Airline Tantrum: Let's Show Some Compassion!

When I was 6 years old or so, my mother took me to the doctor for a blood test. Apparently, I'd been complaining that my legs were falling asleep with alarming frequency, and Mom figured I should be brought in to rule out any serious problems.

I was a very well-behaved kid, definitely not the type of kid you'd expect to have a full-on freak-out fest ... particularly considering I was 6, not 2.

But I remember clearly the panic I felt when the nurse pulled out the syringe and moved toward my arm. I jumped. I flailed. I shrieked. And when they kept coming, I kicked, writhed, punched and screamed. It took two nurses and my very embarrassed mother to hold me in my place.

I thought of that story this week when I heard about the 3-year-old child whose family was kicked off an AirTran Airways flight because the child wouldn't sit in her seat for takeoff.

I won't pass judgment on the airline for their decision. I realize that you can't hold up a plane because one passenger, whether said passenger is 3 or 43, refuses to follow the rules. It wasn't simply a case of crying - refusal to sit in her seat posed a safety hazard for little Elly Kulesza and the other 112 passengers on the plane.

But I find it disturbing how quick people are to blame the unfortunate incident on bad parenting.

Talk show hosts tsk-tsked and blogs and message boards were abuzz with criticisms of the Kulesza parents, calling them, among many other things, careless, selfish and examples of today's ineffective, overly permissive parenting style. Meanwhile, Elly has been called a brat, a monster and an example of why parents everywhere should take up spanking.

I realize it's all the rage to slam modern-day parents, but let's have a little compassion, people.

A public tantrum ranks right up there in the list of a parent's most horrifying, red-faced moments of humiliation. And this tantrum happened on an airplane, where most parents are already feeling defensive and anxious as they get the hairy eyeball from other passengers who don't want to be on a flight with children in the first place.

So going in, I'm sure the Kuleszas were not in a position to make the most well-thought-out parenting decisions. More likely, they were operating, as the best of parents sometimes do in stressful situations, from a place of defensiveness and desperation.

"They should have just MADE her get in her carseat," critics have insisted. Well, next time my 3-year-old decides to have one of his (thankfully infrequent) tantrums, I'll let you come over and try to force him to do anything. His body goes rigid; somehow he makes himself weigh at least 30 pounds more than he actually is. You can't even bend him; much less force him into any kind of child-safety seat. Believe me. I've tried.

Not only that, but I can imagine that if I were a parent stuck on an airplane with a crying kid, I'd be doing anything I could to appease him or her. Not because I believe in caving to a child's demands, or because I'm a pushover, but because in the hot-faced moment of ultimate public embarrassment, parents sometimes make choices they wouldn't make in the privacy of their own homes. Choices like, say, bribing a child to get him to sit in the grocery cart for the rest of the shopping trip or letting him have another cookie in a restaurant so that you can finish your own meal in peace.

Most of the time, I want my kids to learn lessons about being good, responsible, socially aware citizens. But I certainly wouldn't want to be judged as a parent by the things I've occasionally let my kids get away with in order to keep a public outing from disintegrating into a hellish experience.

So I'm not going to take sides here. Did the airline make a proper decision? Probably so. Did the parents overreact? Possibly. Are they good, thoughtful parents and citizens? I believe they most likely are.

Will this change how airlines deal with tantruming children in the future?

All I can say is, I hope I never have to find out.