As a kindergarten teacher, I appreciate the caveat in your first sentence. I think I have a lot of advice to give to new parents around *what types of child they might get*, *how little control they have* post birth about which type they get, and most crucially, how to think in terms of being fertile soil for the seed you've gotten, rather than disastrously attempting to mold an unformed piece of clay..
Of course, just to prove your point about children being diverse, our just-turned-two-year-old doesn't fall for the false dichotomy trick everyone recommends and indeed says, "NO SHOE". So we have have to launder all of our asks through a toy animal trying to do the task, failing, and then asking her to show them how it's done. Her psychological need appears to be autonomy and that includes it being "her idea" to do the thing. Anything that we explicitly offer is not a valid choice.
Yes. Many parents have their first child, and read lots of parenting advice. Then they have a second child, and the second child is a _completely different person_, and the parents realize that their two children require totally different strategies.
So you make it up as you go along, and you do your best.
I probably one of the childfree people you talk about. well, i don't give parenting advice, but i do have opinions that may look like having the consequences of forbidding parents exist in public.
I got them from my parents. who are very much not childfree, and also very much exist in public. i think it's cultural mismatch - we just have very different standards of what is reasonable.
for example, last time i fly to some place was when i was 3 years old, and my parents and I migrated. so i find avoiding airplanes for some years as reasonable, and bringing babies to planes as something to do only when really needed. migration or meeting dying grandmother are dire needs. wanting to go to vacation - very much not. (i don't have coherent opinion on living flying distance from family and fly every holiday.)
in the same way, the first time i remember going to restaurant was for anniversary of my greadfather, i was ~15 years old. my parents went to restaurants less then one time a year. if you assume norm of "restaurant-going is rare and special", then it both easy and sensible to not bring children to restaurants.
I actually went from this set of norms to more standard while-collar set. i still go to restaurants ~1 time a year, at fun day at work. but i can actually understand the idea that you will go to fancy restaurant to eat - it's Greyed Out Option for my mother. if you model people as "it totally normal go to restaurants, and also children should not", well... i will not say those people don't exist, as i did, actually, hear about such things. but i don't think most of the people who held such believes are like that.
I don't so much protecting those opinions - I agree with some and disagree with some. i'm more trying to point to something. It's look to me there are two ways to see those situations, and both sides fail to understand the other.
the side that see plans flying as normal and basic don't actually model the other one as thinking that it's rare and not essential. and the differences come from there. there is a big difference from "I went to out once-a-year restaurant outing and those people bring children and ruin it" - both in the higher cost it impose, and the smaller cost of avoiding it from the parents.
and - and this is important point - the numbers just don't add up. people don't take babies to planes only when they really need to. if you assume rule of "only when needed", you can't say about any concrete random person they break it, but if the number of people this "really need to " happen to is ~5%, and you observe 30%, you know that most of the people bringing babies to the airplane are being assholes.
and there is honest disagreement here, that sort of getting shoved under the rug of "you don't know", that worth exploring. on what norms we think are good and want to have. and a lot of children-related disagreements stem from those deeper values,
You've outlined some ways that the expected norms of airplanes and restaurants are different between people who use them a lot and a little. I would say that a lot of airplane things sit at an awkward compromise between frequent fliers and once-a-year-or-less fliers*. People are stuck in close quarters such that the question of where one fist ends and another's nose begins is pretty questionable and two people can both come away with the reasonable impression that the other one was being an asshole. Among Americans (a heavily airplane-using people, globally speaking), about 90% of adults have been on an airplane, about ~40% of adults fly in a given year, and 10%** fly >5 times in a given year. I used to be really annoyed by the TSA but I've come to view the TSA as, in fact, what voters want - many people who fly rarely but ever think that flying is scary and want to feel that the government is there and making sure everything is safe. The compromise is _precheck_, which frequent fliers can use to reduce their hassle, even though it makes no sense from a "security" standpoint. They give a mandatory security demo on every flight, as opposed to having a video you can watch if you don't know how to use your seatbelt. They offer "carryons" to people in back rows who don't know that they will be forced to check their bag every time. Most airline tickets are refundable anyway, but airlines sell bullshit travel insurance and tickets marketed as refundable that cost more to people who don't know, which lets them charge a little less in other ways. These things all exist in the way that they do because some people on planes fly a lot and others only fly rarely.
