Nobody has EVER received a more uniform and united smackdown in Yahoo comments than this mother-author:
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/m/04a9b4a0-f44f-3e0c-bd48-69978bdf4578/a-letter-to-the-person.html
Parents have to control their kids’ behavior or don’t fly. I’ve been in a seat that was kicked mercilessly for hours by a child in back of me and its torture. It’s not fair to passengers. If a child can’t control himself, maybe he doesn’t belong on an airplane.
This part is a bit mysterious -
It sounds like a sympathetic flight attendant moved the kicked man and his son to first class because of this incident. It must have been bad!
It can take a long time to civilize some children and I get that it’s exhausting, especially during travel, but she seems a bit too proud here.
A child that age where I don’t know them - I would address them as sweetheart or sweetie regardless of sex. Taking offense at that was silly.
Obviously he shouldn’t have disciplined another’s child, especially with parent right there but to allow child to continue to do something wrong because she was ticked also not good. Maybe he also had a horrid day.
The only adult in this was the other woman in front of them.
The fact that both the man and his son were bumped up to first class to get away from the mother and kid pretty much says it all.
One of the most excrutiating flights I ever had was sitting next to a kid and his mother who didn’t bring anything whatsoever to entertain him, and didn’t do a thing the entire time to discipline him. For some reason the kid wanted to crawl all over me and paw my face the face the entire flight, except for a break to continually try and grab my food away while I was trying to eat. I spent about 4 hours continually pushing him away. It was apparently pretty obvious as when we landed a passenger behind me told me I was a saint for keeping it together.
I traveled a lot when my son was a toddler. If he kicked the seat, I told him to stop. And he did. I also didn’t get to relax until he fell asleep. And I had to keep him occupied. Just a part of parenting.
I don’t think he disciplined the boy, just said something like “hey, don’t kick my seat, sweetheart”.
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The only flight I’ve been on where someone was ejected, the ejected person was a child. The poor kid was exhausted and just lost it, screaming and kicking and they made him and his mother deplane because they couldn’t get him to wear his seatbelt. I felt sorry for them but I was at least 10 rows behind and his screaming was loud! JFK, Xmas season, a snow delay - you get the picture. Yikes. The Mom had a young baby too.
Another time, I was in the ladies’ room at the airport and woman was in there with baby twins in a stroller and a toddler who was naked and apparently wouldn’t even try to pee so the Mom was bribing him with candy. Aghghghg, just don’t travel when you have very young children, you’ll add years to your life! Live in a really great place and make everyone in the family come to you.
“32” flights in 3 years with a toddler that cannot behave and throws “tantrums”? Sounds like mom is the spoiled one.
I wouldn’t be taking him on any air plane unless it was an emergency or close family funeral.
OMG, I hate it when some kid is kicking my seat! Or people at games pounding the backs of the seats to make more noise.
I don’t know about that, it’s something I might have done in sheer sarcasm gritting my teeth and the kid’s mom just didn’t recognize it. Personally, I wouldn’t have addressed the kid. I did have to ask a parent once to please make their kid stop kicking my seat. Not sure what I would have done if they didn’t respond. Maybe move someplace else if the plane wasn’t full.
My husband and I once took our two toddlers on a nine hour flight. We had packed many things to keep them busy. Luckily the flight wasn’t too full, so there was plenty of space for them to move around and play with the (quiet) things we had brought.
But it seemed that no one else had brought a thing to keep their little ones busy. Before long, it seemed that every kid under the age of 5 was hanging out in our row. No one ever seemed to come looking for their kid. I think at one point, four extra kids were in “our playground.” It was fun for a while, but after an hour, it got really annoying, because basically hubby and I were babysitting everyone’s kids! No ipads or smartphones back then. Anyway, the kids enjoyed themselves I guess, and because the flight was pretty empty, they didn’t seem to be disturbing others. It was not restful at all for us, but I guess the other parents felt great.
