Monday Teeny Poll
By Glinda
A whopping eighty three percent of you are dictators at the family table, banning any and all electronic entertainment. I join you in celebrating our rule! I happen to think that eating together as a family is one of the most important things we can do for our children. I don’t care if it’s KFC you picked up on the way home from work, make time to share at least one meal a day together. That means talking with each other, not texting your friends or playing a Leapster. And, that includes meals out.
Something brought up in the comments got me to thinking about something that happened in early July. A woman boarded a Southwest plane with her sister and their children. One child is autistic, and another has cerebral palsy. The children were apparently disruptive during the flight, getting up and being loud. Upon attempting to board their connecting Southwest flight, they were told that due to the children’s behavior on the previous flight, they were not allowed to board. They were forced to get a flight on another airline the next day. Southwest did not give them a later flight, nor did it give them a hotel for the night.
July 21st, 2008 at 7:40 am
I have flown on business at least twice a month for the past 25 years and misbehaving or constantly crying children/babies on planes is one of my pet peeves. Actually, much of the time it is the parents’ fault for not planning ahead. I have seen folks board an aircraft with a 3 year old and one book for a 3 hour flight. Now what’s wrong with that picture? It is not the job of the flight attendants or the other passengers to entertain your child.
I have often felt that the airlines should assign a sequestered area of seats (preferrably in the rear of the aircraft) and reserve it for parents traveling with children under the age of 5. Air travel is stressful enough without having to listen to a complaining or crying child for several hours.
All that being said, I don’t know enough about what the specific circumstances were in this situation to pass judgement on Southwest. However, the fact that a child has a disability should not exempt them from adhering to standards of good behavior or from obeying directions from the cabin crew. If they were standing or playing in the aisle, for instance, it could potentially compromise the safety of themselves or the other passengers, should unexpected turbulence occur. A disruptive passenger is responsible for their own behavior and for continuing their journey and for their own hotel accommodations, so the airline is not to blame on those counts.
This is a subject near and dear to my heart. Disruptive passengers, no matter what their age (and I have seen plenty of disruptive adults that should also be jetisoned) are a major pain to everyone forced to share a confined space with them for several hours. OK, I’ll be quiet now.
July 21st, 2008 at 7:56 am
I think that there’s a world of difference between being irritating and being dangerous. As the daughter of a pilot I say if the child was unable to remain in his seat for the duration of the flight without getting up and running around, that’s a safety issue.
Also: nobody, absolutely nobody, has the right to fly. Your ability to take a ride in a plane is constrained by the risk you, yourself, pose, and someone who cannot remain seated is, essentially, a projectile if something goes wrong.
July 21st, 2008 at 10:05 am
I would have been very reluctant to fly (especially alone) with kids that I knew would not do well on a flight. With CP and autisim I would have even been more cautious. Heck I have not worked up the courage to take my kids on an airplane knowing that Evan’s pacemaker would set off the metal detector.
July 22nd, 2008 at 2:26 am
I understand what everyone is saying here, and I feel for you, but I think Southwest could have handled this a little better.
The kids were disruptive, even dangerously so, and I completely understand that they didn’t want to allow them back on a plane. Fair enough. But to dismiss them without apology or assistance is just stupid.
These people paid for tickets and the trip couldn’t have been fun for them either. (Have any of you ever ENJOYED having a screaming little one in their lap on a plane?) Southwest may have been in the right, but they come out of this looking like the bad guy.
They should have: refunded the ticket, given them a cheep hotel stay, and/or offered a polite apology. Any or all of the above would have been decent service and I would have nothing to say.
Shame on Southwest for being rude to their paying customers.
July 22nd, 2008 at 9:36 am
When my mom brought my brother, sister and me back to the US from Spain when we were all under 8 by herself (my dad would join us later), she asked the doctor for drugs to make us sleep on the flight. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable solution.
(I am dreading my wedding in Sept — the one I don’t want to have because I want to ELOPE — when my fiance’s retarded nephew will attend. We will be taking the family to a very nice restaurant after and I am sick with worry that the nephew will be his usual hyper self at supper. His parents are immune to his behavior. I don’t want the other customers to have their evening ruined by a rambunctious kid. I have asked a pediatrician friend what drugs I can slip to this kid to keep him quiet. Is that wrong?)
I used to fly a lot and I got sick and tired of poorly-behaved kids making the flight miserable. There is nothing to be done about a crying infant, but a four-year old who is screaming and kicking the seat knows better. If his parents can’t control him, then they shouldn’t bring him on a plane.
July 22nd, 2008 at 10:48 am
Amen to all of the above.
