I don't really want to argue any more about this topic, but I do want to suggest something, based on my own experience becoming more tolerant.
I realize that for some people, it's simply not helpful just to say, essentially, "Get used to it." When I did that myself (trying to force myself to get used to unpleasant settings, including church settings), it merely increased my anger because all I really did was suppress my honest disappointment. It was only when I realized I had to stop focusing on my disappointment -- not to focus on the externals of what was happening outside of me -- on "the other" -- that I was able to be at peace.
I don't know how to explain this well. It feels somewhat like meditation, perhaps. (Catholic meditation, not New Age or "transcendental"!) Perhaps centering is a better word, but the point is, that it's really about my calm, not about what's going on around me. And it starts even before I walk into church, which is one reason I actually do not like it when others entering the church try to stop me and socialize. I sometimes have trouble being my usual friendly self then, because I do not experience low or high Mass as a social event. Chatting afterwards is very different than chatting beforehand. I try to recollect myself before I enter. So I enter a kind of interior ("monastic") silence to prepare myself to be receptive to grace, not to whichever adult is making a spectacle of herself (read my much earlier post on this) or whether a group of any age is being restless in the pews or doing odd things.
A few other things help: (1) not making eye contact with others, but practicing custody of the eyes, mind, and soul. ("Let nothing disturb you.") (2) Praying to Our Lady to help with interior silence, since surely she is the queen of silence and receptivity (3) Using my veil as a kind of "screen" on either side of me, discouraging me from looking at every distracting event or sound.
So for example I did this tonight at Mass, and it was very helpful because there were a lot more attendees tonight, for some reason. And many of those were not "regulars" at this Mass, which sometimes creates distractions by that very fact, if I allow it. I realized tonight that I really have cultivated using my body and mind to help me focus only on what's important. I think part of what has helped me is that I now sleep next to a very, very busy street -- major thoroughfare, lots of loud cars, motorcycles, buses, emergency vehicles, street sweepers, etc. I was either going to learn to tune out noise, or I was going to be awake all night. So I have learned to do this in more than one setting.
Now, it's true that I do use earbuds at night sometimes, if the street is just too loud and if I have no time to waste going to sleep for an early rising. But I listen to traditional sermons while doing so, and that gets me in a prayerful mood, which itself helps the process of tuning out external noise. I think I have unconsciously applied that practice of calm to the practice of the presence of God inside church, regardless of disruption. It has really helped.
If I hadn't been able to develop those techniques, perhaps I would use earbuds in church, but ONLY if I were able to do so very unobtrusively, which for me would mean:
already arriving with earbuds on
sitting somewhere very out of the way (like the side pews near the confessionals, or the back if noisemakers are closer to the middle of the church, and vice-versa
I'm pretty sure that my trad priest would disapprove of anyone inserting earbuds in response to children's noise and in view of that family. He would consider that quite uncharitable. He would instead prescribe moving far away from the family but never doing anything so overt.
Just some ideas for Awkward, in an attempt to be constructive.