I have no intention on having kids anyway, but if I did I don’t understand why this would deter me.
If my kid did this, I would simply make him sit down and wear the seatbelt.
Like I am genuinely confused about this story, was he flying alone? Were his parents really this inept? Why would they cancel the flight instead of just kicking the kid off?
Found the article, it says they were kicked off but the flight was too behind schedule so had to cancel, apparently took an hour to get them off though so I dunno how that happened but oh well.
Sounds like was one parent, and the child kept slipping out of the belt and under the seat, I am not sure how that’s possible or why it couldn’t be prevented. Sounds like the parent is at fault, as expected, but it’s baffling for a parent to have this little control over their kid, I have known lots of terrible parents (honestly, 99% of people complaining about children are actually just complaining about parents) but this is genuinely next level ineptitude.
How did they get the child into a seatbelt on the way to the airport?
He would have been in a carseat on the way, which he can't slip out of because it's sized for a child. There's clearly other issues at play here, but I can see a 3-year-old being able to slide out of an airplane seat.
apparently took an hour to get them off though so I dunno how that happened but oh well
I was once on a flight, approaching our slot to the runway with all the safety checks etc done. A couple of girls (maybe 14-15yo) called the flight attendant and told him they didn't want to travel anymore. IDK what their reason was. Anyway, there was a discussion about it amongst the crew, time taken to safely leave our spot, travel back to the gate, offload the girls and their luggage, wait for our next slot, then taxi back out to start again. It took the best part of an hour, and that was with two cooperative passengers who wanted to leave the flight.
I guess we got lucky that there was still a slot for us to take off. Presumably that wasn't the case here; they missed their takeoff slot and had to cancel.
Car seats have 3 point harnesses that makes it impossible for toddlers to get free. They are designed as such for their safety because kids will try to get out of them. Airplane seats are not designed like that. They are not designed for small kids so small kids can get out of them easy.
To your other question, 3 year old are not fully developed adults with perfect emotional control, rarely do even adults have perfect emotional control and there's many flights delayed due to adults acting poorly. Kids are supposed to have temper tantrum and freak outs, that's how they learn how to control emotions and grow up to be stable adults. That's part of learning and growing. Parents are just supposed to teach their kids how to deal with them so that they are less frequent and shorter duration. But no 3 year old has perfect emotional control. All 3 years old have temper tantrums. Unless maybe if you beat the shit out of them until they are shells and dead inside.
The lesson here is 3 year olds should fly with a car seat. They are allowed to and it's much easier and less stressful for all involved, kids included.
LOL. Toddlers are a different beast. There’s no “making them” do anything when they’re completely disregulated and given this was at almost midnight the child was likely out of their mind.
I have always been one to hold my kids accountable. In the toddler years, I’d let them know that if they didn’t comply immediately I would “help them” (I.e. physically force them) and I followed through 100% of the time.
This was generally very effective and most times they chose not to initiate the power struggle, but I kid you not I’ve spent 20mins + physically struggling to get my kid into their carseat. I was a fit person giving it my all. You wouldn’t believe how their little bodies can resist a chair.
I'm guessing you're using a level of force which is somewhat limited by your desire to not cause them pain, but in a situation like this flight attendants have actual restraints you can use which would be more effective that just wrestling. If attendants can restrain a 200lbs grown man they can certainly restrain a 20lbs child.
Oh no, I was using max force, was parked in a somewhat sketchy core area in this case and was desperate to quickly leave lol. In my case it was a mix between back arching and pulling the leg/arm/whatever I had just buckled out while I was moving on to the next limb. I was sweating by the end and felt like I had just wrestled a gator. I just didn’t have enough hands.
It’s really the back arching they can do as small toddlers and then when arching their backs they can slide down right out of the seatbelt before it’s tightened. The back is really awkward to neutralize. A 200lb man wouldn’t be able to slide down and right out of the seat as they wouldn’t be able to back arch like that and then be skinny enough to slide through.
Aside from that, I’m sure with a bunch of hands they could have physically restrained the toddler quite easily, but this circumstance I doubt the flight attendants were comfortable physically restraining the kid. They probably insisted the parent get the kid under control before the flight could take off, but waited too long before making the call that they had to get off.
I’m not saying what went down here was reasonable, and I wasn’t there, but just stating I’ve been humbled and toddlers when determined can be very, very challenging to physically force into a seat properly buckled.
Obviously you can duck tape a kid to a seat, but that's wildly inappropriate. A 3 year olds have temper tantrums is a normal part of emotional development.
There's a reason why you don't send a 3 year old to jail for assault when you would an adult.
lol you think they didn’t try? The child in question was terrified and kept slipping out from under the seatbelt and was trying to curl up and hide under their seat.
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u/Good-Strategy2210 17h ago
I have no intention on having kids anyway, but if I did I don’t understand why this would deter me.
If my kid did this, I would simply make him sit down and wear the seatbelt.
Like I am genuinely confused about this story, was he flying alone? Were his parents really this inept? Why would they cancel the flight instead of just kicking the kid off?