I deeply apologize for every parent in the world because at one point in your life a child was allowed to get chocolate on you. I also suggest that if you actually have a condition in which a screaming child will cause you to vomit, that you either avoid such situations (which includes air travel) or get yourself some powerful drugs. You have the condition here, not the children. This thread has become almost surreal, as though children are an option like pets or something.
I have traveled with my kids, and they cry. Does it make you sick? Really that’s just too bad. I will continue to travel with them and do my best to keep them quiet, but, chances are they will cry. I do not need to give anyone a reason why we are taking them anywhere. It’s a friggin’ means of transportation people. It’s not a nice restaurant or a movie, both of which I would avoid with my kids and remove them if they became unruly…IT’S A PLANE! It’s not a “worship children” situation…IT’S TRANSPORTATION!!! It’s like a flying bus, not a spa.
I am not going to apologize for taking my kids on a trip, and I will not apologize if a small child cries. I seriously feel sorry for you if such noises make you vomit, but on a plane specifically, that’s your problem. In a movie theater or restaurant, it’s my problem.
The mere suggestion that people refrain from transporting their kids because they might cry and bother you is bizarre. Children are a fact of life. You will run into them no matter how hard you try, and a plane is going to be one of those places. If I were rich enough, I would charter a private jet so I would not have to deal with all the nasty glares of the thoughtless passengers, but I’m not, so I’m forced to deal with it. I suggest you do the same.
Are you saying that it’s perfectly OK for your kid to climb up my leg and nearly ruin my suit by smearking their chocolate cookie on it? Your attitude about crying is one thing, and I have ignored it or at least tried to ignore it on airplanes, but it’s an entirely different issue when someone else’s child is running around being destructive to the property of others because the parent won’t make them sit in their seat and behave.
Your post suggests that you believe having my expensive clothes ruined because someone else’s kid was running around unsupervised is a fact of life I should just get used to. If that’s what you meant, you need to learn something about respect for other people’s property.
I don’t damage your clothes with my food, and common courtesy dictates that you shouldn’t let your kid damage my clothes with their food.
You think common courtesy would extend to not drugging someone else’s children as well, wouldn’t you? And maybe on the scale of injustice, drugging someone’s child might rank above chocolate on a suit.
Oh, but you don’t believe he did. You believe that this mom set him up - and she just happened to set him up using the same drug he’s already been charged with smuggling into this country illegally. You are making quite the probability leap to assume that she either knew he’d been charged with importing Xanax illegally (not bloody likely), or that she just picked Xanax and a flight attendant who is being charged with importing it out of thin air (even less bloody likely).
catsix, the child who got chocolate on your suit was a pain. And the mom was a bitch. But GET SOME PERSPECTIVE!
It’s a basic fact of travelling by plane – or, for that matter, by bus – that you will be more or less trapped in one ‘sound zone’ for a certain number of hours. It’s also, at least in my experience, guaranteed that at some point in your journey you will be exposed to some sounds that you will classify as ‘noise.’ Not just crying children qualify. Personally, I’m much more annoyed by people shouting into cell phones; being forced to hear one side of boring conversations drives me up the wall. Or what about a seatmate who is working on their laptop? tick-ticky-tick-tick for hours on end – you don’t find that annoying?
So follow the old Boy Scout rule and come prepared. Bring a portable cd or tape player along with whatever music you find pleasant. As soon as it gets noisy, pop on the headset and replace the crying child with Beastie Boys or polka tunes.
You can’t keep unpleasant sounds from happening around you, but you can certainly protect yourself from having to hear them.
Now, what do you do about being seated near someone who is drenched in god-awful aftershave/perfume?
I said that if I were on the jury, the fact that the alleged crime wasn’t reported for over 10 days, and even then the ‘evidence’ was not given to police but to an independent lab would create reasonable doubt in my mind.
That’s not the same thing as saying ‘I think it was all fabricated’. What it says is that the details known so far are not strong enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the flight attendant is the one who put the stuff in the drink.
Did the flight attendant have opportunity? Yes. Motive? Sure. Does that conclusively prove to the necessary criminal standard that this is what happened? No, it doesn’t. It is a leap of logic on your part to think that stating the room for reasonable doubt on the part of the flight attendant’s committing the act means I think it’s OK to drug a kid. I’ve specifically said that’s not OK. It’d be the same if you accused me of condoning murder because I said there is not enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this particular suspect committed the crime. I don’t doubt that there was Xanax in the juice, since that has been proven. What has not, with the evidence thus far, been proven is who put it there, not to the standard required for a conviction.
