And if you are dreading your nephew attending because of behavior issues, ask your fiance to have a few polite words with his parents or both of you volunteer to take him out a few times and practice restaurant behavior. Drugging a child, while certainly tempting, is really illegal and frowned upon in most circles unless under a doctor’s orders.

That said, having a physical disability does not excuse one’s bad behavior. Again, my limited understanding of CP (I read “Karen” when I was in fifth grade) is that it does not necessarily include mental retardation, so if the girl is mobile and not retarded, her excuse for bad behavior at such a young age is that her mother hasn’t raised her right. Pretty much all of us, I think, remember The Look our mothers would give us as kids in public that meant Stop That Right Now Or Else There Will Be Consequences And I Don’t Mean Maybe, Missy. Where was that mother’s Look?

Without getting involved, for the moment, in the whether or not Southwest should be ejecting people (I’m not a big Southwest fan), I absolutely DO think that parties so evicted are entitled, at the least, to the return of their money.

I am also not a fan of poorly-behaved persons, including children, on plane flights. I endured one particularly badly-behaved toddler running up and down the aisles, whose parent did nothing to stop said behavior. The toddler did stop, though, after tripping over the cramping legs that someone had stretched out into the aisle.

In this particular case I leave responsibility to the family. If these kids were running around in a dangerous fashion it is the responsibility of the responsible adults to settle them down. It is entirely possible that the adults also behaved inappropriately in response to concerns from the airlines.