Family gets rewarded for disrupting a flight?? (1 Viewer)

[Adam Lenhardt]

Which is exactly what my parents did when I was a brat. Many parents no longer think they should have to sacrifice in these small but important ways anymore.

 

[nolesrule]

I'm not sure I would equate leaving a restaurant with getting off an airplane that is a return flight home. A restaurant is a missed meal. Voluntarily getting off an airplane when you are 3 hours from the end of a week of traveling, especially if you have a restricted non-refundable (and possibly non-exchangeable) fare costing several hundred dollars is a much more difficult decision to make when you might get stranded 1500 miles from home because of a temper tantrum you can't control.

Not exactly a small sacrifice when you consider everything involved with missing a flight.

It's not always a simple, easy decision.

 

[Malcolm R]

But that's the whole crux of the matter. As the parent, if you are competent, there should be no behavior of your child that is beyond your control. You are the parent...exert some discipline and control your child.

You pull the kid out from under the seat, strap them in, and everyone's ready to go. This isn't some give-and-take negotiation where you beg and plead with the child to obey of their own volition. You take control and make them obey. Apparently the parents were able to extract the child to get off the plane. Why couldn't they do the same to get them strapped into their seat?

I was never "negotiated" with when I was young. There were no "time outs." My parents told me how it was going to be and if I said/did otherwise, I either got a hell of a spanking or was sent to bed at 5pm without supper. It didn't take too many red asses and/or hungry nights before I learned what was acceptable behavior and what was not.

 

[nolesrule]

Let's not kid ourselves. A 3 year old that doesn't want to be strapped down will be able to get out of an airplane seatbelt. They are the easiest buckles on the planet to open.

I'm the oldest of 4 kids, and I'm about to become a first time father in a couple of days and the issue of discipline is something I think about all the time. I was old enough to remember everything about the youngest 2 from the day they were born. My 3 siblings and myself were very good as children, and my parents knew how to discipline. But every once in awhile, there came a time, when one of us was really bad and extremely hard to deal with.

Every once in awhile, a child will throw a temper tantrum that even the threat of death can't stop. It might be because the child is tired. It might be because the child has too much energy. Could be any number of reasons. My point is, sometimes the spanking/spanking threat and early bedtime threat don't work, especially on a 3-year old that doesn't completely understand the situation.

Try spanking a kid on an airplane these days and you'll probably get hauled off by Homeland Security as a terrorist anyway. (don't take that to mean I'm against spanking, because I will administer it if necessary)

 

[drobbins]

I believe the main reason for them being asked off the plane was the fact that the 3yr old would not stay in her seat, not the tantrum. I bet tantrums are not uncommon on any airline. Take-offs are not a time for anyone to be standing due to the turbulence and all. With all the law suite happy people out there, I would not take the chance of letting a 3yr old (or 30 yr old) stay unbuckled if I were the airline.
They gave the family 15 minutes to get the child seated. How much longer should they wait? 20 minutes? 30 minutes? 2 hours? During this time the plane is burning fuel, the terminal is not free for the next plane, and there are the other passengers and their flight schedules to think about. Even though no one wanted to hear the kid screaming, the kid not staying in her seat was the reason for the family getting off. I am with the airline on this one.

 

[Holadem]

But it did take some red asses, correct? Imagine people generalizing about your parent's competence based on one of these instances.

I was raised in far stricter environment than most of you (by our standards, most western kids are unsufferably spoilt brats), yet was no stranger to tantrums.

--
H

 

[JonZ]

"And if they can't, they should be able to forcibly put the child in a seat and strap them down."

Exactly.

I have much more tolerance for a child crying, because theyre upset or whatever, more than just misbehaving.

 

[Holadem]

And make sure you keep the seatbelt key well out of reach .

--
H

 

[RobertR]

In the movie Bill Cosby Himself, Cosby pokes very effective fun at the kind of things parents sometimes have to deal with ("the beatings will now commence!").

 

[MarkHastings]

Holadem, since you are talking as a parent, what DO you do if the child is so out of control that you can't get them to sit in the seat during take off? Do you expect the entire flight to have to wait the tantrum out? Is 15 minutes enough? 30 min? an hour?

What do you do?

I can understand that the ones (like me) making the comments "you should be able to restrain your kid" are coming out of frustration because we tend to see a lot of parents try to get out of parenting by saying "Oh, you don't understand."

That's what burns me about that statement. Not because kids ARE difficult at times, but because a lot of parents use it as a crutch to not discipline their kids. There are a lot of control issues that can be solved without throwing your hands up and saying "Kids will be kids - there's nothing I can do". I see that so many times.

I know you're arguments are more to the fact that we think it's easy to restrain a child, but then I ask again, if the child is so unrestrainable - what do you do in a case like this?