* Much less true for restaurants because mostly, among restaurants of sufficiently low fanciness that children are allowed, _different restaurants_ cater to people who go out rarely vs often. Nobody is having their once a year anniversary dinner at the fourth Just Salad in the financial district.
** Profile of one frequent flier (me): I have immediate family members in three cities, most of my social circle in a fourth, and I live in a fifth. Only one pair of these cities is close enough for train or bus (which I usually take between them). I also do ~2 round trips airplane business travel and ~2 round trips fun travel per year as well. (Since I have done it lots of times, it is easier for me than flying is for others and cheaper as well because it's worthwhile for me to do points/miles stuff and my timing is more flexible than people who are traveling for holidays.) Frequenter fliers than me are people who have tons of business travel and people whose entire lifestyle is traveling all the time.
> and - and this is important point - the numbers just don't add up. people don't take babies to planes only when they really need to. if you assume rule of "only when needed", you can't say about any concrete random person they break it, but if the number of people this "really need to " happen to is ~5%, and you observe 30%, you know that most of the people bringing babies to the airplane are being assholes.
Hang on, this makes no sense mathematically. Firstly you're pulling numbers for who 'needs' to travel out of thin air, and I definitely don't hear babies crying on 30% of my flights***, but accepting that, looking at the numbers: You can observe a baby crying on an airplane from, let's say, eight rows away. That's 48 seats. Kids are annoying**** on airplanes until, let's say, they're 4 and just watch videos the whole time. There are ~12 million Americans age 3 and under (3.6%). If we were randomly picking 48 people, there is a (correct me if I'm wrong) .964^48 = 0.17 = 17% chance that none of them are babies or toddlers. So if you observe that none of 48 people on a plane are babies or toddlers 70% of the time, babies fly way less than other people*****, many of whom _already only fly when it really matters to them_.
*** I may be taking flights at times that are particularly unpopular for families? I bet Dec 23 flights are _full_ of babies.
**** Honestly, I just wear headphones, it's not a big deal.
***** The obvious explanation for this is that flying with a baby is hard and sucks way more for the parents and the baby than it does for you.
That said, when I have kids I might take them on an airplane just because I wanna go to Kyoto for no good reason. But nobody else does this, I am a flying-obsessed lunatic & all the other flying-obsessed lunatics I know besides my partner are not planning to have kids.
Even parents give crappy parenting advice, for reasons you mention: children are different, parents are different. Your 3rd footnote is about a tactic that many parents advice and that is utterly unusable with our two year old, for the reason you mention: he just names a third option. But at least the advice given by parents has a small chance of working 🤞
I'm a baby-crying-on-airplane complainer but yes I am under no delusion that you can stop the baby from crying. I've always said that as a more general "it's a dick move to bring a baby onto an airplane." Sometimes you only have dick options and should do it anyways, surely, like the grandma dying scenario. But indeed still they did a thing that is unpleasant for everyone around them.
I can absolutely remember the experience of learning cursive handwriting and wouldn't wish it on anybody. Teach kids to type and use pens/pencils to handwrite print-style text when necessary. That way, reading, typing and handwriting reinforce each other. Reading cursive can be left to grad students in history.
Totally agree, but I have also absolutely had arguments with people about why I spend significant amounts of time teaching my students to print. Some people think that learning to handwrite at all is a waste of time, these days.
"But I think some childfree people don’t quite realize that their preferred norms for children’s behavior amount to “children shouldn’t be allowed to leave the house at all.”"
