Earlier this week, a 2-year-old boy drowned out preflight announcements on a Southwest Airlines flight with his screams of “I want Daddy!” and “Go, plane, go!” So the airline kicked the child and his mother off the plane.
Southwest has since apologized to the child’s mother, and offered a refund and travel voucher.
Southwest apologizes to mom on Calif. flight [AP]
(Photo: woodleywonderworks)
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Are we really a nation of spoiled self-involved pussies to the point where we cannot put up with a screaming two-year old for a flight? REALLY? Jesus folks, suck it up. You’ll have far better stories to tell if you’re not wrapped in cotton wool your entire lives.
@sybann: You think Sully could’ve gotten everyone off his plane alive if he’d had to give escape instructions over a screeching toddler?
Southwest is stupid. “Root says she was confident Adam’s screams of “Go! Plane! Go!” and “I want Daddy!” would subside after the plane took off Monday in Amarillo, Texas.” The lady agreed her kid was yelling and just claims to “know” the kid would have quieted down during the flight.
So first the lady does not dispute the kid was yelling during the safety stuff, but she clearly cannot guarantee the kid won’t yell during the whole flight.
Southwest screwed up big by apologizing to this idiot woman.
as a father of a 2 year old i know the best parent in the world couldn’t control them unless they had been literally been beaten senseless by that age. their brains just don’t work that way. it is why i don’t WANT to fly with my son. it is unfair for him and others, but i have had the luxury of making that choice, other may not. when our country is 3-4 days of driving across, flying is the only option in certain circumstances. that said, im not sure why so many people are so angry about children. forget the sentimental stuff, children are necessary to the continuation of our species so you are going to have to deal with them. they also need to participate in being human in public or they won’t be the kind of adult you’d want to be around either. lastly, the most vocal want it both ways. disciplining a a child physically would certainly do no good and many would vocally object to seeing this. not physically disciplining and the other half of the crowd starts up. it is a losing proposition in any scenario. what i would like is for all the adults here is to start acting like adults. you won’t be harmed by a loud or obnoxious child, discomforted, surely, but i know you can handle it. remain calm, sit back and be quiet. YOU are the adult. the parent knows you are annoyed and here is a news flash, they are too. if you want to help, great, but if you can’t, then control yourself, you have the discipline to do so. i hope. if you can’t, maybe you should question your own parents’ parenting skills.
I know that kids can be impossible to control at times. Even so, I do think airlines should consider offering special “family flights.” I think that having people around fully prepared for the kid-zone would be helpful and that the customers would appreciate knowing the other passengers are in the foxhole with them.
@Colonel Jack O’Neill: Milk with sedative in it?
@ben: I think some people have never spent significant time around a 2-year-old.
@ben: K, first off: I don’t agree with either side. You should attempt to control your children, but there are times where they’re just going to scream. The problems arise from: we as outsiders haven’t been observing you/your parenting for years.. and we have no idea if this is a normal occurrence or not. I was also a kid on a plane once, and I’m sure I cried at some point… was I wild? No.
BUT: It’s very easy to take the “No one’s forcing you to get on the plane” and turn it around… No one forced you (and your kids) to get on the plane either.
@ben: No, two year olds are not unpredictable. I know, I have ‘em.
Two year olds with self-absorbed incompetent parents that will not control them are unpredictable.
@mrsultana: “Removed from the situation?” I got smacked upside the head until I was i conformity with the (reasonable) requirements of the situation.
@Wombatish: No, no one forced the woman and her child to get on the plane. But she isn’t complaining about the other people on the plane. Obviously the flight crew decided that it would be better if she weren’t on the plane, and I have no problem with that. Southwest also obviously decided that they would rather have her as a repeat customer and compensated her. I have no problem with that either.
