Look, I didn’t mean “saying your don’t like kids is exactly the same as being a racist in every way.” I meant it to be thought provoking. What is wrong with saying “I don’t like black people”? Could it be that judging people, based solely on their inclusion in a group that may have little or nothing to do with how they actually act is wrong? And that, maybe, when you say “I can’t stand children” you are behaving in a similar fashion?
And that’s why I’m not terribly surprised that the calls for oppression started. Because it starts with bigotry. But, I guess I jumped the gun, and if I offended you I am sorry.
My SIL reports that on her last trip out of Atlanta, a family of 4 was asked to disembark after their 3 year old son threw a major temper tantrum before takeoff. The 3 year old took issue with putting on his seatbelt and was throwing a bloody fit. The captain came back and told them they had 30 seconds to control their child. They could not and off they went.
The father had the audacity to demand that his luggage be removed from the plane prior to takeoff. They did not comply with his request.
I do feel for parents with inconsolable infants. I have less sympathy for parents who do not have sufficient authority over their 3 year old child to take a 3 hour flight in peace. Patrons at a bookstore or even a restaurant can always get up and leave. Folks on a plane don’t have that luxury.
I would apologize to the OP for my hijacks, but . . . oh well.
miss elizabeth, I wasn’t offended; like I said I was perplexed. Beyond that, I think we stand on more common ground than you realize, in this thread and otherwise.
Did I read here on the Dope that you are from/have lived in Mississippi too?
To the post below:
Captain_C said it; that’s what started the exchange miss elizabeth and I were having.
I don’t think anyone in this thread is saying “I hate kids.” Some of us are saying we don’t like screaming kids.
It’s like saying, “I don’t like black people who stab me.” Should I put up with black people who stab me just to prove to people like you I’m not racist?
Believe me, screaming children “stab” me in the eardrums and it hurts. I’d feel perfectly justified in saying “I’d prefer to go to a restaurant where black people don’t stab me.” Not the same thing as saying I’d prefer to eat at restaurants where there are no blacks, because one might stab me. Once the stabbing starts, it’s time to take your black person home.
Oh, God. That sounds terrible. Oh well, we’re in the pit.
I’m a parent of a 3 year old, and although I have enough “authority” over her to force her to be strapped into her seat, I really don’t see how I could keep her from having a temper tantrum about it. Sometimes, they just scream, and nothing less than smothering them with a pillow will make them stop. Your point is a good one about not being able to get up and leave. When my child acts up in public, that’s what I do…pick her up and leave, and come back when she’s calmed down. The parents can’t do that, any more than the other patrons can.
As 5-4-Fighting said, someone did say they hate (or rather “can’t stand”) kids. And that is what I’m talking about. I said several times, I have no problem, and in fact agree with, a statement like, “I really can’t stand it when kids are screaming in a store.” Or, even better, “I can’t stand inconsiderate parents!”.
That is all I’m talking about, these blanket statements that were made by only a couple posters. I think saying “I can’t stand kids” is about as morally defensible as saying “I can’t stand black people.” Or women. Or whatever. Now, I wholeheartedly agree when 5-4-Fighting says there is a "whole cultural, institutional and historical aspect, miscegenistic attitude, power-dynamical tone and diasporical effect " that isn’t present when people talk about oppressing children. Our society is very permissive of children, even misbehaving children. I think it may, in fact, be too permissive of misbehaving children. So the cultural background isn’t there, and a statement like that isn’t seen as a threat. I guess that’s why a lot of people consider it “okay.” But I don’t. It’s still ignorance, which is what this board is dedicated to fighting. And I wanted to speak up against it.
You can drive from New York City to London, England? Please, let me know how you do it.
No one NEEDS to fly? No one NEEDS to take a train. No one NEEDS to take a bus. No one NEEDS to take a boat… If you can’t drive there yourself, ship the kid by FedEx.
Yes, the CEO can video conference. Yes, families fled Europe during the war never to see their loved ones again. But air travel has progressed to actually make it possible now for families to actually touch each other. Allowing a grandmother to actually toussle the hair of her toddler grandson is commonplace magic.
Maybe your job lets you have a month off or two for holidays. For the average North American, that’s not the case. Most people can’t take the time it would need to travel by boat to another continent and be able to visit.
If I was a divorcee, I wouldn’t be able to drive to Vancouver to pass my kids to my ex for their two month visit, and then drive their again to pick them up. Do they NEED to see their mom? No, but fuck I’d hate to deny them that, and the courts would consider me an asshole if I did.
Fine no one “needs” to fly – no life or death issue – but to deny families a chance to interact because Carol or catsix doesn’t want to share a jumbo jet with a toddler is fucking stupid.