Huh, I always assumed that "children and parents shouldn't be allowed to leave the house at all" was *exactly* what those people wanted. Your alternative explanation attributes to them a level of ignorance I assumed was impossible, but less active malice. I am not actually sure which explanation is more charitable, but certainly your tone is far kinder and more patient than mine would be. Who cares if the nice restaurant is the only one that's open or one of 100 on the same block? You were a child once, children are humans and have as much right to be in public as anyone else, fuck off.
"Children are as diverse as adults."
It's kind of funny when people ask me how I "plan" to parent my kid when they're older. I haven't _met_ my kid when they're older yet, have I? So how would I know?
Don't underestimate how little experience some people have with children. See this thread where someone ask why people just don't put their hand over a crying baby's mouth or give them a sedative and instead jiggle them, "because obviously jiggling doesn't work".
Childhood amnesia is a thing, and also actively not wanting to think about your childhood is a thing. For example I feel very little nostalgia about anything in my childhood because I didn't enjoy mine, I basically never interact with children, I pretty much just never think about them.
I'm one of these on the airplanes in particular and I will 100% cop to thinking you just shouldn't bring babies on airplanes unless you have some dire need. But "spend a couple years not flying places" is not, IMO, an unreasonable thing for most people to have to tolerate.
I was surprised to have this end with a discussion about the complaints of the child-free. I've never really understood the complaints about children on airplanes, given that they are crying, I assume they're having a much, much worse time with the air pressure changes and other disturbances than I am with their crying. I had a baby cry during my wedding ceremony, but it was my niece and I was very glad to have both her and my sister at the wedding. Though I suppose I am probably not the typical childless adult, having just wrapped up reading a parenting book with my book club of other childless adults years away from parenting.
Thanks for linking the micro-school site, I was rather curious about it since Kelsey Piper was tweeting about it last week. Do the parent-teachers generally have professional/academic expertise in the subjects they instruct in?
Not generally but the children are very small. I don't know how we'll do things differently as they get older and start outpacing their adults in some subjects.
I was talking to some folks recently and one was complaining about a small child who had kicked the back of her seat repeatedly on a flight she was recently on, and how the parent should have put a stop to that. I'm not a parent, but I do feel like some (not all) kids are just...unstoppable in that scenario. An old-fashioned person like the one I was talking to would probably think you should beat the child if they won't stop otherwise, but even if I thought that was an appropriate parenting technique, these days doing it on an airplane would probably get you on a viral video and possibly worse. What is there to do but remind ourselves that we were once children and benefited from the same tolerance we should show now?
Well, for one thing, they will start screaming and upset everyone in the plane (as you would if someone attempted to physically restrain your legs for two hours).
Maybe this would work with some kids and some parents but I'd find it physically challenging to restrain a toddler or small child's legs for any significant period of time.
I had a similar situation and the way I tried to go about it was say "ow!" quite loudly and comically. I tried to turn around to face the kicking kiddo, but airplane seat designs make this pretty much impossible.
The parent was apologetic and the kicking did stop - but to be fair she wasn't super young (old enough to stop when I made noises, anyway).
I think ignoring it is the strategy that's least likely to stop the kicking. You can try to entertain the child in other ways.
(Childless person that hopes parents don't find it too weird when I try to interact with the child if their child comes up to me or makes eye contact)
A thing I often observe in childless people planning for their own children and future parenting styles is that they make WAY TOO MANY assumptions about what their child will be like (this sometimes but not always survives contact with actual children). Usually they assume the child will be like they remember themselves as a child. Buddy, you cannot be making plans that specific.
>I’m all for children having separate bedrooms, but sometimes you live in the Bay Area and you couldn’t afford a bedroom for each child without crippling debt.
Simply do not have more children than you can afford to give separate bedrooms. No one would agree with the statement "I'm all for children having clothes, but sometimes you just have more kids than you can afford to buy clothes for." Privacy is a human right. Children are people. (Also freedom of association is a human right and basically the entire way the family is currently structured flagrantly violates it, but this will be the subject of a future post.)