The only things I have a problem with are people assuming that this woman is automatically a bad parent because her two year old was making noise and that they have the right to be on a noiseless airplane. In this instance, the crew kicked the woman off. There are plenty of flights where crying/screaming kids are not kicked off. Southwest (as well as every other airline that I’m aware of) doesn’t have a “no kid” policy, so by buying a ticket for a flight, part of the risk you’re assuming is that you might have to listen to a screaming kid.
@ben:
I don’t know, on the one hand I understand that sometimes the world’s best kid, toddler, baby can have a melt down and its impossible for the world’s best parent to calm that child down. Does that mean the child and parent need to be kicked off the plane, I don’t know seems pretty harsh but on the other hand do the 100 other passangers have to listen to the screaming child for the next two hours?
Perhaps it is best to kick child off, give parent free flight as compensation, make all other 100 passengers super happy?
@ben: So does using benzocaine on their gums or a little whiskey during teething bad parenting?
@ben: Nonsense. A little Benadryl in Precious Snowflake’s sippy cup full o’Sunny D makes parents and passengers happy and leaves no scarring emotional residue.
@ben: As Esquire pointed out, when near 80% of people complain about something you’re doing, you may want to look at yourself as the source of a legitimate problem.
And just because something isn’t explicitly banned, doesn’t mean common courtesy doesn’t apply. I can tell by your comments, though, that you maintain the “screw-everyone-else, I’m-a-precious-snowflake, nobody-matters-but-me” mentality; I’m better off trying to reason with a brick wall.
@eyezick: I don’t know where it stands on the abuse scale, but I can tell you that it’s a total failure on the effectiveness scale. You’ll just get screeching through the nose that’s higher-pitched and no quieter and a degree of flailing that’s likely to bounce the hand off pretty quickly.
@lmarconi: you are the voice of reason in this thread.
@lmarconi: I tend to lean toward the anti-kid myself (as in I don’t want them, but I have no problem with other people who do want them). But I totally agree with you. If a parent is actively trying to be a good parent, then hell, yes, I will help them out if I can. It’s called being a human being. I’d be annoyed with the screaming child, but hell – at that point, you could even consider it selfish motivation to help the woman calm the kid down.
It seems like the problem here was that the woman was actively not feeding the kid, though, which was one of the big things leading to the problem. So unless the village springs to feed the kid (which is inappropriate for a lot of reasons), it doesn’t seem as if it would have helped.
@lmarconi: I too have respect for parents and know there are circumstances which may require bringing a small child on a plane. However, as someone mentioned, an airline cabin is going to magnify the intensity of everything, so it’s important to keep this in mind when a child is screaming around adults not familiar with your particular child, this might actually bring on a panic attack in some folks.
When and if I ever find myself in this parent’s shoes, I won’t be traveling without enough earplugs for everyone several rows ahead and behind me. It’s the right thing to do.
@lmarconi:
“It takes a village to raise a child? The rest of us villagers are busy!”
-Bill Maher
We don’t make it easy to raise a kid? Here are just SOME of the concessions I make to children:
-Property taxes going to schools I will never use
-Higher taxes due to parents’ tax breaks
-Restrictions on my freedoms because of the “what about the children?” parents who don’t want to actually, I don’t know… PARENT (i.e. adult entertainment, video games, movies, music censorship, unfair drug laws, zoning restrictions, alcohol, TV… and on and on and on).
If these things aren’t enough of a contribution, I want them back. And I’m not even getting to the stuff that is merely annoying and not flat out unjust.
If someone wants to be a villager and help raise children, more power to them. But co-opting someone who doesn’t want to be involved makes you not just a bad parent, but a bad person. And if you can’t kick in a little more money than the 200K you are already shelling out, maybe you shouldn’t have kids yet. I mean, this is The Consumerist, where we believe in only paying for something when you can afford it!
@sisepuede is the femmiest femme of them all:
Because they are funny.
@sisepuede is the femmiest femme of them all: Because no one reports them to the moderator.
