If your baby is crying...DO SOMETHING!!

The BBQ Pit
201

Pffft – I really liked your descriptions of parenting styles. In fact, I’m ALL of them, from time to time. I definitely have “cult of child” moments, when my kids have done something adorable or when we’re sharing something that’s particularly meaningful to me (like going to a free community concert together). And I definitely have “fuck this shit” days, when all I want is for someone ELSE to listen to their non-stop chatter and smear peanut butter on various food items.

And I think my job analogy was spot-on. You don’t think the way YOU work affects other people, too? Why are there a dozen threads in the Pit most days complaining about poor service or annoying co-workers?

While we usually get lots of approving looks from people in public situations (because I know how to rig it – which situations to pick, and when), it’s not ALWAYS true. I’ve gotten concerned looks, guarded looks, hostile looks from time to time.

I do try to respond and keep them from bothering people in public settings, but I’m sure that according to some of you I sometimes fail. It’s a job. I’m not perfect. Neither are you.

202

You have not addressed the essence of my question. Two weeks ago, my wife’s grandfather passed away. It would have taken us about 18 hours to drive to the location of the funeral. Everyone in the family was attending, and was anxious to see my 3-year-old daughter (the only “child” in the family) as a way of relieving the oppressive gloom.

As it happens, my daughter is extremely quiet and well-behaved. However, if she had gotten sick, or very frightened, she might have cried. Maybe even for twenty or thirty whole minutes. Should we have skipped the funeral?

203

(probably obvious, but that “neither are you” wasn’t directed at YOU, Dangerosa)

204

I quoted your message because I wanted to discuss the “Cult of the Child” concept that you raised in your post, but the rest of my response was not directed at you specifically. On re-read, that is obviously not clear; I apologize for what does read like an attack on you personally.

205

Even if I always had time for such things as changing clothes when I land, which I don’t, I still don’t think it’s reasonable to expect that whatever clothes I am wearing will be ruined by someone’s kid. Every time I’ve been spilled on or stained it’s been by a kid who was allowed to run amok. Every single time.

There are a lot of things that are legal that are a bad idea, and IMO, putting kids on airplanes to annoy, disturb, kick, climb on, and get food all over people who didn’t choose to deal with said kids is a bad idea and rude. You might not have a problem with kids ruining your clothes and giving you a migraine, but not everyone is Saint Dangerosa.

And some of us in this thread apparently see nothing wrong with their kids ruining some stranger’s clothes because hey, they shouldn’t wear anything nice just in case there’s an idiot parent who can’t restrain their little ape.

If you can’t remove your kid from a situation where they are causing disruption and make sure that they don’t damage other people’s property, then your kid doesn’t belong in that place.

206

Oh! I get it now! I was starting with some false assumptions; let’s go a few steps further back.

Those of us who aren’t cold and dead inside developed a unique ability during our formative years. It may, to you, seem like a comic-book superpower or a magic spell, but to the not-cold-and-dead-ers (NCDs) it actually comes easily and feels relatively natural. There’s a fancy book-learnin’ term for it, but broadly speaking it’s just the ability to understand and feel for other people, and to give them a break when things aren’t going their way.

See, NCDs recognize that the majority of the people they encounter aren’t that different from themselves. They know that most people are doing the best they can to manage situations that can be unmanagable. Why would they do this? you wonder. Don’t they realize that my right to not hear a single sound beyond the soothing music of my own perfect voice is the paramount concern of human society?

But NCDs see the world a little differently. Every day, they get up and go about their lives. They do their best not to annoy or inconvenience others, but things do happen. They get startled by a noise and accidentally spill something on someone. Their dog gets free and rips up the neighbors azaleas. You know, things happen. This is especially true of children, which unfortunately are not robots or dolls - they’re unpredictable. An NCD’s four-year-old might be quiet and well-behaved on nine consecutive short flights, then throw a tantrum two minutes after takeoff on the tenth.