>my child is watching a noisy YouTube video because my phone doesn’t have a headphone jack and it was this or a meltdown
The thing that is hard for me to understand re babies crying on planes is why parents don’t take obvious steps, like giving the kid a mild sedative to help them sleep through the flight or, if that’s not an option, just holding your hand over the baby’s mouth to lower the noise level. Instead parents seem to respond to crying by …jiggling the baby, which doesn’t work. Why are they not doing the obvious things?
Jiggling the baby *is* an obvious thing, though! It is actually very calming for babies under many circumstances. It is thought to, among other things, mimic the familiar, comforting movement of being in the womb while the parent is moving or walking. I don't have a primary source for this, but it's very common parenting advice you see in What To Expect, Mayo Clinic guides, etc.
Also, you can't really cover a baby's mouth without risking suffocating them, pllus it can just cause them more distress that prolongs the crying.
I can't really speak to sedatives, but I would very disinclined to put a sedative in my son's developing nervous system unless it were medically necessary.
I'm curious what specific mild sedatives you would advocate. The obvious candidate seems to be diphenhydramine (Benadryl). (And maaaybe dimenhydrinate (Dramamine.)) Both are first-generation antihistamines / anticholinergics. Benadryl cannot be given to children under 2, is not recommended for children under 6, and is not recommended as a sleep aid for children under 12. (In fact, the package directions of Benadryl say: "do not use to make a young child sleepy.") In some children, instead of drowsiness it can cause paradoxical agitation. It also has a lot of other potential side effects. (Essentially all of this is probably about the same for Dramamine, but I guess it's less popular as a sleep aid so there's less written about it.)
As a kindergarten teacher, I appreciate the caveat in your first sentence. I think I have a lot of advice to give to new parents around *what types of child they might get*, *how little control they have* post birth about which type they get, and most crucially, how to think in terms of being fertile soil for the seed you've gotten, rather than disastrously attempting to mold an unformed piece of clay..
Of course, just to prove your point about children being diverse, our just-turned-two-year-old doesn't fall for the false dichotomy trick everyone recommends and indeed says, "NO SHOE". So we have have to launder all of our asks through a toy animal trying to do the task, failing, and then asking her to show them how it's done. Her psychological need appears to be autonomy and that includes it being "her idea" to do the thing. Anything that we explicitly offer is not a valid choice.
Yes. Many parents have their first child, and read lots of parenting advice. Then they have a second child, and the second child is a _completely different person_, and the parents realize that their two children require totally different strategies.
So you make it up as you go along, and you do your best.
I probably one of the childfree people you talk about. well, i don't give parenting advice, but i do have opinions that may look like having the consequences of forbidding parents exist in public.
I got them from my parents. who are very much not childfree, and also very much exist in public. i think it's cultural mismatch - we just have very different standards of what is reasonable.
for example, last time i fly to some place was when i was 3 years old, and my parents and I migrated. so i find avoiding airplanes for some years as reasonable, and bringing babies to planes as something to do only when really needed. migration or meeting dying grandmother are dire needs. wanting to go to vacation - very much not. (i don't have coherent opinion on living flying distance from family and fly every holiday.)
in the same way, the first time i remember going to restaurant was for anniversary of my greadfather, i was ~15 years old. my parents went to restaurants less then one time a year. if you assume norm of "restaurant-going is rare and special", then it both easy and sensible to not bring children to restaurants.
I actually went from this set of norms to more standard while-collar set. i still go to restaurants ~1 time a year, at fun day at work. but i can actually understand the idea that you will go to fancy restaurant to eat - it's Greyed Out Option for my mother. if you model people as "it totally normal go to restaurants, and also children should not", well... i will not say those people don't exist, as i did, actually, hear about such things. but i don't think most of the people who held such believes are like that.