@Esquire99:”Why should I suffer because a parent is too lazy/incompetent/rude to inconvenience themselves for the sake of the rest of us? “
Because that’s life, and sometimes it sucks. So get over it and yourself.
You know nothing about a person’s situation, their overall parenting skills, the temperament of their child (what works best to make them calm), but you can still call them “lazy/incompetent/rude”?
Making that kind of blanket statement is pretty lazy/incompetent/rude. Being a parent is hard, don’t judge them blindly. Maybe instead sympathize, the last person a mom on a plane needs is a judgmental jerk who KNOWS the best thing all the time.
@Esquire99:..to folks with an immature and inappropriate sense of humor.
@sisepuede is the femmiest femme of them all: Welcome to the internet.
@sisepuede is the femmiest femme of them all: Nice one! Except the best comedians in the world have “an immature and inappropriate sense of humor”. Perhaps George Carlin’s comedy is actually normal and you are the one that’s too immature to handle it?
@Brontide: OK, I know Cameraman said he had the cutest 2 year old in the world… but the pictures of your daughter on the plane will be awfully hard to top. Thanks for sharing.
Two sets of responsible parents in one thread? That’s unpossible!
@Brontide: Your little one is absolutely adorable! I am not into kids, but I can acknowledge and appreciate them as individuals when a pleasant one is discovered. To you and Cameraman I say, would you consider having a few more, to balance the population of properly-parented beings to accessory children?
@PsiCop: Heh, my parents didn’t take us out to restaurants for about 10 years after my younger brother and I jumped up on a table to lick up spilled soda when we were 3 and 4.
If we acted up in stores, it was a swat on the behind and we were sent to go sit in the car.
@CheritaChen: I think 2 is our limit. Any more and I think wife and I would go insane. It’s really hard to keep sane and raise nice kids when they outnumber you. For the most part raising a nice kid comes down to setting reasonable standards for behavior and enforcing them. That “enforcement” could be as simple as sending them to our room ( why people send kids to their rooms I will never understand ).
[ericwarnke.smugmug.com] – Grandma and the two darlings on fathers day.
@LadySiren:
Just so we’re clear, you’re “pro-bad parent” then?
@LadySiren: Yes, children are boogery, noisy, rambunctious little energizer bunnies, but they still have the same rights as the rest of y’all.
So then you are okay with the 40 year old to just get fuckin’ RIPPED and start shouting and crying at the top of my lungs and kicking the seat in front of me for the whole flight? Clearly I have these rights, and being drunk, I have no self control.
@LadySiren: “Yes, children are boogery, noisy, rambunctious little energizer bunnies, but they still have the same rights as the rest of y’all” – Actually, children don’t have anywhere near the same rights as the rest of us. They’re basically property of the parents but have basic human rights.
@mrsultana:
Dont forget, those kids will be paying for your social security and Medicare…
be nice to the breeders, you need them.
@mrsultana: Win. Very very win. Amen.
Screaming kids on a plane = pain for everyone else. It’s amazing how irritating it can get to be locked in what amounts to a sealed tube with screaming children.
If anything, everyone *else* on the southwest flight should be given travel vouchers.
@Brontide: OK, now it’s time to replace all of our cat pictures with pictures of cute kids. You have a beautiful family Eric.
On a more serious note, you might want to remove your kids names from the photo captions. Especially given that you use your full name. My experiences have made me somewhat dark and cynical, and those experiences have shown me too many children with stolen identities. Of course they don’t discover this until they’re ready to apply for student loans to get into college, but by then the damage is done. Your relatives who look at your photos will know their names, and the rest of us are happy just to see the pictures of cute kids.
@nonzenze:
Perhaps you were smacked upside the head too many times a as a child that you don’t actually realize you don’t have children.
@PsiCop:
If I were way off base, so many people wouldn’t be agreeing with me. From the way you describe children, perhaps you just have an unhealthy and immature issue with them that colors your world view. You don’t like kids, that’s cool, but it’s not cool to berate or disrespect people who do.
