I'm starting to think that I have a recurring theme in my blog posts: Parents attacked for having noisy children. Today it's the Georgia toddler and his mother, Kate Penland, who in June were kicked off a flight in Houston, Tex. Why you ask? Oh, for terrible deeds. The flight attendant and supposedly one passenger thought the child talked too much. As the plane taxied toward take off, the toddler said "Bye-bye plane," one too many times apparently.
After a discussion with the mother in which the flight attendant suggested she medicate the child, the flight attendant allegedly told the pilot that the mother threatened her (FOX news brief). As a result the plane returned to the terminal and the 19-month-old and his mother were kicked off. No, I'm not joking.
Here are more details from the full television story at ABC 13 News, Houston:
Passenger Kate Penland recalled, "He was saying, 'Bye-bye, plane.'"
That's how Penland's son Garron said goodbye to a more than 11 hour delay at the Houston airport. It happened last month on board a Continental ExpressJet plane while it taxied. The one and a half year old repeated 'bye-bye, plane' all through the flight attendant's safety speech.
"As she finished, she leaned over the gentleman who was sitting next to me, and she said, 'OK, it's not funny anymore. You need to shut your baby up,'" Penland said.
Penland explained Garron would likely fall asleep soon. The toddler wasn't crying or throwing a fit.
Penland told Eyewitness News, "She said, 'It doesn't matter. Regardless, I don't want to hear it.' And she said it's called baby Benadryl and (made a drinking motion.) And I said, 'Well, I'm not going to drug my child so you have a pleasant flight.'"
"He wasn't any louder than the adult passengers on the plane," said passenger Stacey Watts.
Watts sat just a few rows back from the Georgia mother and heard the entireconversation.
I like DaddyTypes.com take on this:
"Baby Benadryl"? How About "Flight Attendant Xanax"? Damn. (post title) ... And anyway, it's a waste to drug a kid for a 90-minute flight. All it does is turn them into handle-less, carry-on deadweight for the remaining 4.5 hours. Continental's got some 'splainin' to do.
Under the title "Captain, we have an evil-doer aboard this flight", blogger Steven Ford at the Orlando Sentinel doesn't believe a talking toddler should be considered a threat to national security.
This is the Parent Place blog, remember? You know where this is going because it happens so often these days, or so it seems.
...How many more anti-kid news story involving the U.S. airline industry do we have to read these days? From breast-feeding Moms kicked off flights to al-Qaeda wannabes who have the audacity to try to take their toddler’s apple juice through security checkpoints, you gotta wonder when parents are going to just say enough is enough and start booking multiday trips aboard Amtrak just to avoid the hassle of flying.
I gotta admit I mostly fly Southwest, and I’ve never experienced anything like this. But, then again, their flight attendants are known for being jovial anyway. I’ve been on flights where, once we landed, the attendants even jokingly acknowledged our inflight discomfort caused by screaming kids –- in song even. That simple and corny acknowledgment of reality was refreshing.
When he mentions "breast-feeding moms kicked off flights," he's referring to news I first read here at BlogHer by Mir. In that incident Delta was the offending airline.
I'm sure some readers have stories to tell about how they were trapped on a three-hour flight with a screaming child, but I don't think a toddler saying "Bye-bye plane," who was not shouting, kicking, or yelling, falls into that category. In this incident the passengers defended the mother, who had already been held over with her toddler for a long while in Houston. Mother and child only wanted to get home on an ExpressJet to Georgia.
What do you think?
Photo Credit: Worth1000.com
Comments
I think the airline went too
I think the airline went too far on this one. After an 11-hour delay, I'm sure there were some cranky adults who wanted to shout "Bye-bye plane!" themselves.
Karen
"Life is too short to pout all the time."
A Deaf Mom Shares Her World
Hands & Voices
Ridiculous!
Unfrigginbelievable.
And yet I also saw a passenger removed unjustly from a plane for talking during a safety demonstration. (Everyone else was talking as well. Of course, he was the only African-American man on the plane. Story here, on my blog.)
Leslie
BlogHer Contributing Editor, Research and Academia
Proprietor, The Clutter Museum
Horrible
I think what they did to that mother and her son was horrible.
He's a toddler! It's completely ridiculous. This wasn't a private jet. It was public transportation. There's such a sense of entitlement in our society. That toddler had just as much right to speak in the airplane as anyone else.
A. Elliot
I wonder...
would she have suggested that if the child were (obviously) mentally challenged in some way? How obnoxious, to think they'd consider drugging a kid just to make HER job easier. That would be THE DAY.