Now, since NCDs know that they - unlike you - will occassionally have these problems, when they see another NCD struggling with a balky kid, or spilling his soup, or whatever, they have the power to identify. They figure, hey, I’ll give this poor lady a break about her kid spilling chocolate on me, because somewhere down the road I’m going need someone to give me a break when I do something stupid. Now sure, they could be difficult about it an expect the lady to skip the funeral or wedding or vacation so as to avoid even the chance of chocolate spilling, and accept that others won’t give them a break later, but to an NCD this seems silly - why increase the net amount of nastiness in the world?

Now, somewhere inside the dry little peach pit that maintains your circulatory system, the part of you that wants to believe that you are an NCD is saying that the people who are willing to give others a break are just saps, letting others walk all over them. Nothing could be further from the truth. Because NCDs try their best to acommodate others, they generally expect that others will try as well. If, to use the example of the moment, a parent is reading unconcernedly while letting their 8-year-old sprint up and down the airplane aisles singing I’m a Little Teapot and reading unconcernedly, then this a problem. But if the parent appears to be trying, in one way or another, many NCDs are inclined to give them a break - and not tell them they have to skip the funeral or wedding or whatever - even if we have to suffer the amazing indignity and torment of listening to a baby cry for fifteen minutes.

207

Gotcha, thanks.

208

However, apparently very few people are also catsix - since the vast majority of air consumers aren’t lobbying for children to be removed from airlines. I think you need to accept the reality of this situation and adapt to it. There are things you can change - making air travel child free is not one of them, so why bother working yourself into a lather over it. Well, you can change it - you can charter your own plane and therefore determine who is a passenger and who isn’t. For us poor schelps who can’t afford that - we have to accept that our seat mate may be seven, or may weigh 300 pounds or may have last showered in 1972, or may talk endlessly to us about her mother’s recent surgery and her husband’s infidelity.

I’m not sure what kind of business travel you do that doesn’t allow for five minutes to change from your travel clothes into business clothes in the airport - I can never get my timing that close when I travel by air. Even with an ontime flight and booking my seats to the front of the plane - even traveling first class on occation, tight scheduling and travel doesn’t work. Hell, I’ve even been able to travel in the corporate chartered plane (child free, beer in the cooler - I don’t drink beer, but it was on the plane) and we haven’t been exactly on time. Nor has it worked for anyone else I’ve ever met. I’d like to know your secret, since I could save hours of my life if I could schedule my flights so that I didn’t have five minutes to spare between the flight and the meeting.

Seriously, you seem to have horrid luck traveling by air and you don’t seem to enjoy it at all It seems unreasonable that your boss would schedule you so tight that you don’t have time to change upon landing (in this day and age it seems unreasonable that you’d be expected to wear a suit, but then I work for a tech company nowadays - our CEO only wears a tie if he is having meetings on Wall Street. (I’ve done the "discover you will be on a plane at 11:00 at 9:00 (while cleaning the bathroom on your day off), run to the airport, buy clothes for the meeting at the airport (and makeup - very important last minute meeting - normally I don’t bother with makeup), fly to NYC, change in airport bathroom, take a cab to the meeting, have an hour meeting, leave the meeting, catch a flight home, running through the airport so you can get home before 11:00 pm trip - it sucked - if that is what your job is like, I really feel for you. On the plus side, I expensed the clothes and the makeup.)

209

So why do we see so many stories of drunk, belligerent people being arrested for their behaviour on planes? You can SAY they keep the drunk people off, but of course that’s bullshit and you know it’s bullshit. The gate personnel simply don’t have the time or opportunity to screen every passenger unless they’re so drunk they’re collapsing in the jetway. I’ve seen enough tipsy assholes being belligerent on planes to know there’s no breathalyzer by the jetway of any airport I’ve ever been in. And believe me, I’ve been in most of the big ones on this continent.