However, a young mother whom I know rather well, and who makes great efforts to make sure her well-behaved toddler stays that way on flights, found her efforts blown out of the water by a three-hour wait on the tarmack before the plane even took off. A mother’s best efforts can be sabotaged by a three-hour flight turning into a six-hour flight, and moms need to be aware of this new trend in commercial flight.
But ultimately, it’s the parent’s responsibility to control his/her child in every public situation. If parents do not, and others have to intervene, the parents will not be happy with the results.
July 22nd, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Bellamama — you make some excellent points. I think the airline is perfectly within their rights to put the family off the plane. Given what behavior is accepted on a plane, I shudder to think what caused the pilot to be fed up enough to throw them off. But yes — Southwest could have avoided a lot of bad publicity — because it’s not like the press is going to look for a way to make the Big Bad Corporation look good against at Disabled Kid — by simply doing what you suggested.
July 22nd, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Agreed. Southwest should make Bellamama an offer. One that includes nice hotels with fluffy towels.
July 22nd, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Okay – time for a reality check.
First of all I have a hard time believing this story was reported as it *actually* happened because the story in the link is very brief, not thorough and reads like an aprocraphyl accounting of the facts. These two children have significant disabilities. Every a parent I know who struggles with disabilities like these would, well in advance, have called the airline to mitigate the situation and make sure the trip was as smooth as possible for themselves as well as other passengers. Parents who have children with these types of disabilities know only too well that it’s all about minimizing the probability of problems in public settings, and this just doesn’t ring true to me. Something tells me we are being seriously manipulated by the media here. The only saving grace is that this affiliate is a Cox/CNN station and not FOX.
I’m not buying this story, its shoddy journalism and my B.S. detector is going off big time. Why have you all been sucked into this?
July 22nd, 2008 at 11:16 pm
And a mint on my pillow!
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:52 am
Because the story appears to be quite genuine, actually. This is also the airline that refused to fly at least two women so far this year because they were dressed “too revealingly.” As well, not all parents are as conscientious as you, Phyllis.
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:26 am
Phyllis, as I heard it on the radio a few weeks ago, it was the two non-disabled kids who were acting up. Excuse my ignorance, but if you have CP, you can’t walk, right? And it was the “kids” who were getting out of their seats and running, so it couldn’t have been just the autistic one.
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:33 am
OK — just saw a youtube clip with the kids and the CP kid doesn’t look like she’s in a wheelchair and indeed, looks like she has very strong command of her motor skills (brushed her hair out of her face).
July 23rd, 2008 at 4:26 pm
I don’t have kids and have traveled enough to say good for Southwest. This is not about the poor disabled kids. This to seems an example of the general lack of personal responsibility that people espouse. When my parents took me anywhere, be it plane or grocery store I was behaved and there would be no sceaming, yelling, or making a scene in public because I knew the consequences.
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.
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:22 pm
So class factotum - you really know all you there is to know about Cerebral Palsy based on a YouTube video? Pretty thin “research” if you ask me.
July 24th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Phyllis, I believe your original objection was to whether or not the Southwest story was genuine; it appears as if it was - and it is certainly in keeping with other tales I’ve heard regarding Southwest, including booting the young ladies for being dressed “too revealingly.” They’ve also booted people for being “too fat.”
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.
July 24th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Nope, Phyllis. I did not claim to know all there is to know about CP based on watching one Youtube video. What I was getting at was the the CP kid could have been one of the out of control kids because 1) she was not in a wheelchair as far as I could tell and 2) she seemed to be able to control at least her arm and finger muscles, which means that it could be possible that it was just the two disabled kids who were wreaking havoc and that the two others could have been perfect angels.
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?
July 26th, 2008 at 6:45 am
Class factotum. I think this is really All About You. You also stated that a child with a disability should be drugged because you are inconvenienced by his behavior when he is your guest in a public place.
July 26th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
No one has enough facts here, ladies! Maybe there was no choice but to take the kids (death in the family, father shipping out, etc…) No one in their right mind flies alone with 4 children. 2 of the kids would have had to sit in seats without a parent because airlines don’t allow 3 children in a row. We don’t know! The kids may be angels but acted out because they had never flown. A lot of children can’t handle the pressure changes and cry or fret because of inner ear pain. We don’t know. Give the poor mom a break and let me know how you do with 4 young children on a flight. (My mom had 4 airsick kids on a series of flights from Fairbanks, Alaska to Washington DC! Military transfer. She was ready to leave us in Chicago! LOL!!!)
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.
July 28th, 2008 at 7:31 am
[...] Last week’s poll regarding Southwest Airlines and their actions against a particular family ignited quite the firestorm in the comment section, but had fifty six percent claiming they didn’t have enough information to make a decision about the situation one way or another. Thirty two percent felt that since two of the children had disabilities, (although it was not made public which of the children the airline took issue with) Southwest should have been a bit kinder. [...]