It costs something like over 200,000 to raise a child from birth through 18, not even counting college tuition. You provided examples of support of parents (most of which relate to corporate greed and ways to milk money out of parents rather than help them), but what about the ridiculously high cost of day care or the struggles households with two parents working (or god forbid, a single parent) face in raising a child. We don’t make it easy on people to make a living and raise a family.
I’m not making excuses for parents who fail to parent their child, and I don’t know what the mother in this instance did or how she parents. I’ve seen parents interact with their children in ways that make me wince or fail to control their child, but I also understand that nobody’s a perfect parent 100% of the time (god knows my parents weren’t and they’re great people who did their best). If this woman was trying as best as she could to get her child to quiet (a 2 year old, and not a monster, but I understand your confusion), I would be willing to accommodate them.
@PsiCop: “It might let them off the hook, but those parents are raising monsters, not people.”
Psicop, I’d hate to let facts to get in the way of their rant, but 2-year-olds have no restraint. They are entirely incapable of keeping quiet when they wanna yell. No amount of parenting in the world is gonna change that fact.
And yelling is hardly “monster” behavior. Hitting, maybe, but 2-year-olds can’t restrain themselves from that either. While you can physically restrain kids from hitting, that doesn’t work with yelling.
@voogru: “nobody”
@Paladin_11: Names are far too easy to obtain to bother obscure them on my photo site. I would rather spend a few minutes every few years to pull their reports since that will catch *anything* including misapplied billing or errors as well as anything intentionally malicious.
@first man: And when Benadryl backfires and makes the kid more excitable, which can happen about 50% of the time, as it does with me? Then what, oh genius of parenting advice?
Sheesh, you people who don’t have kids are just full of stupid advice.
Get a grip, folks. Airlines are PUBLIC TRANSIT. Regulated heavily, yes, but PUBLIC. Don’t like it? Get some friends together and pay for a PRIVATE chartered flight.
Suck it up and deal. You don’t buy out the whole flight when you buy one seat. You don’t get to dictate if someone in the next seat is an age you don’t like or any other factor you don’t like. Should racists get to kick people of colour off of the flight? Should a Muslim get to kick off a Jew or vice versa? I mean hell, that situation could get out of hand and noisy too, right?
I’m allergic to cologne…can I demand nobody wear it on a flight?
If you don’t like noise, DON’T FLY, and please stay at home and whinge to yourselves instead!
@Brontide: Fair enough, it’s of course your call. And as I said, I’m overly dark and cynical. In my experience the names are the start. With very little extra work it’s possible to collect additional information to make a plausible forgery of the rest of a life that corresponds closely to yours. Pulling their credit reports periodically is exactly the right thing to do.
Everything else I said still stands though. They’re mighty cute and I appreciate your sharing the pictures.
@dantsea: yup. and i learned the error of my ways. thank you, everyone.
@kaceetheconsumer: “Get a grip, folks. Airlines are PUBLIC TRANSIT. Regulated heavily, yes, but PUBLIC.”
No, actually. They aren’t. Airlines are primarily private corporations who choose to sell to the public because that’s where the profit is. And as a private corporation, they have every right to decide who does or does not get to remain on their property, provided they do not show a trend of discrimination against specific types of people.
To remove this parent nd her child was their right, and I guarantee you they would not have exercised it unless they firmly believed it was the more profitable decision. They may have believed that because they felt the comfort (and thus continued business) of the majority of the plane’s occupants outweighed the comfort and continued business of those two individuals. They may have believed that the ability of everyone to hear federally regulated safety announcements, thus avoiding hefty federal fines, was worth more than the fares paid by these two passengers. They may have believed that the comfort and mental health of their employees (who may or may not have just been having a bad day) and thus reduction of staff turnover, recruitment and training expenses was worth more than the fares paid by two passengers. They may have believed some combination of the above or something completely different. Regardless, it was their plane and their right and their business decision.