I think it’s extremely rude of that mother to let her son continue to do that. It makes my blood boil. I think he handled the situation very well and am glad he got bumped to first class.
Speechless!
I traveled with two small children on 10-11 hour flights (plus the additional hours to and from airports and destinations) many times and we all managed to hold it together.
Something tells me that this mom and son combo would be just as rude and obnoxious in restaurants, on public transportation at family gatherings etc.
A brat raising a brat, the cycle continues.
I had a kid kicking my seat on an overseas flight once. I let it go for a long time, but finally turned around and asked him to please stop kicking my seat. For the next 6 hours, every 20 seconds I heard the mom say “Johnny, keep your feet away from that lady’s seat.” “Johnny, don’t kick that seat”, etc, etc. I think I would have preferred if he had continued to kick my seat rather than to listen to mom!
These days, what I find more annoying is on some of the planes that have the seat back monitors with touchscreens and people are playing games so there is a constant pushing on the seat (and these are adults!). Hopefully, I think this technology is on the way out. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t bring their own iPad, laptop, or whatever to entertain themselves.
They need to make the Wi-Fi free… That’s why people don’t use their own devices.
This mother was immature in letting her son continue his annoying behavior. But passengers without children can be extremely rude and unaccommodating, too.
When I was 36 weeks pregnant we had to fly out of the country we were living in to a country with better medical facilities. My just-turned 3 year old aspie son sat next to me on the approximately 8 hour flight. We were used to traveling and had older children as well, so we had packed well and knew to keep our kids still and quiet. About an hour into the flight, I took down the seat tray and pulled out my son’s favorite toys–2 Thomas trains. He was simply rolling them on the tray, not making any noise (he didn’t talk at all at the time, actually).
After about 30 seconds, the young lady in front of us jumped out of her seat, turned around and said “Keep your child still”, then promptly sat back in her seat. I stood up and told her that he was just rolling his trains on the tray table and all passengers were allowed to use their tray tables at that time. She replied, “He’s bothering me. Make him stop.”
She then began to talk to her companion, loudly, that children should never be allowed on planes, and that she didn’t understand why some people had to have so many children in the first place. She finished her rant by saying “Americans!” in an exasperated tone.
I won’t bore you with the words I had for her after that, but I let her know exactly how little her opinion mattered to me. In my opinion, her behavior was much, much worse than anything my son had done. She was the kind of passenger who would only be happy if she never had to see a child.
On the flip side, During our flight back with a 6 week old, two people (one was a flight attendant) offered to hold him and walk with him so that I could attend to my other children or just have a minute to myself. On my most recent flight I did the same, offering to hold the sweet but clearly bored toddler sitting behind us. The mother was at her wit’s end trying to keep her quiet, and the little girl knew it and screamed even louder. Instead of demanding my own comfort, I simply introduced myself, explained that I had 6 kids (some grown) and would be happy to try and entertain her for a while so mom could have a break.
I think a little compassion goes a long way.
Note: If you have Netflix, you can download some content and watch it offline.
I call all children “sweetheart” regardless of gender. I call my grownup sons “sweetheart” as do all women in my family for at least three generations.
If you click on her name, there are more posts. She describes her husband being killed in their home, by a stray bullet, days after their child was born. I am trying to cut her some slack but her parenting style is detrimental to her child. She is modeling wretched behavior. Her son is three. If someone had to stand up to ask him to stop kicking, she should have told her son to tell the man “I’m sorry.” And she should have apologized. That was the only appropriate response in my mind. She may not be able to control him, but she can at least acknowledge the misbehavior.
If the man was abusive, she should have called a flight attendant to handle the issue. Not decided she didn’t need to hold his feet this flight to teach this guy a lesson.
There are other articles about her. She has a blog where she answers the criticism of the Open Letter. She is planning to write a book.
She seems to me to be looking for publicity, and got it with this letter.