The longest flight I’ve endured was 13 hours. It sucked, but even the biggest jerk on the plane fell asleep afterwhile. My commute to work by commuter train used to be two hours – how is that different from the average domestic flight? Should we ban children from trains too? “Oh noes I’m stuck on a train for two hours and there’s a toddler!” Plenty of domestic flights are just as long/short.
Where do you want to draw the line? No children on the Greyhound ride from LA to Cleveland? Want Amtrack to have a “no spawn” policy? My flight from NYC to Toronto is an hour – less than my old commute. No kids allowed? What the fuck does it matter if it’s a plane or a train or a boat? Won’t the “horror of travelling in the presence of children” be the same?
Flying has become as comonplace as taking the bus, and more commonplace than the Pony Express.
No one needs to fly, but comparred to all the other options (for distances longer than a reasonable car ride), how big a deal is it, really, if a kid is on the plane? Get stuck on a Greyhound for three hours, it’s the same. You want to ban all public travel for anyone under the age of 12?
Oh, I agree completely. But need is a strong word. The airline industry could die and humanity would survive. Would it suck, sure. But no one NEEDS to fly. However, to be ethical we should extend that definition of need to all passengers - if kids don’t NEED to fly, neither does the CEO.
Actually I’m the mother of two former 3 year old children. Did they ever throw temper tantrums? Absolutely, but not after they learned to recognize the hairy eyeball. In fact, they’re teenagers now and the hairy eyeball *still * works.
Oh, and a wrestling contest with a 3 year old to put on his seatbelt? I’d win that. every. time. for no other reason than because it’s a non-negotiable safety issue. What kid isn’t used to putting on a seatbelt? The ones who aren’t used to putting them.
See, that’s why you use the dye-free kind. And believe me, on a cross-country flight, having Benadryl on hand is a blessing for all concerned, including the child.
Yep. My SIL doesn’t bother to buckle her kids in, because “they delight in getting out of the seatbelts. How many times am I supposed to stop the car?” :rolleyes: :mad: Who’s in charge here?
Strange how my kids never balked at the seatbelt–oh, sure they used to arch their backs (at about 18 months) to prevent the buckling, but this is non-negotiable, so by age 3, they were asking to be put into the belts.
Heh - when mine were about 2 yrs old I explained that if they weren’t wearing seatbelts, then “policee-man” would be arresting me (at that age, it causes some concern).
Of course, I had to scramble when they started telling everyone we met that “Policee-man a take a mommy a jail”.
As PunditLisa and several others have pointed out in the thread, being a responsible parent means that you’ve BEEN parenting properly all along. Well before you have to take a flight with a three year old. And you come prepared, perhaps even having done “practice runs” (like a few long car trips).
Who waits until they’re going on a plane ride to suddenly decide to teach a child to be seatbelted in? A responsible parent would have been doing that all along. Whenever I’ve seen a child behaving badly on a plane, it certainly hasn’t had anything to do with the fact that they’re on a plane, it’s been quite obvious that they’ve not ever been parented or disciplined properly.
You bring things to keep them occupied, you make sure that they are already well-disciplined and well-behaved kids, LONG before you put them in a confined space with several hundred innocent bystanders. And FTR, unless the seatbelt sign is on, you can CERTAINLY take the child to the bathroom/galley area and have a stern word with them if need be.
Screaming babies on a plane is a whole 'nother ballgame. I have rarely seen any fellow travelers that didn’t understand that with tots too young to understand about swallowing etc, that this was probably a likely occurrance, but ONLY for the take-offs and landings generally.
Oh and by the way, what kinda IDIOT doesn’t bring earplugs for riding amongst one’s 100 to coupla hundred fellow humans? I HATE flying, so I generally have a few OTC sleeping tablets, a good neck pillow and definitely earplugs. Though I’m one that hates unnecessary kid screaming, misbehaviour and the poor parenting generally behind those problems, my most unpleasant experiences (noise-wise) have been my fellow adults, not kids.
For most parents there is at least one trip (eighteen months sounds about right) where you are standing in the parking lot of Target (or wherever), physically - I don’t want to say forcing because you don’t force enough to hurt - encouraging your child into a seat they don’t want to get into (which can take some time) where you think to yourself “please, do not let this be the moment some busybody walks by and decides that the only reason my kid is screaming like this is because I’m abusing them and calls the cops.”
However, a car trip and an airplane can be very different things to a child. Some children are quite spooked by security now (they used to get more of a free pass). Our last trip with our kids was with Grandma and Grandpa - and we got seperated in the security line (my kids are old enough to understand “we’ll meet them at the gate”) Teddy gets put on the scanner. They may have to board on the tarmac - which can be loud (my older kids did NOT like boarding on the tarmac out of San Jose). If you don’t bring their car seat, the seat is too big for them and their seatbelt not at all what they are familiar with (an argument in favor of bringing your car seat for plane travel). Once in flight, little ears are much more susceptible to pain. Little feet kick the back of the seat with every movement (even when your kid is being good - their legs are just the right length for move=kick). Planes aren’t well configured for families bigger than three - we always have Dad (occationally Mom) across the aisle or in a different row. Its a lot louder on a plane than in a car - and there is just the whole flying thing.
