My three-year-old son was busy flattening his piece of clay into a pancake when another ball of clay came flying through the air. It hit him squarely on the back of the head, and he started to cry. My husband and I were sitting nearby at his weekly art class, held in a high-ceilinged, 20th-century building in Prenzlauer Berg, a trendy neighborhood in Berlin.
We turned to see a toddler continuing to throw clay balls. The child’s mom was sitting next to her son, not saying anything and simply letting him continue his aggressive antics. I tried to catch her eye, but she refused to make…
