Hello, live from a mostly excellent (as usual) transatlantic Air France business class flight… and I have a question!
Kids scream at top of their lungs, parents do nothing
A lot of people get unreasonably frustrated with children (especially infants and toddlers) on flights. Kids can sometimes be hard to control and can most definitely be annoying to people around them, but they’re part of society. Airplanes are a form of transportation, so as unpleasant as it might be, you should expect that kids will sometimes scream on flights.
While we haven’t done much travel yet with our younger son, we’ve had a couple of flights with our older son, Miles, where I just wanted to crawl into a hole out of embarrassment. The thing is, as parents we do our best, especially on planes. Sometimes that’s not perfect, but we try.
I remember traveling with Miles across the Atlantic when he was two years old, and just thinking to myself “ugh, I don’t need to repeat that any time soon.”
But that brings me to the daytime transatlantic flight we’re on right now. There’s a family of six seated near us in business class, with four kids and two parents. The kids maybe range in age from four to 12(ish). Let me mention that the dad is completely checked out — he’s sitting in a window seat, and I don’t think he has communicated with the kids once.
One child in particular has just been screaming on and off the entire flight (the others aren’t angels, but by comparison…). And I mean S-C-R-E-A-M-I-N-G. Not crying out of discomfort, or anything, but yelling at the top of her lungs due to lack of manners and lack of parental intervention. Whatever the loudest volume you can imagine, that’s the volume at which she’s yelling. And that says nothing of the constant climbing on seats.
The parents are disinterested. Maybe every 10 minutes the mom would just go “shhh” once, but that’s it. Otherwise she has just been left alone to yell at everyone, including her siblings, and neither parent could care less.
At what point do you complain about kids on planes?
As I always say, you should never confront other passengers directly onboard aircraft, since that can quickly escalate. So if you have an issue, you should direct it at the crew, since they’re the ones in a position of power to deal with such a situation, without it escalating unnecessarily.
Also, quite honestly, we’re a gay couple traveling with a kid, and let’s just say that the family doesn’t give friendly vibes, and they appear to be from a “sanctioned” country that isn’t known for being particularly gay friendly. I’m just saying, I’m being more cautious than I’d be at a Taylor Swift concert (not that I’d be at a Taylor Swift concert).
Anyway, we put up with this for hours. Finally at about the halfway point of the flight, our son was sound asleep (we’ve convinced him it’s an overnight flight, and that the rule on the plane is that everyone has to sleep), and then this girl goes on one of her shouting tirades for no damn reason, and the parents do nothing.
So Ford finally politely complained to the crew. I recognize this puts the crew in an uncomfortable position, and I feel badly for them, but I also think it’s the lesser of the evils. To the crew’s credit, they handled it incredibly well.
They approached the parents, and the mother’s response was simply “we will give her something now.” Ummm, I don’t even know what that means, but you could also just spend some time with your child and try to entertain her.
While things got a little better, initially it wasn’t a huge improvement. Fortunately the crew literally stood in the cabin for some amount of time basically hovering over the child’s seat, and directly telling her (politely) that she needed to be quiet. I think she took it a bit more seriously when it came from strangers (not that her mother ever told her anything, other than “shhh”), but they really kept at it. They also kept telling the parents that they needed to do something. That’s how it’s done.
So to me that raises the question — at what point is it appropriate to complain about the behavior of other passengers? After five minutes? After five hours? Never? Obviously it’s a delicate balance with kids. You can’t help if an infant screams once in a while, but when the parents literally just don’t even try, it’s hard to not get frustrated.
Bottom line
It has been some time since I’ve seen as poorly of a behaved child as I have on my current flight, where the parents just seemingly don’t care. I hate to put the crew into an uncomfortable situation, but in this case, it really crossed a line, in my opinion.
Fortunately the crew was great, first addressing the parents, and then when that didn’t fully work, addressing the kids. The situation definitely got better.
So I’ll pose the question I asked above — at what point would you complain about poorly behaved children on flights, where parents don’t put in any effort? Have you ever found yourself in such a situation?