Sure, I’ve been on planes with screaming kids. It’s irritating, but shit happens on public conveyances; it’s not a quiet place anyway. I’ve been on far MORE planes with adults yelling, or being jerks, or holding the plane up, or in a few memorable cases, stinking. I’ve had adults drool on me. (Seriously.) Just a few months ago I sat next to a woman with amazingly bad breath - I mean, it was revolting at a distance of three feet - who wanted to talk to me the whole flight. I was on a flight that showed “The Shaggy Dog” with Tim Allen. Trust me, there are worse things than kids on planes.

Sometimes with the kids you can at least get the parent to do something; I’ve actually seen that happen, where you say “Excuse me” and the parent just to act and stops the bad behaviour. You can’t do much about the adults, unless they act so badly they get arrested.

Unless you’re rich enough to own your own plane you have to fly commercial, and that means sharing the plane with other humans. They can be irritating. Some of the irritating ones are children. That’s part of being a Homo sapiens. Suck it up, buttercup, or else stay at home.

Tough shit. If an adult were creating a disturbance or being an asshole or sat next to you and smelled like sweaty shit, couldn’t do anything about that either, could you? Why are kids are different from adults in this regard? Answer: They aren’t.

And how often, honestly, do you get shit spilled on you? In the hundreds of flights I’ve taken I’ve SEEN it happen, oh, twice (not counting turbulence-related incidents, or people spilling shit on themselves) and both by adults, one a passenger, one a flight attendant. Even coming out of vacation destinations the kids generall;y aren’t running amok. I had one kid kicking my seat, and I turned around and didn’t even have to say anything; the mother, seeing me turn, stopped that shit in a hurry. Most of the kids seem content or quiet. Once I played “Fish” with a 5/6 year old girl who’d gotten stuck in a row away from her Mom. Nice kid, really polite. Why should she be kicked off planes for your weird hangups?

210

Coming out of vacation destinations, what I’ve noticed is the kids all fall asleep. They are wiped by their week at Disneyworld and you have a flight full of snoring kids by the time the plane leaves the gate.

Getting down is a different story, then the kids are hyped and excited. But as a vet of multiple Orlando trips, if you want to avoid kids - Fly down Sunday night (people generally don’t start their vacation Sunday night - Friday night, all day Saturday are bad for kids, Sunday is business travellers getting a jump on Monday morning meetings so they don’t need to wear their suit on the plane - Monday and Tuesday are business travel friendly, tourist (with kid) travel picks up again starting Wednesday - home Friday (business travellers - vacation travellers stretch their weekend out to Saturday or Sunday), choose flights that coincide with RCCL/HAL cruiseships docking/departing (older crowd than the Disney crowd), book the exit seats (which is usually pretty easy on a kid filled Orlando flight - I’ve been on full flights were they were begging adults to sit in the exit row), fly into Tampa or book first class if you want to avoid kids and have the luxury of time or expense. However, its probably foolish to get on a flight to America’s #1 kid friendly vacation destination and be pissed off because there are kids on the plane. Some people however enjoy either being foolish or being pissed. I suspect catsix enjoys being pissed - or she enjoys yanking our chains.

211

I think there’s a huge difference between the local grocery store and an airplane.

Tolerance is needed on planes, trains or other public transport. With planes, there is the altitude difference to contend with. I have said my kids never had temper tantrums in public and that is true. But one of them has melted down in public due to circumstances beyond my control.

I consider ear pain from an incipient ear infection upon take off and landing to be a completely different thing (unfortunately, the results look much the same to the helpless bystander). I’ve had a screaming baby on a flight once and there is no worse hell. I was doing everything I could to soothe him, but I couldn’t. The nasty remarks coming from midcabin were unneccessary and rude. Believe me, I was as distressed at the noise as anyone. He did not cry the whole flight, just on take off and landing.

In situations like this, I tend to be sympathetic toward the parent–IF the parent is trying to fix the problem-and tolerant of the noise. The odds are that there are probably kids coming down with whatever at the mall etc, and that may be a reason for their behavior. But the ones I was discussing are the ones who are out of control, running, shouting, crying and mom and dad are oblivious or also out of control, shouting etc right back.