If you would carefully read my post, Dangerosa, I never accused anyone of putting the Xanax in the juice. I never said that I believe the kid’s own mother did it, because I don’t believe that either. Putting words in my mouth and claiming I accused the mother is a nice strawman, but no matter how pretty it is to you, it’s still a scarecrow. I’m sticking by my opinion that right now there is not enough evidence, at least that I have seen, to conclusively prove beyond a reasonable doubt who put Xanax in the juice. Remember that to convict it doesn’t have to be that the most likely scenario is the flight attendant spiking the juice; the burden of proof is much, much higher.
As for perfume people, I request to change seats. If that’s not possible, I tend to breathe through a handkerchief.
catsix, you are right - my apologies. I wouldn’t convict the guy on this evidence either.
However, I believe it to be the most likely scenario.
Would you like to - pure speculation, I’m certainly not asking you to be on a jury - put forward some other likely scenarios and what it would take to make those scenarios probable? 'Cause I’ve tried (really I have) and have to make leaps of probablity and logic that go far beyond “Mom doesn’t wash cup for ten days.”
I tend to agree with this. If the flight attendant did do this, then he is beneath contempt. But, with the limited knowledge that we have from the media, i’d be pretty disinclined to convict unless there was some sort of strong physical evidence linking the FA to the drugs found in the kid’s juice.
Things that i would be thinking about, if i were on the jury:
the fact that the FA has been busted with smuggled xanax etc. does not necessarily mean that he put that drug in the kid’s drink (pretty strong circumstantial evidence, however).
the delay of ten days in having the juice examined by the lab is, at the very least, suspicious, especially since the articles suggest that the woman noticed something wrong with the juice on the day of the alleged incident.
even if the woman can produce a decent reason for the delay, the fact is that she (and who knows how many other people?) had access to that juice for a ten day period between the flight and the testing. The potential for someone else to have put a drug in the juice is pretty large.
she went first to an independent lab, instead of to the authorities. If you have suspicions that a crime as serious as this might have occurred, and that your own offspring was the victim, surely the police would be your first stop.
All the FA needs to get off is reasonable doubt, and there seems to be plenty of room for that in this case.
I don’t know, Dangerosa. I’d have to investigate the hell out of this one to try to get to the bottom of it.
Putting something in another person’s food that could kill them is a serious crime, and whoever does that should be punished. Thing is, it has to be the person who actually did it that gets punished.
RILCHIAM WROTE: "I’ll point out something that might not be obvious. I employed the “quote” button in the lower right-hand corner of your post; there’s one for every post. When I did that, your post came up in a new window, looking like this, except with square brackets instead of curly…also also, the word is “schmuck”.
Thanks for correcting my spelling of the word “schmuck.”
Also, I do not have the luxury of a high-speed, American-style internet connection. To speed things up, my brower displays only ASCII characters and does not show any of the graphics, sound effects, animation, fonts, pop-up menus and other bandwidth intensive features permitted by a functioning local telephone network.
If this annoys people, then I will try to modify my behaviour accordingly. Afterall, I am only one person and I would not like my inability to conform to established and expected codes of conduct to prevent the vast majority of people from fully enjoying their time on this forum.
Some rather thoughtful parents have posted their travel tips on keeping their children mollified on airplane flights. They mentioned bringing games, books, food, drinks, bottles, etc. so the child has something to do on the plane. If only all parents were like you, then there would not have been in the incidient mentioned by the OP.
A have a very good friend who absolutely hates to fly because of claustrophobia. Normally, this would not be a problem but she is a London-based solicitor with clients all over the Far East. Guess what? Every month or so, she has to travel to Hong Kong, Singapore, KL, or Bangkok for work. Know what she does? She consults her GP and gets a perscription sedative.
Now the aforementioned thoughful parents have also mentioned that there are times when their child can not be pacified and will, despite the best efforts of the best intentioned parents, cry, scream, yell, and otherwise make a lot of noise. Their comments also mention that this is a miserable experience for the parents as well as the other passengers.
My question is this: Is it possible for a MD or other healthcare professional to prescribe a sedative or other medication that would cause the child to sleep? (NOTE: An earlier poster mentioned “a friend” did this but the child got diaper rash. Well, perhaps if the parents changed the diaper, then the child would not have gotten the rash.)
Actually, Bond, I offered advice because I wanted to make you feel welcome and help you to fit in better. I didn’t realize that you could only see ASCII. There’s no pressure to “conform”, which was not what I was suggesting anyway. Do whatever’s most convenient for you.
