Three cheers for AirTran Airways!

western pearl

Porch wrote:

unless it was eddie vedder's kid right?

i am disgusted by this thread and some of the postings in it... obviously some of you are not parents...or some of you must be the perfect parent... I am one of those people that get looks in a store EVERYTIME I go to a store...people look at me like i am a shitty mother because I am not controlling my kids properly...well I invite any of you to take my 2 autistic kids to target for a shopping trip...it would be all my pleasure to watch... sometimes you dont know crap about other people's situations... minding your own business would be nice:)

Here comes the guilt trip.

jeffbr

western pearl wrote:

Here comes the guilt trip.

No guilt here. Once that kid started screaming on the plane and delaying takeoff it became everyone's business on that plane. Once it made the news, it is something we discuss. We're not prying into anyone's private lives.

boxwine_in_hell

I've flown with a small toddler to Europe and it does suck but you have to get control of your kid, it's the parent's responsibility. Those parents need to look themselves in the mirror and realize they are obviously doing something wrong.

Personally, I think it has a lot to do with this "time out/child psychology" bullshit mentality. Time outs are only so effective. I know some people will disagree and take this the wrong way but here goes. Sometimes the only thing that will work is a good old fashioned ass whooping. Granted you can't whoop the kid's ass on a plane, they'd probably put them in jail but when that kid pulls that shit at home.....whoop her ass good. She'll think twice about it the next time.

ps....I am available for parental consultation.

hippiemom

Porch wrote:

unless it was eddie vedder's kid right?

i am disgusted by this thread and some of the postings in it... obviously some of you are not parents...or some of you must be the perfect parent... I am one of those people that get looks in a store EVERYTIME I go to a store...people look at me like i am a shitty mother because I am not controlling my kids properly...well I invite any of you to take my 2 autistic kids to target for a shopping trip...it would be all my pleasure to watch... sometimes you dont know crap about other people's situations... minding your own business would be nice:)

No one has the right to hold up air traffic. The flight was delayed by 15 minutes because of their nonsense, inconveniencing every person on that plane, every person waiting to board that plane at it's next stop, every person on the plane scheduled to be next on that runway. If you have special circumstances, such as a disabled child, it's up to you to make advance arrangements with the airline. If you can't get your kid into her seat by takeoff time, you need to find some alternative means of transportation.

chrisg72

Porch wrote:

unless it was eddie vedder's kid right?

i am disgusted by this thread and some of the postings in it... obviously some of you are not parents...or some of you must be the perfect parent... I am one of those people that get looks in a store EVERYTIME I go to a store...people look at me like i am a shitty mother because I am not controlling my kids properly...well I invite any of you to take my 2 autistic kids to target for a shopping trip...it would be all my pleasure to watch... sometimes you dont know crap about other people's situations... minding your own business would be nice:)

Hey I am with you....I have 3 young children and even when they are sitting in their carriage and being good I will still get looks EVERYTIME just because 3 young children will be loud even if it's not a tantrum. I know where you are coming from. I have twins and a rather large carriage and I also get looks for having that in a store, I guess it takes up too much room!

chrisg72

Porch wrote:

unless it was eddie vedder's kid right?

i am disgusted by this thread and some of the postings in it... obviously some of you are not parents...or some of you must be the perfect parent... I am one of those people that get looks in a store EVERYTIME I go to a store...people look at me like i am a shitty mother because I am not controlling my kids properly...well I invite any of you to take my 2 autistic kids to target for a shopping trip...it would be all my pleasure to watch... sometimes you dont know crap about other people's situations... minding your own business would be nice:)

Sorry for the double post....computer problems

Abookamongstthemany

chrisg72 wrote:

Hey I am with you....I have 3 young children and even when they are sitting in their carriage and being good I will still get looks EVERYTIME just because 3 young children will be loud even if it's not a tantrum. I know where you are coming from. I have twins and a rather large carriage and I also get looks for having that in a store, I guess it takes up too much room!

I can see this, too. Even the best parents and best behaved children freak out sometimes, act out and get frightened. The world wouldn't end to just pass a little bit of understanding to each other once in a while. Everything seems so aggressive and set in stone these days....like there's no room for error or time to be bothered with our busy lives. People should slow down and learn to care for and help one another in times of stress more often than being so quick to be annoyed. All the bad vibes being sent probably made it worse for the kid, when one or two kind smiles and helping hands could have made all the difference in the world.

wolfbear

Abookamongstthemany wrote:

I can see this, too. Even the best parents and best behaved children freak out sometimes, act out and get frightened. The world wouldn't end to just pass a little bit of understanding to each other once in a while. Everything seems so aggressive and set in stone these days....like there's no room for error or time to be bothered with our busy lives. People should slow down and learn to care for and help one another in times of stress more often than being so quick to be annoyed. All the bad vibes being sent probably made it worse for the kid, when one or two kind smiles and helping hands could have made all the difference in the world.