“You don’t get to dictate if someone in the next seat is an age you don’t like or any other factor you don’t like.”
Not a single passenger dictated anything. It was a decision made by the company. Obviously, it was one that a large portion of the population agrees with, which only makes it make more business sense.
@BluePlastic: I’ve only flown twice in my life. It’s not something my family ever did; you can bet your ass listen to those instructions when I’m on the plane. If you don’t want to hear it, that’s fine, but I do.
Besides, wasn’t there a study that was done a while back that showed that people who listen to the instructions/read the rather comical instruction cards in the seat pockets have a more logical, more effective response in an emergency situation than people who don’t? Don’t worry; I’ll know how to use my seat cushion as a flotation device. I’ll show you how, if you can find the exits.
@SadSam: It was @supercereal:
Supercereal, your ignorance and intolerance is astounding. Why does everyone assume that a noisy child is a result of bad parenting?
I travel the world with my two kids, and they are both under 7. We just got back from Germany last week. My oldest flew from LA to London with me when he was just 5 weeks old. My boys have each logged over 100k miles over their lifetimes.
95% of the time, they are silent on the flights.
I’ve learned two things over the years:
1) Provide entertainment. Video games, movies, books, coloring, whatever, just make sure they have enough activities to last them the entire flight. If you’re lucky enough to be on Virgin America, all the better.
2) This is critical. Have chewing gum available at all times, including taxiing. This serves two purposes. First, it keeps the mouth occupied. Second, and most importantly, it clears the ears when pressure changes occur in the cabin. Kids can’t clear their ears the way adults can, and I’ve discovered that ear pressure is the culprit 9 times out of 10 when a child is crying early on in a flight. They are in pain, but how the hell are they supposed to articulate that fact?? If your child is too young for gum, have a bottle or pacifier ready that they can suck on during takeoff. I can’t tell you how many times this has worked, and it surprises me how few flight attendants know about it.
However, on occasion, a child just becomes difficult. Often times, it has nothing to do with bad parenting. They are little people whose bodies are going through massive changes 24/7. Freakouts happen. Airplanes and airports are stressful environments for everyone, and that includes little kids. The thing is, if people like you would realize this fact and not be so quick to pass judgment, maybe we could all get through it together instead of at each other’s throats.
@first man: Bravo. First intelligent suggestion in this thread.
What a bunch of hypocrites. No one ever listens to the safety messages anyway. I’ve heard as many loud drunk adults on planes, people who continue to use cell phones while flying, people with loud annoying laughs they use nonstop – and people constantly accept behavior from these adults that they find unacceptable in kids. Clearly it’s not the kids behavior, it’s the fact that they’re a child and therefore it’s easy for some to violate their rights and hold them to standards above adults.
Flying is NOT a “privilege”, it’s a business and a simple exchange of money for service. If that kid’s seat was paid for, he was just as much a customer as anyone else on the flight and he had every bit as much right to be on the flight as any adult. The only time anyone ever pulls out the “flying is a privilege” BS is when they want to discriminate against fat people or kids. Flying is just another business, nothing more.
I’m glad she was given a voucher and hope she and the 2 year old that OMG – VOCALIZED! are sitting next to YOU on their next happy flight.
@xtc46 – thinksmarter on twitter: You are absolutely wrong. Kids are never the singular responsibility of the parents. The entire society around them is responsible for raising kids. We pay taxes for public schools because we believe as a society it is important that kids are educated. We impose extra safety precautions and restrict the rights of others in order to protect and raise kids.
You claim that when you have kids of your own they will never be a burden on someone else. My daughter is generally well behaved, but she had a little problem on the flight because her ears weren’t equalizing so she cried for about an hour. I felt bad that she disturbed the flight but should I have just stayed home and not gone to my grandmother’s funeral on the opposite coast?
Are you planning to keep your kid locked in the house and never go out? Kids will always have an impact on everyone around them. To claim otherwise is short sighted and ignorant.
