Comments on: Incessant Whiner

By: lnelson1218

lnelson1218 — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 15:03:38 +0000

Granted this original post was from awhile ago, but still it could have happened yesterday. For me, I understand that little kids get bored, ears hurt, etc. They are kids and some can expressed themsleves better than other. However, it is the parents responsibility to try to maintain a bit of order.
Yes, there will always be some jerk who is avoided that the child is even on the same flight as he/she is regardless of the child's behavior. However, if the parent is truly trying to keep the child quiet/amused/etc, the majority will be understanding.
For example, on one trip my uncle sat across from a woman with a baby. Not quite walking, but older than a newborn. The poor Mom was doing her best to keep the child entertained. but the baby was hand full. This was an overseas flight, so the flight probably was at least 7 hours. My uncle offered to take the child for a few minutes. The woman was very grateful and the baby was fascinated by my uncle bread and stayed quiet while being held.

By: Nicole

Nicole — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 00:14:07 +0000

The parents just tuned the kid out and let everyone around them be disturbed by it. THAT is what would annoy me. Yes young children can’t express themselves well, but that doesn’t excuse the poor parenting. They could have at least tried to shut the brat up. Funny how people are often expected to sedate their pets, I often wish it was a requirement to sedate children while traveling. I have two kids, and I would never allow them to act out like that without consequences or at least trying to do something about it. I’ve dealt with parents like that before while travelling many times, and have asked the stewardess to move my seat to a quieter area loudly enough so that the offending negligent parents could hear. I’ve also ranted on my cell phone to friends once off the plane where the idiots could hear me. If they were offended I didn’t care since they bothered me during my whole flight. Have some basic courtesy for people around you.

By: Kiri the Can Opener

Kiri the Can Opener — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 01:19:09 +0000

bubba clearly whined for the entire first 35 years of his life that he spent living in his parents' trailer home. Karma indeed…

By: Alison

Alison — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 01:17:20 +0000

Oh please. I have been kicked by two year olds on planes and I'm not as pissy as this guy. Kids are kids, the plane hurts their ears. Kids are basically narcissists for their first few years of life – literally proven by experiments that show kids under 5 have trouble understanding other's perspectives. Also, when a kid is cycling, sometimes there is literally nothing you can do to get them to calm down. Yelling (or god forbid, hitting) will only make it worse. There are a lot of bad parents out there, but I can't believe the vitriol thrown at "breeders" on this site. Did you ever ask if you could talk to him? Sometimes having a third party the kid doesn't know saying "hi" helps, because a kid will calm down for a stranger when they are overstimulated by mom and dad.

I do not have kids (my dad's a pediatrician so I've spent a lot of time around developmentally disabled children), but I understand that I'm the grown-up in the situation. What's you guys excuses for acting like 5 year olds?

By: Gem

Gem — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:25:39 +0000

I agree, I took my 6 month old twin sisters long haul London to LAX with my mother. We didn’t touch the inflight entertainment system as we were with the babies keeping them happy the entire time. A year later, we did the same.

Even last year when they were 6, we entertained them and only used in flight entertainment when we had to.

It was exauhsting but neccessary. Its our jobs as grown ups to look after them and stop them making a nuicence.

That said, during take off and landing when they had to be still, they did scream especially when they were babies and we couldn’t do more than comfort them. We still tried.

As a young childless adult. If I see kids being annoying, then I get annoyed with the parents, if I see parents trying to look after their kids. Then I feel sympathetic to the parents instead of annoyed.

Sometimes you have to fly with kids, my mum moved to the UK and got married, her family are all in LA. Thus driving isn’t an option, nor is expecting her entire family (some with kids themselves) to come out here to visit us.

By: Gem

Gem — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:31:28 +0000

What if its a transatlantic flight, and you are the one person in an extended family who lives on one side of the Atlantic? How do you drive across the Atlantic? Or do your family not deserve to see your kids until they're 20?

Sometimes there a few options.

That said, parents should look after their kids and try and entertain them, it can be done. With effort which it is the parents duty to put in.

By: Bob

Bob — Tue, 11 May 2010 13:37:24 +0000

Most of the time a whiney brat is the result of a lazy a**hole for a "parent" I flew countless times with my daughters and they were as well behaved as they were expected to be and that usually entailed non stop attention from me or my wife for the duration of the flight. Not a big deal when you are considerate of the other passengers and your own children. Now that was twenty years ago and we were average people so if we had it to do over we would probably stop by the lounge and get trashed before boarding the flight and forget about changing a diaper or paying attention to our children- that is what the other passengers are for ! we would simply watch a video or pass out and drool for the entire flight while showing no consideration for our fellow passengers or flight crew , just like so many "modern parents"do. After all todays "free range " children deserve nothing less than total freedom to make anyone within earshot miserable and to hell with anyone who has a problem with that.

By: Sue

Sue — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 09:44:42 +0000

As many stated before me – I think the problem is never the child but always the parents. If a child really is in pain there are things to be done against it (e. g. eating, drinking). I also hate it if people give us bad looks when my child is crying; but on the other hand I myself cannot stand parents who do not even try to control their child. In my personal experience 2-3 year old children can very well understand when they are told to stop something. And the best way to stop is to distract anyway – with playing or some cuddling; not to sit by and put earplugs in! The method of "ignore and it will stop" might be o.k. at home but never at the cost of other people. In the long term this will result in a rude child (just as rude as its parents), and the older the less cute and the more annoying they become. But if something like this happens to me I speak up right away; I definitely don't wait for 5 hrs and then put in a comment and run…

By: miles

miles — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 03:08:07 +0000

I will have to say that i was flaying all the way down from northern germany to australia and i had two kids with me on my way down there. beatutiful silence and a little bit of smiling thats all i got from these two. i was flying club and everything was fine. no inconvinience at all. there is stuff parents can do, believe me. just sitting there doing nothing will definitively not help and so i think hes got a point there to be honest…

By: J. Harper

J. Harper — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:50:14 +0000

I was a kid, and I listened to my parents. If I didn't, I would get spanked. I was rarely spanked, because I'm a quick learner.

It was very rude of the parents to not even try to do something about their kid's whining. If the kid was in pain, try water or gum… try something. I remember being in lots of pain on a flight as a child, but my parents trying to help me was enough of a distraction that I didn't make a big fuss about it.

Sure, that kid was more than likely going to be just fine, but even if the parents knew that, they shouldn't have just ignored the kid. My parents were attentive, which is why I turned out well enough. Make excuses all you want, but those parents just didn't care enough about their kid or the other passengers. Sure, my parents would ignore me if I was asking, "are we there yet?" a million times just to annoy them, but that's far different from, "my ears hurt."