While I agree with this, imagine you are on that plane and have to be somewhere or have connections. I don't think 15 minutes is an unreasonable amount of time to give the family to get things under control. If a plane is late, they can be delayed for hours. Believe me, that has happened to us. In this case it was solved by taking the family off the plane, refunding their money, plus giving them another free flight. I think the airline went above and beyond what they needed to do.

Abookamongstthemany

wolfbear wrote:

While I agree with this, imagine you are on that plane and have to be somewhere or have connections. I don't think 15 minutes is an unreasonable amount of time to give the family to get things under control. If a plane is late, they can be delayed for hours. Believe me, that has happened to us. In this case it was solved by taking the family off the plane, refunding their money, plus giving them another free flight. I think the airline went above and beyond what they needed to do.

Yes, I think they were good to them about refunding and the free flight. I do think it probably could have been handled better on the plane. I guess I'm replying to the negativity and lack of inderstanding towards the kid and the parents. People seem so quick to get grouchy and annoyed.

wolfbear

Abookamongstthemany wrote:

Yes, I think they were good to them about refunding and the free flight. I do think it probably could have been handled better on the plane. I guess I'm replying to the negativity and lack of inderstanding towards the kid and the parents. People seem so quick to get grouchy and annoyed.

Yep, I agree on both counts. Very few conflicts are ever one sided. If everyone just used more common sense and understanding, these things probably wouldn't happen quite as often.

hippiemom

Abookamongstthemany wrote:

Yes, I think they were good to them about refunding and the free flight. I do think it probably could have been handled better on the plane. I guess I'm replying to the negativity and lack of inderstanding towards the kid and the parents. People seem so quick to get grouchy and annoyed.

I'm a mom, and I can certainly sympathize with any parent dealing with a child's unpredictable behavior. What I really CAN'T sympathize with is seeing a kid that's out of control with a parent who clearly has no idea what he or she is doing. We've all seen this ... wheedling and cajoling and begging and bribing, while the kid just goes off. Kids need limits, and the impression that I got from this story is that this kid didn't have many. They weren't thrown off the plane for being noisy, they were thrown off the plane because they couldn't get her into her seat. How hard is it for two adults to put a three year old child into a seat?????

Abookamongstthemany

hippiemom wrote:

I'm a mom, and I can certainly sympathize with any parent dealing with a child's unpredictable behavior. What I really CAN'T sympathize with is seeing a kid that's out of control with a parent who clearly has no idea what he or she is doing. We've all seen this ... wheedling and cajoling and begging and bribing, while the kid just goes off. Kids need limits, and the impression that I got from this story is that this kid didn't have many. They weren't thrown off the plane for being noisy, they were thrown off the plane because they couldn't get her into her seat. How hard is it for two adults to put a three year old child into a seat?????

Very true that some parents can be pushovers. But I can also see where a strong willed child can suddenly get frightened and be very hard to control who may normally be a pretty well behaved kid.

gue_barium

Abookamongstthemany wrote:

Very true that some parents can be pushovers. But I can also see where a strong willed child can suddenly get frightened and be very hard to control who may normally be a pretty well behaved kid.

barroomhero?

Porch

you are right maybe we should have separate flights... one for people with kids...people with tolerance and understanding... and one for know it alls... assholes and people that think their time and lives are more important than everyones elses...

catefrances

hippiemom wrote:

No one has the right to hold up air traffic. The flight was delayed by 15 minutes because of their nonsense, inconveniencing every person on that plane, every person waiting to board that plane at it's next stop, every person on the plane scheduled to be next on that runway. If you have special circumstances, such as a disabled child, it's up to you to make advance arrangements with the airline. If you can't get your kid into her seat by takeoff time, you need to find some alternative means of transportation.

you know what shits me when flying?
would jack smith and jenny toadhead please make their way to gate 43 where your aircraft is awaiting departure
those triple final calls for those passengers who are probably in the frigging bar while a plane load of people are waiting patiently for these arseholes.
final call should be final call.
if you are not there, then the plane leaves without you, see ya later.

of course it just occurred to me while typing this diatribe that they may be stuck on a delayed connection.

tooferz

i have to agree with the airline. 100+ people depend on that plane being where it's sposed to on time. should one person, child or adult, be allowed to hang things up like that? no. the parents were more than compensated.