@dantsea: Sorry those hardened flight crews may be the first people to overreact. People who work in high stress jobs tend to be less forgiving than those who do not.
@Esquire99: Tough shit. Everyone was a little kid once, including you. Unless you want society to grind to a halt because people stop having children, you’ll have to put up with children in public.
@Esquire99: Unless the Bering land bridge and roads linking the two sides popped up while I wasn’t looking there’s no way I can get to the place I usually fly to. Then again,flying with a baby is something I get to deal with in the near future, not now.
@subtlefrog: Unfortunately, that hasn’t been my experience – though I haven’t tried in a while. They seem pretty harried and most of the time seem to forget my request – or something more urgent pops up and it gets very delayed. I’ve gotten used to bringing my own & if a cart comes around when I’m thirsty, it’s a bonus!
@subtlefrog: I asked for a drink on my last trip about 15 minutes after we took off. They told me (quite rudely) to wait and the cart would be around shortly. An hour later the cart came around. That’s not ‘shortly’.
@supercereal: I completely agree. There are many places families and children should avoid and my wife and I are very sensitive to people around us (we were childless for many years after all). However, traveling by airplane is not one of them.
Assuming that there’s a problem with parenting just because a kid has a fit is simply not true. I know many very good parents with kids who just sometimes have a meltdown. That’s just how kids are. They do not have mature control over their emotions and reactions.
@Buffet: If only your mother had followed your advice, the world would have one fewer troll.
@lmarconi:
Serious why don’t people realize that there are places and AGES where it is unreasonable and inappropriate to bring children. As parents they are responsible for recognizing what situations are simply to much for their child to deal with.
This particular child 2 years of age SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN FLYING. Yes the parents will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars blah blah blah. None of that matters.
If that child can’t be made to shut up what are the odds that parent will get them to follow directions in an emergency? At 2 years old pretty low. She is unapologetic and unreasonable. She was not in an emergency situation, there was no funeral. I applaud people for berating this decision because it was bad.
[www.mercurynews.com]
@subtlefrog:
That’s the problem with slapping kids; it makes them scream louder. Dammit.
@AirIntake: @oneandone: Wow – am I just lucky? I don’t ask for water every time, I often travel with a water bottle (filled after security). But even when people near me ask, I’ve never heard anyone denied, unless the drink cart was literally already in the aisle.
If it were for a screaming child, I wonder if most flight crews wouldn’t be slightly more motivated to act than has been both of your experience?
@StarVapor: I’m not sure when flying on a plane became an exercise in democracy. Try using the democracy card when you’re stuck on the tarmac for hours and all the passengers want to get off the plane, and see how far that gets you.
Regardless, since you obviously didn’t read what I said, I’ll reiterate. I have no problem with the woman and her kid being kicked off the plane. The flight crew decided that was necessary and that’s their call.
It’s not the call of the other passengers, however. Sometimes kids will cry or scream or otherwise make noise. That doesn’t mean they have bad parents. Kids are not devices that can be controlled, especially since in this instance, we’re talking about a two year old. Maybe you’ve discovered the magic words that make your child obey your every command when you snap your fingers, but most parents haven’t. Kids are a part of society and kids will act like kids. If you can’t stand being around kids that much, you should avoid places where kids are allowed.
And once again, I haven’t seen any indication that all the other passengers on the plane were annoyed by the kid. The flight crew made the decision to kick them off, not a vote of the passengers.
@jimv2000: What’s your point? I offered it as a suggestion for the people who seem to not understand that kids act like kids. As far as I know, no airline has such a policy. If there are that many people that would be willing to pay for such a privilege, I’m sure most airlines would be happy to charge a fee for it.
@AirIntake: George Carlin is fine. It’s Consumerist amateurs we’re talking about here.
But yes. I am the immature and uninitiated Consumerist commenter with the fainting couch and smelling salts that lacks the sense of humor and time issue witty comebacks.