I don’t see why this has to be such a black and white issue. Children certainly have a right to travel. It is up to the parents to guide and well, parent them so that travelling is not hell for all. Sometimes illness gets in the way of that, but mostly not. Most of what I see in public is bad behavior and lax parenting.

212

I think the Cult of the Child needs to chill out a bit and stop pretending they’re being persecuted because someone else doesn’t want their property damaged by an uncontrolled kid.

I thought it was a parent’s job to make sure their kid doesn’t damage someone else’s things. I thought it was their job to keep their kids from climbing on people, or running around screaming in restaurants and airplanes and late-night movies.

I didn’t sign up for being the guinea pig whose clothes, expensive suit or Old Navy track suit, get ruined because someone decided that although their kid should be on the airplane, they shouldn’t have to sit still with their candy bar or bubble gum. Gum does not come out of velor.

Maybe you all expect your things to be destroyed by strangers and don’t give a rat’s ass, but I do care about my things. I’ve never had an adult get bubble gum on me by grabbing my leg with their gum-covered fingers.

At the very least, if your kid has an accident and spills something on me while seated next to me, say ‘I’m sorry.’ If your kid is climbing around on a plane with a candy bar and gets chocolate all over me, offer to pay for the cleaning. Don’t just give me that ‘Kids will be kids’ as if I somewhere agreed to have my clothes and other possessions ruined because you chose to breed.

213

Yeah, you’re not paying attention to what anyone is actually writing in this thread, are ya? Just kind of responding to what we all might say, if we were a lot stupider and held completely different opinions than the ones we hold?

Hey, whatever you need to do to convince yourself that you’re not a petty, mean, narcissist.

214

No one is pretending to be persecuted because you are saying kids shouldn’t be allowed to run wild and destroy people’s things. Nice strawman, though. People think you are a bitch because you believe kids shouldn’t be allowed on flights because someone got chocolate on your suit once. And somehow, this instance has turned into a broad brush that paints all children as raging hellions who delight (along with their crazy evil parents) in ruining everyone’s flight.

Maybe you didn’t “sign up” but here’s a clue: Just because you didn’t “choose to breed” doesn’t make you special. When you go out into public, occasionally shit happens. The world is full of people who aren’t **catsix **and anyone of them might bump into you, talk too loud, act surly, or spill food on you. It might be a kid, it might be a stinky old person, it could be a dog that crapped on the street. Life can be hazardous to your suit; if you want to maintain it’s pristine integrity, don’t wear it. Ever.

If the only rude people you ever meet are parents and kids, then I feel like you are one lucky person. I deal with rude people of all types all the time. You’ve got to learn to cope. A lot of people are assholes; that doesn’t absolve the ones that are kids and parents, but pretending they are the only ones is nuts.

215

As if anyone is actually reading what I’ve posted instead of going wild with the whole ‘catsix is an evil kid hater’ pitchfork party. I don’t want my things ruined because people refuse to control their kids. The answer I got to that was ‘stuff happens’. That kind of disrespectful attitude is exactly the thing I take issue with.

The solution to that isn’t to tell me to just not have nice things because I should expect that they’re going to be ruined by someone else’s lack of control - of themselves, or of their children.

‘Somehow’ happened when the suggestion wasn’t that the kids who do such things should be controlled, but that I should expect such things to happen and not wear nice clothes.

When other people damage your shit through their own negligence, they should offer to pay for it.

And here’s where we get to that ‘somehow’. The ‘my kid may have ruined your property, but you just have to expect that will happen’ attitude.

I guess that means paying for it when your kids damage someone else’s things.

216

Something that comes up from anti-kid patrol is that they do not want to accomodate the kids. Their lives should be sheltered from the unpredictable nature of children.

OK, so lets see if we can make a deal…

You smoke? Fuck off. I NEVER want to smell cigarette, cigar, or pipe smoke again. No butts on the beach, in the gutter, or anywhere else that I roam.