2 words. car seat. not only does it protect your precious...it helps keep the kid under control. i'd no more fly without it than i'd drive without it. n if you gotta kid who fights car seats...one more word. benedryl. (or authority. take your pick. i've never yet met a 3 yr old who was bigger, stronger nor smarter than me.)

NMyTree

Abookamongstthemany wrote:

Very true that some parents can be pushovers. But I can also see where a strong willed child can suddenly get frightened and be very hard to control who may normally be a pretty well behaved kid.

The one thing you can always count on, is that kids will behave ......like kids. Even the most well behaved of children will run-a-muck like little kooks, on a fairly regular basis. Of course at different extremes depending on the individual child and how good of a job their parents are doing in teaching and desciplining them.

It's important that kids be permitted to behave ....like little kooky kids. It's important for their development on every level.

It's up to the parents of any child (children) to draw the lines, outline the parameters, enforce and descipline when the kids go overboard and cross those lines.

A child's outburst, bad behavior or an incident such as this one doesn't necessarily mean the parents are pushovers or too lenient. As I said, kids will be kids.

It's easy for a parent to give one's kids plenty of latitude. The hard part is reigning them in and teaching them what is going too far, or when their behavior or activity has potential for danger or intrudes unfairly on others.

The hard part is responding effectively in these types of situations. The parent's response is the important factor, not the child's behavior.

In my opinion, these parents failed to respond and quickly re-establish the rules and parameters for this obviously frantic child. These parents could have easily and quickly resolved this situation (and if was my kid I would resolve it) by physically getting a hold of the child and restraining her arms (so she couldn't hit) and then placing her in her seat and fastening the seatbelt. As every parent knows kids can be squirmy and resistent, but no three year old child should be able to over-power and overwhelm their parents. Later, when the seatbelts could be removed and people allowed to leave their seats, I would have taken the rebelious, young lady to the bathroom and had a very long talk/discussion with her about her behavior-inquire why she behaved that way and what she may have been feeling; then once again re-establish the parameters of acceptable behavior.

These parents simply seemed clueless.

Collin

NMyTree wrote:

These parents simply seemed clueless.

I agree with a lot of what you said but everyone's hindsight is always perfect. I definitely think the stress in your statement should be on 'seemed'.

enharmonic

I love kids, and understand that we don't always know what the nonverbal cues are...or even the verbal ones, like incessant crying and screaming. Sometimes it's hard to know why a child is so upset.

BUT

Airtran is not in the business of consoling kids who are wigging out. They are in business to provide professional transportation services, and are under no obligation to accommodate anyone who makes a disruption that interferes with their ability to deliver their service.

If they'll pull you off of a plane because you look Arabic and it scares people, what makes you think that they won't pull you off a plane if your kid is giving everyone the ice pick through their skull?

If I were on that plane and had to listen to a screaming, crying kid for my entire flight, I would be asking for a refund of my ticket price when I landed, and I would likely never fly Airtran again, and I would encourage all of the other passengers to do the same. That could cost Airtran thousands for that flight.

NMyTree

chrisg72 wrote:

Hey I am with you....I have 3 young children and even when they are sitting in their carriage and being good I will still get looks EVERYTIME just because 3 young children will be loud even if it's not a tantrum. I know where you are coming from. I have twins and a rather large carriage and I also get looks for having that in a store, I guess it takes up too much room!

I have a three year old and an eight month old (both boys). I couldn't give a rat's ass about people giving me looks at grocery stores, malls, diners/restaurants or any other type of store.

My three year old is a fairly well-behaved kid, 95% of the time. But he has his moments just like all kids do.

A few weeks ago I was in Target with my three year old in the cart. He was NOT being bad- he was howling....singing....making goofy noises...laughing and generally being a loud, silly kid. I laughed my ass off and even joined him in singing the theme to Spiderman and the Veggietales theme song.

That was pure fun and I couldn't care less what the other shoppers thought (which by the way, most of the customers we passed we're laughing as we rolled on by:D:D ). We weren't intruding on anyone or causing them any kind of delay or inconvienance. Although, those who know me may argue that my singing voice is indeed a hardship to others:D:D;)

What we're talking about here is extreme bad behavior, in a delicate situation. A situation where other people's time and day is important and any delay could in effect cause these other passengers a HUGE amount of grief and inconvienance.

Going by the article, it sure seems like these parents were irresponsible, slack and unwilling to apply themselves in a firmer manner to their daughter's frantic behavior.

It's not a matter of my thinking I'm a perfect parent. I certainly don't think that. No one is a perfect parent. But in those situations, as a parent, you either step up to the plate and diffuse the situation; or you don't.