Let the hazing continue.
@RayonFog: I agree with #1. I was on a flight once (don’t remember the airline, but it was one of the very few that service Rapid City, SD) and a woman with two little kids (probably between 3 and 8) sat in the seat in front of me. The first thing she did once they were seated was to purchase the in flight TV (separate ones for each of them) so they could watch cartoons. They were quiet the whole flight.
I don’t think a 2 yo behaving badly is a sign of bad parenting. However, not realizing that there is a very good chance that your kid is going to raise hell on a flight and planning accordingly is. And, sucky as it might be, that might include not traveling with others. You chose to have a child, and hopefully you realized that meant a lot of sacrifices were going along with it.
@s73v3r: Applause!
@nerdtalker:
I had to fly from London to Cleveland last July on an overnight flight. There was a little kid in the row directly behind me who screamed for at least 4 of the 8 hours we were in the air. What was almost worse was his father telling him in the whiniest little voice possible “Behave Toby.” I have never wanted to murder someone as much as I did by the time we landed. I agree 100% with the person above who said that if you aren’t a good enough parent to control your kids, at least have enough sense to sedate them.
Furthermore, I would like to add that allowing an unruly (I want to add, once again, that children are sometimes unruly by nature; this does not mean that s/he is the result of bad parenting, although I’m not saying that might not be the case, sometimes kids cry and nothing can be done about it) child to govern the lives of adults and other strangers is a horrifically bad example. If this type of behavior were to be allowed to continue, there will be an unmanageable 7 year old eventually, who knows that getting his way is only a matter of making enough of a ruckus.
The world is already full of such children because we live in an age of such permissive parenting.
And the illogic and narcissism of parents is astounding to me. One can’t say, “Well, kids are expensive, but I make good money, let’s have one!” There are more sacrifices involved than renting fewer videos. The government caters to parents, as pointed out by another poster below: I’ve been paying taxes since I turned 18 in 2005. That goes to paying for public schools. My taxes pay for public parks. WIC (which I would never, ever, say is a bad thing, as WIC is probably one of the most important social programs that exists in the states). Tax breaks for parents. And various other sundry things that benefit me not in the slightest. Your child is already a burden to me.
Burden or no, however, I love kids. My god-daughter is 8 months old is precious. She is also kept out of the public, mainly out of the RESPECT that her parents have for other people. And that’s what most of this argument boils down to. Parents want everyone, everywhere, to mind their own business. And most people have no problem treating parents, especially of younger children, with deference, because they know that raising children is HARD. It requires a great deal of patience, and since children often cry without reason and are inconsolable (not having the faculties to do so), that patience can wear thin.
But parents who don’t show even a modicum of respect for other adults are completely missing the point. This argument has gone beyond whether or not the woman needed to be removed from the plane. It’s bled over into an argument of how children should behave in public, and has resulted in a heartbreaking outpour of “Suck it up, childless ones! Our children will do whatever the hell they want!” Not having respect for other people, and their own human needs (i.e., not to have screaming in their ears in public), is a terrible fucking example to set for your kids, especially if you expect them to respect you in their later years.
TL;DR: Children cry for no reason. People are generally willing to put up with it to a point. Parents who disagree with SW’s actions are taking it personally, and make personal attacks against those who disagree.
@ben: Agreed. I think you’ve presented some of the most reasoned, intelligent thoughts on this topic today.
@thezone: whatever. people used to discipline their kids. physically. until very recently. Remarkably, they weren’t royal brats, as much as today’s kids mostly are.
//I’m 25 and was spanked from a young age until i learned to not act like a brat.
@Idontwearpants: Perfectly said. Until we see the video of the event and just how bad the kid was Southwest should not be held responsible for anything.
I have two boys and they can be a hand full.
Heaven forbid talking to your child or engaging them in a discussion to quite them down.
@Snowblind: That’s okay, since I’m paying for their education up to college. Seems like a fair trade.