Flying With Kids

Not long ago I heard about a family that was asked to get off an airplane because they refused to make their kid behave. Recently my family and I flew to Florida for vacation and Council (a national event for the C&MA). I was a little nervous about how my 22 month old boy would do.

He runs everywhere he goes climbs everything he can (at about 18 months I found him sitting on the kitchen table once and on one other occasion celebrating his accent to the peak of Mt. Bunk Bed). He doesn't sit still (except for Jeff Gordan and the other Nascar drivers) and the thought of asking him to sit still on an airplane for 1 & 2 hours on the same day was rather frightening. I thought for sure we would be the next family to dawn a poster for bad parenting. Sometimes I feel bad for parents because America has created a culture where punishment (especially physical punishment) is frowned upon and sometimes viewed as abuse. In this same culture we expect kids to behave when in public. We expect parents who don't discipline to some how find a way to control their kids when they do go into public places. There is nothing more irritating than going to a nice dinner with your wife and having some spoiled little kid screaming at his parents because he doesn't like the macaroni and cheese.

Our kids are pretty well behaved (although we are still working on tantrums with the boy). Still I wasn't sure if I could get away with spanking my boy on an airplane if I needed to do so. Fortunately it all worked out well, even the extra half an hour we spent on the Ground in Chicago. No spankings, only a tiny bit of crying, and Joash (my boy) loved the take off and landing. Of course it helped that he slept almost the entire flight from Chicago to Orlando.