I asked:
Quote:Let's suppose that the flight attendant in this episode was childless. Was she qualified to make the decision she made? If it was the kid's behavior that first made her aware of a possible problem, should she have called in a member of the flight crew who was a parent to deal with the situation?
Mame responded:
Mame wrote:As a flight attendant, she made a call, but she over-reacted and made a bad decision. I think she was just an idiot, and it is irrelevant if she was a parent or not. Being a parent doesn't necessarily make you more sympathetic to children's fussiness, nor does being single make you more annoyed by it.
Thanks for that response. Of course it's irrelevant if the flight attendant was a parent or not. And that's why it's also irrelevant to
this discussion whether the participants are parents or not. Just as it was possible for the flight attendant to make the right decision in handling this situation, whether or not she was a parent, it's also possible for the participants here to offer valid comments, whether or not they are parents.
Penland's remark that the flight attendant "obviously isn't a parent" is to inject an irrelevancy into the entire discussion, just as those here who have said "you wouldn't understand, you're not a parent" have injected a similar irrelevancy into this discussion.
Translation:
Many persons always want to argue although they have no idea
What it means is: People want to argue even though they have no clue.
"People" is me, of course.
And no, I don't mind at all, especially when I read where the critique comes
from.
Well, confusing matters, I agree with a lot of what nimh says. I still don't like being reminded I'm not a parent many many times when I think that isn't relevant to the present problem. I thought JPB nailed the key points of what we don't know, and they have nothing to do with a lack of understanding of the difficulty of bringing a weary toddler to serenity in a short time, ascribed repeatedly, very repeatedly, to our just not being able to know, y'know.* It has to do with whether or not passenger safety was somehow compromised, by whatever the FAA rules are. It may even have to do with the attendant maintaining "order".
If anything, I have (unexpressed heretofore) empathy to the mother and suspect the attendant of some level of working in a zone of bitchiness. (Shall I repeat again that I'm neutral? I don't have enough information.)
On the age matter, I know plenty of old fools, let me count the ways, and plenty of savvy young, and some of you know some of those young people too via a2k.
My exaggerated eight decades was to underline that lack of parenting doesn't preclude that I or anyone else can get that calming a child remains an art of love and perhaps good fortune, if we simply pay attention in life. That really doesn't take intense years of 24/7 to comprehend.
This thread bores some; I find it interesting and useful.
Some parents don't share this 'you can never get it because you weren't there 24/7' thing, so this isn't all between parents and non parents.
* Give me a break already. If the now-parent/you can't understand group didn't get that before they had children, were they sleepwalking through life?
Well, when nimh was arguing away, and I was nodding in agreement, I was riffing on the old teachings of the good fathers, our celibate priests, when I was a young catholic girl roiling in scrupulosity....
And an LA Times article about St. John's Seminary today.
The arguments were about how you could forgive sins of the flesh if you didn't partake of them....
Tangent, beg pardon.
ehBeth wrote:Nimh, I suspect this
CJane wrote:What's your point Joe? You don't like kids, good, we can read that in your statement.
following
CJane wrote:You don't have children, do you, Joe?
set this off on its particularly lively course.
"you don't like kids" doesn't really seem like subtext. Seems like something that was laid out pretty directly.
Yes, Calamity Jane..
Hey, I did say "nine out of ten" :wink:
Of course I was direct ehbeth, I am always direct and controversy
But my intimate "call them at 2 AM" friendships with German-speaking people give me solidarity with them. Just the other day, we were joking with each other, and I was saying "Kraut, please..."
I still like my idea of ear plugs and the Bose. It sure saves me a whole lot of aggravation and worry. Some flights are 11 hours long. Like contraceptives, self-imposed safety is the best policy.
Very interesting, osso.
The New York Times article states this
Quote:Then there was the Benadryl Incident, also last month. A woman was sitting on an airplane with a child in Houston after a long delay. As the airplane finally taxied for takeoff, the toddler began repeating, "Bye-bye plane."
A vexed flight attendant told the mother, "You need to shut your baby up," and suggested a dose of Benadryl, according to news reports. When the mother said she wasn't about to drug her son, the flight attendant went tothe cockpit and told the pilot that the mother had threatened her. The plane returned to the gate, where mother and child were escorted off. Fellow passengers subsequently backed up the mother's story.
And this is so true too (unfortunately)
Quote:Horror stories abound. On a recent flight from Florida to New York, a child cried incessantly, prompting exasperated passengers to yell suggestions to the mother, and not very politely. "Get up and walk the kid up and down the aisle," commanded one. Babies have been among those stuck for 5, 8 or in some cases more than 10 hours on stranded planes, without food or much more than a sip of water. Think about it.
This reminds me of the mother of a toddler and an eight-month-old one
coming from Europe with us one time. We all got delayed for 6 hours in Philadelphia; the mother was already on the road for 15 hours and the kids were crying non-stop and so was the mother after a while. She was close to a nervous break-down, not having slept for over 24 hours, and being stressed out by her crying babies.
Some of us women took turns in attending to the baby and toddler so
the mother could at least take a short nap. It was disheartening to see, how tortured that trip had become for them.
Yeh, and, with others, I don't get that all this can be a security risk.
Seems to be about immediate obedience. Which I am still in favor of, in general if not in particular.
But, therein is probably the security risk question.
Uh, oh, I'm veering from neutral.
I've been with an out of his gourd two + some months person on an, oh, twelve seater plane (I don't know how many seats, but not so many), with the parent of the utter useless variety (dad, saying, there, there, once in a while).
In that case, I was on the kid's side, wildly aggravating as he was. We all had a horrid flight to Sacramento.
On security risk, I do get it, it has to do with obedience, starkly presented.
Arguing about a wailing babe among ourselves is one thing (whether or not we really know, geez). Having this stuff turn into security effluvium is another.
You know, a little communication goes a long way. If a FA says, "Hey, this family has been in transit for 15 hours, please give them a break", then I'm all over it....
If someone says, "the fight will be delayed at least five hours and there will be no in-board service because we're not allowed to serve you on the ground, but you can de-board, get water and cookies"... I'll all over it...
The problem is a lack of communication, in a lot of cases.
I am no longer neutral about this. I think the stewardess did wrong.
I'm actually leaning that way too, but sure would like some corroboration by way of more info from the airline...
Yeah, there doesn't seem to be any new info there...
Interesting article though, thanks.