Obviously people roll their eyes at force, but maybe this is the only thing we can do to make the child comply. Sure it sucks that you have to strap the kid down like a mental patient, but if you are saying that kids are this uncontrollable, then maybe we SHOULD start doing this...


p.s. The other reason why I get miffed by the line "You don't understand" is because I knew a father who was a HORRIBLE parent. He let his kids and dogs run the household. His dog would actually run across the room and jump at you and try to bite your face. If you said anything, he'd say "Oh, he's just playing!" - Anytime he had problems with his kids, he'd also say "Well, when you have kids, you'll understand how hard it is", but what I REALLY saw was, his lack of parenting MADE his kids this uncontrolable. Sure, at the time that the kid is acting up, nothing you can do as a parent would have solved the problem. But that's not what I mean by "bad parent" - In this case, the bad parents LED the kid to become this uncontrolable in the first place.

 

[Randy Tennison]

As a father of a two year old, I can easily say that anyone who thinks you can "control" a child during a tantrum is not a parent. Children don't reason, they don't understand, they don't think. They feel, and they react.

I've flown quite a bit with my son, and there have been times when I did everything I could to calm him down. Singing, reading, rocking, walking, talking, scolding, whatever. And sometimes, nothing works but time. I've taken him to the back of the plane, and waited it out.

My son likes to open and close the tray table. Fine, if no one is in the seat infront. Otherwise, it's very annoying to that person. So, that's a battle every flight, keeping his hands off the tray table.

Lastly, to compare a restaurant, or movie theater with a flight is ridiculous. I can (and have) left a restaurant when my son acted up. Can't do it on a plane.

I have no problem with the airline asking the parents to leave. I have a problem with them getting mad about it. And, if the airline decides to comp them tickets, that's their choice.

 

[Holadem]

Mark, I have explicitly expressed my full support for the airline's actions (including the bonus tckts). My last post addressed the ridiculous notion that good parent are always in control of their children.

Every parent (including YOURS) has a tale of an embarassing nightmarish tantrum. My ordeal was in a crowded NYC subway car. The noise, the frutration, the sweat, the looks, the extreme embarassement. The stuff of nightmares, really.

--
H

 

[nolesrule]

Yeah, I don't think any of us are questioning the airline's decision to remove the family. Just criticizing/analyzing some of the comments being made about parenting skills in general.

 

[JonZ]

"the beatings will now commence!".

Cant say that in 2007

 

[drobbins]

If it is not about the airline decision, is it safe to assume that this thread has been - highjacked?

 

[MarkHastings]

The problem with these threads is, the people with kids will always see this case as a good parent who just can't control the kids actions...I'm not saying there aren't cases like this.

From my perspective, I see it as a parent who has bad skills. Both viewpoints are possible, but IMHO, there are more cases of parents who don't have any control over their kids due to lack of parental skills.

 

[Mary M S]

[highjack airline ON]

I don’t have enough facts regarding this family to determine if they are adept or challenged at child rearing.
What video I saw of the parents being interviewed appears that they do not have a good handle on their daughter’s behavior. Nonetheless it is true you cannot take one incident, nor even a bad few months, when parents are working on getting rid of a recently exhibited or newly inventive (on the child’s part) variation of behavior as the benchmark of their overall guidance capabilities.

 

[Bob Turnbull]

Well, as a general statement, that certainly is a lame ass thing to say. Two things to address though (not necessarily with this particular case):


1) Every child is different - Pretty obvious I suppose, but certain consequences or parenting techniques do not work on all children. I had read somewhere that one theory was children can be broken down into three basic types (I didn't say I agree with this theory, but it hopefully illustrates a point):

- those who seek friendship
- those who seek praise
- those who seek control

Pretty broad admittedly, but our little guy falls directly into that last category. Certain threats or consequences we used in the past had no meaning for him because he was seeking control of the situation (the end result to him didn't really matter). Whereas those same threats would have worked in a second on his buddy next door.

The main point is that over the years, we've developed a number of methods of dealing with HIS behaviour. We know him, when he's about to burst and how to deal with certain behaviours that still occur. And yet, he still surprises us...


2) Behaviour modification is a long process - Just like getting a child to sleep through the night in its own crib, some behaviours do not change immediately to what you want. It takes work and consistent handling of situations to have the child learn how to handle themselves. If you do this, you can usually see incremental changes (sometimes that means a behaviour lessens or changes or just the mean time to recovery from a tantrum is shorter). There's usually no quick fix. That doesn't mean you don't discipline on the spot. Immediate consequences that are tied to the behaviour (difficult to do sometimes) are the quickest way to move towards a change. It won't necessarily stop the current behaviour (sometimes making it worse), however it sets up behaviour modification for the next time...

Of course, this is just our experiences with our little goofball.

 

[JonZ]

Mary,
Do you remember the Chicken Heart? His parents telling him there were black snakes on the floor to keep him in his crib while they went out and left him alone (cant do that nowadays).

I used to listen to my mothers albums waaaayyy back in the 70s as a kid.

 

[Randy Tennison]

The chicken heart was kept alive in a laboratory in a vat, half blood half sodium, supports life.

You won't come near a smokin fire and jello!