So you can parent all along, be quite prepared, and then still have a kid spooked by the plane. Hell, grown ups have anxiety attacks over flying, seems reasonable that a three year old might.
This is true, but again, the difference between when a kid is spooked and which ones are just being brats is pretty obvious. Mine have been both, from what I’ve seen with my own and others who are well-behaved, the parents ARE able to get them under control. My beef is really with those who don’t “do something” like the OP says, or worse, think that brattiness for brattiness’ sake is normal and allow it.
There’s a huge difference between a kid being scared and having to have a scuffle with them and the seatbelt when everyone is boarding and also making noise and having their settling in routines (besides which, every single airline I’ve flown on has the “parents with small children and those needing extra time to board boarding several minutes ahead of everyone else” bonus), and a few minutes of "getting used to the scary airplane fussing, and “I’m bored” brattiness (not headed off at the pass by the parent) well into the flight.
I’m not at ALL in agreement with the “kids shouldn’t be allowed on airplanes” crowd. However as I’ve said throughout this thread, I DO think that parents have a certain responsibility to “do something” when their kids are acting up.
I don’t believe that means that, as someone said “take their baby out of the store within a nanosecond of their starting to cry” but I do believe it means taking appropriate action, such as picking up the baby. Yes, babies do need to just “cry it out” occasionally, but not where they’re going to cause others pain (and yes, as someone else pointed out, it is earsplittingly painful).
Again, some seem to be thinking that any complaint against incompetent parenting is a complaint against them if they’ve ever had a less than stellar parenting mishap (who hasn’t? I can entertain for hours with the embarrassing parenting moments I’ve had, like the one where my 3 year old “beat me up” at the state fair, TOTALLY my fault I waited way too long to decide to go home, not realizing until too late that he was overtired, last time I made THAT mistake).
If you don’t ignore, or expect everyone to accomodate your precious angel no matter what he/she is doing, then you’re NOT what the thread is about. (not you Dangerosa, collective you :)).
I’d have to cite all the negative reaction to Captain_C’s post when he said that since adults can’t scream for two minutes in bookstores, then children shouldn’t be allowed to do the same.
At some point, when the damage is large enough, we all agree that the parent is responsible for their child’s actions. If a child takes a car for a joyride and wrecks the car, the courts and justice system will hold the parents responsible for the damages as if the parents themselves took the joyride in the car. I think most of us would agree on that.
But the issue here is at what point is there enough damage that the parents step in to take responsibility as if the parent him/herself did the actual act. In this case, people are saying that when children create an inconvenience with noise and the like, there is not enough damage to hold the parents responsible to the standard that the parent would be held accountable. However, if there’s enough noise over a long enough time, parents can be held responsible as in the pool case I cited earlier in this thread.
My point is that people don’t agree at what point we hold parents responsible for the acts of the child as if the parent committed the acts themselves. We mostly agree at one end where the damage is egregious (actually the courts step in here), but we mostly disagree where the damage is just some noise or someone getting bumped or small spills or . . . It is for these things that I’m saying that there would be disagreement over whether parents are responsible for the acts of the child. . . as if the parent committed that act.
For me, that would depend. It would largely depend on whether I thought the “accident” could have been avoided. If the parent saw the kids’ game running around playing tag with no melted cheese in their hand and then told them that they needed to eat so take the melted cheese with them to play, I’d still be upset. That, to me, is poor parenting. And I’ve seen things like this happening often. Instead of making the child sit down to eat, the parents accommodate the child by allowing the child to take the food with them. That’s an accident waiting to happen.
I would also be less gracious if I had already told them that their behavior is dangerous and was an accident waiting to happen. This happens quite a lot also.
To me, it read like the Bible verse (I’m not a Christian so please forgive me if I mess up the verse) that goes something like, Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. And your allusion to drawing lines in the sand is interesting because there are some interpretations of the story of the woman at the well which state that when people picked up stones to throw at her, Jesus writes each of the person’s sins down in the sand for those who pick up a stone where only they can see it and they then put the stone down.
The genius of the Bible, which was missing in your list of “sins” was the catch-all phrase at the end. Since pridefulness is a sin, even if you somehow can follow all the pretty restrictive rules, you’d still get hit with the pridefulness or intolerance rule. So if you had said that even if you hadn’t done any of those things and you’re still intolerant of children, then f*** off because you’re an intolerant SOB or something like that, maybe it would have worked. But then again, rivaling the Bible is a pretty hard thing to do.
So if there was a thread about lying, cheating men who had affairs on their spouses and someone had said, “I can’t stand men,” would you fight their ignorance and let them know that it was the same as racism or bigotry?
