If you haven’t seen it yet, you might not want the volume up too loud.
This little boy screamed throughout a flight from Germany to New Jersey. That’s eight hours of hell for the passengers and no intervention whatsoever from mom.
Sure, many kids have meltdowns now and then. But is it normal for any kid to scream for eight hours?
Possibilities and questions…
The kid has some sort of disorder that is not apparent.
The kid has a very strong throat and lungs and a wimpy mom.
Can the airline ban this woman and her kid from flying with them again?
Do the passengers have any recourse?
Could the plane have landed somewhere in Europe before they crossed the ocean, obviously, and told these folks to get off?
Is it possible his ears were hurting and he was in pain? My ears hurt the first time I took a jet flight to the point that I was just this side of panicking before the plane began to descend as we approached our destination, and while later flights were still painful they weren’t as bad as the first. Eventually I had sinus surgery to clear up a chronic infection and I haven’t had a problem since.
Jeez, poor people. I tend to doubt that it was physiological, because if the child was behaving unusually and expressing real physical distress the mother would surely have known, and she would not have (as described) passively allowed the situation to continue.
It’s hard to imagine how you could address this through airline rules or policy. I mean, if every kid on every flight had to “settle down” completely before taxi, we’d be seeing thousands of normal kids kicked off flights every day.
It has to be the parents making unselfish decisions about whether their child’s behavioral status is suitable for flying. And some people are just selfish, and think that little Johnny is so special that making several hundred other people’s life unpleasant for 8 hours just isn’t important.
I think all you can do to get through it is tell yourself that the kid is probably being taken for life-saving medical treatment that he couldn’t receive at home, even though it’s probably really just a visit to Disneyland.
Something like that was my first thought too, but if you watch the video, the kid is absolutely nuts before the plane even takes off. And he doesn’t seem to be fighting ear pain - he’s just squirming and climbing and running, not clutching his head.
I thought I would be sympathetic to the mom but after watching the video, nuh-uh. That was totally unacceptable. If the kid has a known disorder, then the parent needed to create some kind of plan in advance for dealing with it. If the kid’s doctor doesn’t recommend Benadryl, then whatever alternative he would prescribe is in order. Tranquilizing the kid might seem like an awfully drastic move, but you make a choice: don’t make the trip, or use the drugs.
And if the kid has no identified disorder and is just a brat, well…geez, mom sure needed to assert some kind of control. Or ask the flight attendants if she could stay in a bathroom with the kid for large chunks of the flight, to spare the other passengers.
Thanks. I hadn’t seen the video and just couldn’t come up with any other reason a kid might cry for that long a period of time. On my worst days as a child I’d have grown bored and/or given up on whatever I thought I’d accomplish looooong before 8 hours and probably within 15 or 20 minutes. Hard to believe a kid would even have the energy to keep that up for so long.
Might behoove you to, you know, actually watch the video. this kid wasn’t “crying.” he was climbing all over everything, running around everywhere, all the while screaming at the top of his lungs. and no, his ears aren’t going to be causing him discomfort while the plane has yet to take off.
I find this behavior completely perplexing. I can’t imagine any situation where a tantrum like this would occur in my family. No way, no how.
Teaching your child to behave and control themselves starts at home. Long, long, before any airplane trips.
My behavior was always monitored and corrected from a very young age. My parents made a point to take me to restaurants and those short trips were very important life lessons in proper behavior.
I can remember finishing my meal first and getting bored waiting on my parents to finish their meal. They always enjoyed their coffee after a meal. I may have been bored but I had been taught not to show it or fidget. One sharp glance from either parent is all it took.
I certainly wasn’t a perfect child. I made my share of mistake that were corrected by my parents.
The level of insanity in that video is beyond my comprehension. That intense level of uncontrollable, asinine, self-indulgent behavior is beyond anything I ever witnessed in my family or my friends families.
Obviously that parent never disciplined that child at home. He’s a feral animal now. Completely and totally helpless and undisciplined.
I got a few mild spankings. I was never harmed or mistreated. My parents NEVER disciplined when angry. A spanking might occur the next day when there wasn’t any intense emotions. We calmly discussed my behavior and why I was being disciplined. Three swats and it was over.
Except that it does sometimes have a paradoxical reaction, especially in children, and causes excitability. One of my daughters, the first few times she took Benadryl for sniffles, had exactly the opposite reaction: it looked like she just snorted an eight ball.
I took benadryl for allergies when I was a kid, and didn’t feel as though I were drugged. Is the dose to call a kid down more than the teaspoon I took?
would depend on how much antihistamine was in 1 tsp. I know there were a couple of times in grade school where I was given Dimetapp (the purple grape flavored stuff) and later fell asleep in class.
the OTC Benadryl gel tab is usually 25 mg of Diphenhydramine, which is enough to knock me on my ass.
I’m betting an previously unknown ear condition of some kind; I just don’t see something that long and strong being a simple tantrum. I’m just surprised that this isn’t common enough for airlines to have developed some sort of protocol about. Or maybe they did and the ball just got dropped this time.
I couldn’t last through 8 minutes of the video (much less 8 hours trapped on a plane with that), but wonder if there was some sort of autism spectrum disorder or other malady involved.
After awhile I probably would’ve been screaming for a water landing to end the torture.