I don't so much protecting those opinions - I agree with some and disagree with some. i'm more trying to point to something. It's look to me there are two ways to see those situations, and both sides fail to understand the other.
the side that see plans flying as normal and basic don't actually model the other one as thinking that it's rare and not essential. and the differences come from there. there is a big difference from "I went to out once-a-year restaurant outing and those people bring children and ruin it" - both in the higher cost it impose, and the smaller cost of avoiding it from the parents.
and - and this is important point - the numbers just don't add up. people don't take babies to planes only when they really need to. if you assume rule of "only when needed", you can't say about any concrete random person they break it, but if the number of people this "really need to " happen to is ~5%, and you observe 30%, you know that most of the people bringing babies to the airplane are being assholes.
and there is honest disagreement here, that sort of getting shoved under the rug of "you don't know", that worth exploring. on what norms we think are good and want to have. and a lot of children-related disagreements stem from those deeper values,
You've outlined some ways that the expected norms of airplanes and restaurants are different between people who use them a lot and a little. I would say that a lot of airplane things sit at an awkward compromise between frequent fliers and once-a-year-or-less fliers*. People are stuck in close quarters such that the question of where one fist ends and another's nose begins is pretty questionable and two people can both come away with the reasonable impression that the other one was being an asshole. Among Americans (a heavily airplane-using people, globally speaking), about 90% of adults have been on an airplane, about ~40% of adults fly in a given year, and 10%** fly >5 times in a given year. I used to be really annoyed by the TSA but I've come to view the TSA as, in fact, what voters want - many people who fly rarely but ever think that flying is scary and want to feel that the government is there and making sure everything is safe. The compromise is _precheck_, which frequent fliers can use to reduce their hassle, even though it makes no sense from a "security" standpoint. They give a mandatory security demo on every flight, as opposed to having a video you can watch if you don't know how to use your seatbelt. They offer "carryons" to people in back rows who don't know that they will be forced to check their bag every time. Most airline tickets are refundable anyway, but airlines sell bullshit travel insurance and tickets marketed as refundable that cost more to people who don't know, which lets them charge a little less in other ways. These things all exist in the way that they do because some people on planes fly a lot and others only fly rarely.
* Much less true for restaurants because mostly, among restaurants of sufficiently low fanciness that children are allowed, _different restaurants_ cater to people who go out rarely vs often. Nobody is having their once a year anniversary dinner at the fourth Just Salad in the financial district.
** Profile of one frequent flier (me): I have immediate family members in three cities, most of my social circle in a fourth, and I live in a fifth. Only one pair of these cities is close enough for train or bus (which I usually take between them). I also do ~2 round trips airplane business travel and ~2 round trips fun travel per year as well. (Since I have done it lots of times, it is easier for me than flying is for others and cheaper as well because it's worthwhile for me to do points/miles stuff and my timing is more flexible than people who are traveling for holidays.) Frequenter fliers than me are people who have tons of business travel and people whose entire lifestyle is traveling all the time.
> and - and this is important point - the numbers just don't add up. people don't take babies to planes only when they really need to. if you assume rule of "only when needed", you can't say about any concrete random person they break it, but if the number of people this "really need to " happen to is ~5%, and you observe 30%, you know that most of the people bringing babies to the airplane are being assholes.
Hang on, this makes no sense mathematically. Firstly you're pulling numbers for who 'needs' to travel out of thin air, and I definitely don't hear babies crying on 30% of my flights***, but accepting that, looking at the numbers: You can observe a baby crying on an airplane from, let's say, eight rows away. That's 48 seats. Kids are annoying**** on airplanes until, let's say, they're 4 and just watch videos the whole time. There are ~12 million Americans age 3 and under (3.6%). If we were randomly picking 48 people, there is a (correct me if I'm wrong) .964^48 = 0.17 = 17% chance that none of them are babies or toddlers. So if you observe that none of 48 people on a plane are babies or toddlers 70% of the time, babies fly way less than other people*****, many of whom _already only fly when it really matters to them_.
*** I may be taking flights at times that are particularly unpopular for families? I bet Dec 23 flights are _full_ of babies.
