cyrusabdollahi said:
When I flew to california the airplane was packed with little kids. There was one little girl infront of me who was about 2. She had nice big blue eyes and was waiving to everyone. She was a great passenger the whole way. The only time another girl started crying was the one sitting behind me because she had to go pee and we were about to land, so being young I can understand her wanting to cry. Landing takes about 20 mins and your suck in your seat until the airplane comes to a stop at the gate.
For the most part, kids on flights with me have been good too. Of course the babies cry during take-off and landing if the pressure changes hurt their ears since they don't know to swallow to get them to pop again. Usually the flight attendants are good about helping parents out in those situations and recommend they feed the babies a bottle then or give them a pacifier to suck on so they swallow, and even give a lollipop or something like that to a slightly older toddler. A sweet treat can go a long way toward getting them to spend time sucking so their ears don't hurt.
Only once was I on a plane with a kid throwing a temper tantrum, and boy did everyone want to strangle that child. It was approaching landing, so I just figured their capacity for sitting still had worn out, or their ears were hurting or something, but the person in the seat next to me who was a parent said, nope, that was nothing but a plain old temper tantrum (I guess the cries sound different when you've heard a few). Still, since we were about to land, the parents managed to get the kid into a seat and although he was squalling away, he was buckled up and ready for landing.
That's the difference here. Kids will cry, especially if told they have to sit still, or if they're overtired (and heck, when you have to get up early to get out and to an airport, everyone is tired and cranky), or when surrounded by a bunch of strangers, and sure, the crying annoys everyone on the plane, but people know this is par for the course of flying with small children and usually feel sorry for the parents. But, to not even enforce the basic rules of making the kid sit in their seat so the plane can get off the ground...that's a parent problem, not a kid problem.
Oh, and Chi Meson, I was shocked the first time I saw a parent giving their kids benedryl on a flight to make them sleep! It was an overseas flight, and they thought it was easier than making the kid behave that long. But, I'm sure that nobody would have really objected if they let the kid run up and down the aisle for a little while once we were at altitude...we all wish we were still small enough to do that. On the other hand, since then I've heard people advocate it to keep their ears from hurting too, so I just don't know. I do laugh quite hard that a couple friends of mine always fly with their infants/chidren in first class...they have a ton of frequent flier miles from business related travel, so always upgrade to first class. Hee hee...I can just imagine the expressions on the other first class travelers who probably don't expect to have children so close...and the relief on the coach passengers when they realize that for once, they aren't the ones who have to listen to the kids.
