to talk about an argument she had with diners at a restaurant.

Sharing details of the incident on Instagram, the she said her daughter was “screaming out of excitement” when a woman from the next table “stood up and gave [her] a dead stare”; a second scream led to a man from that same table shushing the child, which is when Abbas felt the need to intervene.

The actress said the group at the other table said “[her] child was disturbing them”, that “[she] should not have brought her to a restaurant”, and that “[her daughter] should be taught basic manners”. Abbas said she asked the diners if they had children, and upon their denial, tried to explain that the child was not doing this on purpose and that going out with toddlers is tricky. The group, she said, replied that she should get up and leave the restaurant when the baby screamed.

The Ek Jhooti Kahani star said the back and forth continued for 15 minutes, after which the restaurant manager came and apologised. The other group eventually left the restaurant.

In a concluding note, Abbas warned people who don’t have children and want to eat at ‘family restaurants’ that “children are children and toddlers [are worse]”. She asked such people not to “argue with a toddler’s mother over manners” as “this might just trigger the mother to also forget hers”.