You fat? Fuck off. I NEVER want to sit next to you lardbutts on another plane. I don’t want to have to get out of your way on the sidewalk. I don’t want to have to make any additional room for you. If you do not fit in the perfect BMI space that I take up, then fuck off.

You curse in public? Fuck off. I don’t want to hear your foul mouth ever again. It disturbs the peace, and my peace of mind.

You walk on the wrong side of the sidewalk? Fuck off. I am going to plow your ass down.

You on crutches? Fuck off. Your fault you injured yourself. Stay home until you can walk like a real human being.

You late for your plane? Fuck off. Real business travellers fly First Class and go through the short line. You better have your laptop out BEFORE you get to the xray machine or I am flinging it across the terminal. I am not waiting for you any more, and I want you banned from flying from now on.

Can’t hear your cell phone conversation and need to speak up? FUCK OFF!

Don’t speekee English? FUCK OFF! I don’t want to wait while you try to figure out how to pay for your 10 items at the grocery store when you don’t speak the local tongue!

I LOVE this attitude! Everyone who inconveniences me in the slightest degree, regardless of legitimate reason, can just FUCK OFF!!! For our more bitter posters, we can have special airline seating for bitter losers who don’t want their life disturbed.

Nah. I would rather continue as I do. I fly on business too. The only stains I have picked up have been from flight attendants trying to distribute on a bumpy run. I have had little kids next to me on the plane who were bored - I showed them games on my PC. I have flown with my little ones too. Sometimes they were great, other times they were hurting. I had to take a 9 month old on a red-eye. I gave everyone around me foam earplugs from the local shooting range.

I avoid drunks, ignore cell phone talkers, raise my eyebrows at foul mouthed sailors, tolerate kids, and keep my blood pressure a bit more stable by not letting too much get to me. This is no doubt why I don’t have nearly as many issues to raise in the Pit.

217

I apologize also, on re-read I came across much snarkier and aimed at you than I’d intended. I was meaning more the gist of your post rather than you.

(darned black and white type making things all harsh and stuff).

218

Good GOD!! Everyone stand back, we’re in the presence of the MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE WORLD!!!

Sheesh, get real catsix, you’re not all that that. You and you alone are not so all-fired important, indespensible, and necessary that you don’t have time to change from plane wear to business wear.

This has nothing to do with kids being allowed on planes, and everything to do with irresponsible parents. Which, as others have tried to point out (obviously in way too confusing a way for it to sink into your head), is not different than the dozens of other rude and inconsiderate things our fellow travelers (the adult ones) do to us.

No one has said anything of the sort. Stating that it’s a bad idea to wear nice business attire in such a situation does NOT then equal “it’s okay for kids to spill stuff on people”.

The second part of your statement is true. Parents have the duty to make sure their children don’t damage other people’s things, or else make good on it if they do. Not that you’d notice, but this is EXACTLY what most people in this thread have been saying. The first part of your statement is utter nonsense regarding planes. Yes parents do NEED to take their children places. And they do DESERVE to take their children places. Provided, as everyone but you understands, that they do their duty as a parent to keep their children under control and behaving in a considerate way toward others.

219

Sure I have. London to New York City to Toronto. Toddler was on both flights with an ear infection. Now that’s screaming. So yeah, been there done that.

But I thought ahead and brought ear plugs.

Kid still pissed me off, but I don’t think I’m super extra special enough to deny this kid a chance to go see his grandma overseas before she pops her clogs and they bury her. You clearly, think you’ve got some kind of Empress of the Universe sense of entitlement to the “perfect plane ride”, everyone else be damned.

Being around other people means compromise. A kid may be a holy terror one flight, but the next, it could be the Jehovah’s Witness with extraordinary bad breath sitting next to you who mutters about Amway all night. Suck it up. You’re no more special than anyone else.

220

Please sir, give me the child…I beg you! :eek: