Goodness. I don’t think we have anywhere near enough information to even begin to judge the parents.
I remember how much my parents were judged with me with my issues. But then seeing how other people said they should handle me? It would have only made things significantly worse. Armchair parenting, even by actual parents, is rarely accurate or helpful.
I can easily see how a confluence of factors could have this happen. It’s “just a toddler,” so they wait just a bit too long for the parents and staff to take control. The kid keeps pulling themselves out since the seats and seatbelts aren’t really made for young kids. If they can stand up in the seat, that buckle isn’t going to do much. Sure, ideally the parents could just hold the child (on their lap or something), but it sounds like that isn’t allowed for take off—they have to be in that seat and buckled.
It sounds to me like they could use some some sort of “plane-seat”, similar to a carseat. Small enough kids can get out of seats with seatbelts made for adults if they are determined to do so.
When my son was three we had a minor concern that I thought might be neurological so the doctor, to be safe, ordered an EEG (I think that’s the one, with all the electrodes)? My son has significant sensory issues and could not stand the sticky pads on his head. In one of my worst moments as a parent, they ordered me to hold him down while they stuck on these pads while he screamed like a banshee. I was unable to hold him down successfully and he ripped off the pads, undoing about twenty minutes of work. They had a couple beefy orderlies come in but my kid was so traumatized at that point I decided not to go through with it and we left. It took him an hour to stop panicking.
I’m a rather stocky lady and my three year old was too strong for me. They are stronger than you might think.
My first thought when I heard this story was autism because it’s totally something my kid would do, but admittedly, it could be some neurotypical kid throwing a tantrum. For a three year old it could be literally anything. At that age meltdowns are pretty common. They are also small enough that they can be elusive little buggers. If a kid can’t beat you in strength they can just worm around and slide away and use that size to their advantage.
Pretty much this scene as described is my worst nightmare. And everyone assuming it’s because of permissive parenting. Gah.
This was obviously an extraordinary situation because thousands (probably millions) of toddlers fly every day, and this is the first time I’ve heard of one getting a plane cancelled.
But it’s easy for me to imagine a panicked toddler slithering out of their seatbelt and hiding under the seat and creating an unsafe situation. And i bet that one of the reasons the plane waited so long it’s that there were a couple of near-successes, when the parents got the kid buckled in, buckled themselves in, everyone thought matters were settled, and then the toddler slithered out.
Can i relate to that toddler? No. I started flying as a babe in arms, always wore a seatbelt in cars, and really enjoyed flying as a small child. Of course i wore my seatbelt when instructed to. Obviously, this child’s mental state was different from mine when i flew.
I know people go on an on about the horrors of giving children screen time, but I believe the greatest possible good that can come of tablets is giving them to children on planes. I think after about ten minutes of this nonsense, a screen time bribe would be in order. Rewarding a kid for undesirable behavior in one special instance probably wouldn’t turn them into a delinquent.
My kid did really well on his first flight because he was glued to a tablet most of the time.
Hmmm. Maybe none of this really happened. Look for men in dark suits with sunglasses near the plane. Were red flashy-things involved? Maybe it was aliens. Yes, definitely aliens.
The kid was too old to be a lap baby, and too little for a seatbelt, there should be some kind of harness provided by the airlines to keep the litttle escape artists safely in their seats.
This. I suspect the proble was not just that the toddler, whatever its age, wasn’t just refusing to sit down and get buckled in, but that there was also a level of screaming and hysterics (e.g., thrashing about, punching, possibly biting) that is every travelor’s including the parents worst nightmare.
Why? Have you ever heard of this being an issue until this post? What would it cost to outfit tens of thousands of planes with an extra device that need to be stored and then employees trained how to use them just for something that happened one time?
OK, but, unfortunately, that’s part and parcel of being a parent. No parent wants to deal with thrashing, punching and biting, but it’s either deal with it, or make your own self (and 100 other passengers) all be unable to reach the destination.
We didn’t fly that much when our kids were toddlers, but when we did, we brought FAA-approved car seats for them. Not because we were afraid they’d wriggle out of a standard airplane lap belt, but because we were pretty sure the standard lap belt would not hold them securely in the event of an event.
Wtf? You took the most minor point out of my post and ridiculously misrepresented it. I never said that the storing of the thing would be difficult. The major issue is the cost of the devices and that the staff would have to be trained on how to use it. Going through all of that because of one thing that happened one time out of hundreds of millions of flights is beyond fucking stupid.
Do you have a cite for the cost of the devices? How many required for each aircraft? Is it beyond fucking stupid they provide belt extenders for the obese, or use an aisle chair to get disabled passengers onboard.
I think parents are generally supposed to bring the proper seating for their children when traveling by flight. We use a seat-belt repositioning device for our son that is marketed primarily for travel (and it’s great for that. When we recently went to Chicago and ubered everywhere it was super easy to port this lightweight harness around and quickly use it in any vehicle.) I’m not sure how it would work on a plane but I would imagine there are numerous such devices so marketed.
Seat belt laws for kids have changed considerably since I was a kid. In vehicles, for instance, you’re supposed to use either a booster or a repositioning device until the kid is taller than 4’9" (in my state.) That’s a really big kid!
So the reality is that there’s an in-between stage where a kid is too big for a car seat but cannot safely travel in a regular seat.
I’m not jumping on the blaming parents bandwagon, but it’s reasonable to assume the parents would know this and have some appropriate seating device for their child.
I never made a claim about the cost of the device. It’s like 50,000 times something though. Obviously the other things aren’t beyond fucking stupid because they are used frequently.
What is beyond fucking stupid is outfitting planes with things that don’t have a use case except for like once ever.
Try again. The next time please don’t misrepresent me.