RILCHIAM WROTE: “Actually, Bond, I offered advice because I wanted to make you feel welcome and help you to fit in better. I didn’t realize that you could only see ASCII. There’s no pressure to “conform”, which was not what I was suggesting anyway. Do whatever’s most convenient for you.”
Thanks again for the advice and for making me seem welcome. I did not intend to belittle you or to insult you. The purpose of the second paragraph was to show people that I practice what I preach; I am willing to adjust my behaviour to suit the standards of decorum and conduct here.
Honey, these were exactly my thoughts when we first faced traveling with Cranky Jr. But you know, to my knowledge there really aren’t good, reliable, safe child sedatives that can be given outside of a hospital or other place where there would be constant medical supervision of the sedated child.
Little bodies aren’t the same as big bodies, and darn few pharmaceutical companies are willing to test sedatives on kids.
They do make medicine that makes kids sleepy–it was prescribed to us by our dentist to give to my son before dental work. But it did not work quite as advertised, and that is apparently not uncommon. Same with benadryl–it revs some kids up instead of making them tired. My son was a nightmare on that stuff. It made him dizzy so he couldn’t be allowed to run around, but he LOATHED being held. He was confused and scared about how loopy he felt.
Generally, I think the medical community in the U.S. doesn’t support sedation for convenience, anyway. But believe me, I’ll bet there are few parents out there who haven’t wished such a magic potion had been invented.
I did not say or suggest any such thing, even remotely. Please point out where you got that from. I am merely pointing out that you seemed to have had one parent allow one child to do something destructive (chocolate on your clothes), and now you seem to judge all children by this behavior. So on behalf of all parents, I’m apologizing. The fact of life comment simply meant that if you’re bothered by crying children on planes, you’re SOL, because they exist and always will.
You seem to think that all crying children are doing so because of uncaring parents. When you make blanket statements like
. This is a ridiculous statement that gives the appearance that all parents with children on airplanes just plain suck. Maybe you just have bad luck with the type of passengers you’re stuck with, but in all my flying experience (and it is a lot), I have never been bothered by a child beyond crying. In fact, I can’t recall ever seeing a parent not try to calm their children when they were crying.
And ** BondJamesBond**, you really don’t have a clue. Somewhere you got the idea that with children under 2, there’s a sure fire way to keep them quiet with books and toys. Your use of the phrase thoughtful parents suggests that if a child cries, the parents are thoughtless. Children cry, and children will fly. If you don’t want to hear children, then charter your own plane. If you can’t afford it, then you’re stuck with the rest of us and whatever human nature has dealt out for your flight, including sitting next ot someone like you who advocates criminal behaviour for their own selfish and self-centered reasons.
Who can forget your wonderful opening line of “Good for the FA for spiking the drink of an unruly, crying, screaming, miserable little brat who was making a long-haul flight miserable for the other passengers!”. After this statement, I look at everything you say as though it’s coming from the mouth of criminally deranged person.
Not regularly, reliably, or safely. Diphenhydramine (benadryl) is often mentioned as useful for these purposes, but it is not reliable. About one third of young children get paradoxical stimulation from this medication, and are more awake and irritable.
Sedative medication does not induce anything like a normal sleep. More often it renders one unconscious, which is not a desirable state. Vomiting and aspiration are common side-effects of these medications in young children, and this can often be fatal. Use of barbiturates, opiates, or benzodiazepines for the sake of quieting an unruly child offer too much unacceptable risk for the perceived benefit. Inducing unconsciousness in any individual should only be done under close medical supervision with appropriate rescue equipment handy.
The newer soporific agents like Sonata (fairly safe & effective on adults only when given at normal sleep times) were not designed for, nor have they been tested on children. Melatonin, often touted as a sleep aid for air travelers, should be avoided in developing children, and is not very effective as a sleep inducer anyway.
In short, it would be great to be able to “turn off” an unhappy child. But it is not pharmacologically possible. And if my children had come with “off” switches, I’m not sure we would ever have gotten the courage to turn them back on again during the colicky times, or the terrible twos. Or the teen years.
I worked in a restaurant for a very long time, and saw hundreds or thousands of parents with little kids in there who misbehaved. The vast majority of the time, the parents were not happy at all about being told to control the behavior of their child (do not let your kid walk on the counter, play with the food on the dessert cart, make mashed potato sculpture on the carpet, etc).
I have experienced more ill-behaved kids with parents who think they should tell off anyone who points out the bad behavior than I have well behaved kids or parents who correct their kids.
Or what about a seatmate who is working on their laptop? tick-ticky-tick-tick for hours on end – you don’t find that annoying?