Eutrusca
24-07-2005, 14:06
COMMENTARY: For any of you who have tried to take an airplane trip with small children, I am of two minds: one, I have great sympathy for you, having been there, done that; but, two, I usually want to strangle you with whatever passes for apron strings these days! This little article by David Brooks is hilarious, but oh so true.
Pain, Agony, Despair: Flying With Children (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/opinion/24brooks.html?th&emc=th)
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: July 24, 2005
It's summertime, which means many people these days are flying with children, an experience that can be enriching and exciting, and is followed by memories that linger even after the shell shock, nightmares and trauma-induced facial tics have faded away.
Any airplane trip with children begins before boarding in the airport gate area, where the parents, dreading the next four hours of high-altitude agony, will be laying down a bed of psychic tension that will be the karmic foundation for everything that is to come. They will be coaching their children on how to behave, spreading maniacally upbeat good cheer and exuding the waves of anxiety that are almost clinically certain to produce a toddler meltdown.
The airlines helpfully have families with small children board first, which gives parents an extra 45 minutes to play peekaboo even before the plane takes off. As the craft fills up, it becomes clear they and their kids have been seated in a special sadist section, among Idi Amin, the etiquette committee of the Daughters of the American Revolution and a perfect 4-year-old wonder child who will spend the whole flight quietly reading The Economist.
Parents in these early stages of a flight usually devote their fevered energies to entertaining their children. Many parents begin by reading board books in that super-attenuated nursery school tone of voice, and then, sadly, singing to their children every song they know, beginning with age-appropriate lullabies and ending up with a medley of hits from the Spice Girls.
Toddlers sense when their parents are running out of first-rate material and begin squirming and rebelling. This causes the parents to frantically redouble their efforts to distract and entertain, and soon they are behaving like Jerry Lewis on a sugar high - acting out any desperately silly routine they think will occupy their little ones' minds and keep them from letting out their inner Damiens.
It is an iron rule of plane travel that the parents who are trying to hush their children are more annoying to their fellow passengers than the children who are being hushed. Accordingly, other fliers in the area begin to develop hostile feelings toward the desperately shushing parents.
Anybody who thinks it takes a village to raise a child has never sat near a crying baby in first class. In these circumstances, if it were up to the village, somebody would be stapling the brat's mouth shut and somebody else would be locking mom in the overhead storage compartment.
By this time the parents have given up on trying to entertain their kids and have resorted to bribery. They are pulling out any toy they think might occupy their children's attention.
But the kids are in such a lather, the faster the parents offer toys, the more furiously the kids throw them away so that the rows begin to look like Playmobil volcanoes, with little toy Vikings flying 20 feet through the air while the parents are frantically trying to pin their kids' arms to their chests.
The children are now completely out of control and are behaving as if they were raised by feral wolves. They will be pummeling the seat in front of them with their feet or else playing other manic airplane games, such as Tray Table Trampoline. Amid the frenzy, parents will observe that one child has turned green, which means that every passenger along the aisle between them and the restroom will be an unwitting participant in a contest called Air Sickness Roulette.
When things are at their worst, the flight attendant will unfailingly come by to offer insincere sympathy, in so doing sending the parents (who have by now reached the psychic state of the Robert De Niro character in "Taxi Driver") into a near-homicidal rage. If the F.D.A. approved a do-it-yourself anesthesia kit, mom would be using it on the little vermin, while dad contemplates scaring the kids into silence by showing them "The Exorcist"- let their future analysts worry about the consequences later on.
The final hour of the flight is aptly captured by Picasso's painting "Guernica." Parents are strewn about in heaps, hardened air marshals are weeping under the strain, the kids look like flesh-eating Beanie Babies, and the pilots emerge to complain that because of the kids' crying they can't hear the air traffic controllers (this actually happened to my family).
But then, just as human endurance reaches its breaking point, the plane finishes its descent and the plane door opens, offering an avenue for escape.
And at that moment the kids fall blissfully asleep.
Pain, Agony, Despair: Flying With Children (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/opinion/24brooks.html?th&emc=th)
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: July 24, 2005
It's summertime, which means many people these days are flying with children, an experience that can be enriching and exciting, and is followed by memories that linger even after the shell shock, nightmares and trauma-induced facial tics have faded away.
Any airplane trip with children begins before boarding in the airport gate area, where the parents, dreading the next four hours of high-altitude agony, will be laying down a bed of psychic tension that will be the karmic foundation for everything that is to come. They will be coaching their children on how to behave, spreading maniacally upbeat good cheer and exuding the waves of anxiety that are almost clinically certain to produce a toddler meltdown.
The airlines helpfully have families with small children board first, which gives parents an extra 45 minutes to play peekaboo even before the plane takes off. As the craft fills up, it becomes clear they and their kids have been seated in a special sadist section, among Idi Amin, the etiquette committee of the Daughters of the American Revolution and a perfect 4-year-old wonder child who will spend the whole flight quietly reading The Economist.
Parents in these early stages of a flight usually devote their fevered energies to entertaining their children. Many parents begin by reading board books in that super-attenuated nursery school tone of voice, and then, sadly, singing to their children every song they know, beginning with age-appropriate lullabies and ending up with a medley of hits from the Spice Girls.
Toddlers sense when their parents are running out of first-rate material and begin squirming and rebelling. This causes the parents to frantically redouble their efforts to distract and entertain, and soon they are behaving like Jerry Lewis on a sugar high - acting out any desperately silly routine they think will occupy their little ones' minds and keep them from letting out their inner Damiens.
It is an iron rule of plane travel that the parents who are trying to hush their children are more annoying to their fellow passengers than the children who are being hushed. Accordingly, other fliers in the area begin to develop hostile feelings toward the desperately shushing parents.
Anybody who thinks it takes a village to raise a child has never sat near a crying baby in first class. In these circumstances, if it were up to the village, somebody would be stapling the brat's mouth shut and somebody else would be locking mom in the overhead storage compartment.
By this time the parents have given up on trying to entertain their kids and have resorted to bribery. They are pulling out any toy they think might occupy their children's attention.
But the kids are in such a lather, the faster the parents offer toys, the more furiously the kids throw them away so that the rows begin to look like Playmobil volcanoes, with little toy Vikings flying 20 feet through the air while the parents are frantically trying to pin their kids' arms to their chests.
The children are now completely out of control and are behaving as if they were raised by feral wolves. They will be pummeling the seat in front of them with their feet or else playing other manic airplane games, such as Tray Table Trampoline. Amid the frenzy, parents will observe that one child has turned green, which means that every passenger along the aisle between them and the restroom will be an unwitting participant in a contest called Air Sickness Roulette.
When things are at their worst, the flight attendant will unfailingly come by to offer insincere sympathy, in so doing sending the parents (who have by now reached the psychic state of the Robert De Niro character in "Taxi Driver") into a near-homicidal rage. If the F.D.A. approved a do-it-yourself anesthesia kit, mom would be using it on the little vermin, while dad contemplates scaring the kids into silence by showing them "The Exorcist"- let their future analysts worry about the consequences later on.
The final hour of the flight is aptly captured by Picasso's painting "Guernica." Parents are strewn about in heaps, hardened air marshals are weeping under the strain, the kids look like flesh-eating Beanie Babies, and the pilots emerge to complain that because of the kids' crying they can't hear the air traffic controllers (this actually happened to my family).
But then, just as human endurance reaches its breaking point, the plane finishes its descent and the plane door opens, offering an avenue for escape.
And at that moment the kids fall blissfully asleep.