**** Honestly, I just wear headphones, it's not a big deal.
***** The obvious explanation for this is that flying with a baby is hard and sucks way more for the parents and the baby than it does for you.
That said, when I have kids I might take them on an airplane just because I wanna go to Kyoto for no good reason. But nobody else does this, I am a flying-obsessed lunatic & all the other flying-obsessed lunatics I know besides my partner are not planning to have kids.
Even parents give crappy parenting advice, for reasons you mention: children are different, parents are different. Your 3rd footnote is about a tactic that many parents advice and that is utterly unusable with our two year old, for the reason you mention: he just names a third option. But at least the advice given by parents has a small chance of working 🤞
I'm a baby-crying-on-airplane complainer but yes I am under no delusion that you can stop the baby from crying. I've always said that as a more general "it's a dick move to bring a baby onto an airplane." Sometimes you only have dick options and should do it anyways, surely, like the grandma dying scenario. But indeed still they did a thing that is unpleasant for everyone around them.
I can absolutely remember the experience of learning cursive handwriting and wouldn't wish it on anybody. Teach kids to type and use pens/pencils to handwrite print-style text when necessary. That way, reading, typing and handwriting reinforce each other. Reading cursive can be left to grad students in history.
https://theconversation.com/teaching-cursive-handwriting-is-an-outdated-waste-of-time-35368
Totally agree, but I have also absolutely had arguments with people about why I spend significant amounts of time teaching my students to print. Some people think that learning to handwrite at all is a waste of time, these days.
That does seem to take it a bit far. Admittedly, I hardly ever print these days, but when you need to print, you really need to be able to do it.
I loved learning cursive, but I do feel like it was designed for fountain pens and making kids do it with pencils is cruel and unusual
"But I think some childfree people don’t quite realize that their preferred norms for children’s behavior amount to “children shouldn’t be allowed to leave the house at all.”"
Huh, I always assumed that "children and parents shouldn't be allowed to leave the house at all" was *exactly* what those people wanted. Your alternative explanation attributes to them a level of ignorance I assumed was impossible, but less active malice. I am not actually sure which explanation is more charitable, but certainly your tone is far kinder and more patient than mine would be. Who cares if the nice restaurant is the only one that's open or one of 100 on the same block? You were a child once, children are humans and have as much right to be in public as anyone else, fuck off.
"Children are as diverse as adults."
It's kind of funny when people ask me how I "plan" to parent my kid when they're older. I haven't _met_ my kid when they're older yet, have I? So how would I know?
Don't underestimate how little experience some people have with children. See this thread where someone ask why people just don't put their hand over a crying baby's mouth or give them a sedative and instead jiggle them, "because obviously jiggling doesn't work".
Childhood amnesia is a thing, and also actively not wanting to think about your childhood is a thing. For example I feel very little nostalgia about anything in my childhood because I didn't enjoy mine, I basically never interact with children, I pretty much just never think about them.
I'm one of these on the airplanes in particular and I will 100% cop to thinking you just shouldn't bring babies on airplanes unless you have some dire need. But "spend a couple years not flying places" is not, IMO, an unreasonable thing for most people to have to tolerate.
I used to think this, but then I remembered how common it is for Americans to live an airplane ride away from their parents.
I was surprised to have this end with a discussion about the complaints of the child-free. I've never really understood the complaints about children on airplanes, given that they are crying, I assume they're having a much, much worse time with the air pressure changes and other disturbances than I am with their crying. I had a baby cry during my wedding ceremony, but it was my niece and I was very glad to have both her and my sister at the wedding. Though I suppose I am probably not the typical childless adult, having just wrapped up reading a parenting book with my book club of other childless adults years away from parenting.
Thanks for linking the micro-school site, I was rather curious about it since Kelsey Piper was tweeting about it last week. Do the parent-teachers generally have professional/academic expertise in the subjects they instruct in?
Not generally but the children are very small. I don't know how we'll do things differently as they get older and start outpacing their adults in some subjects.
"Thirsting for knowledge" and "wants to play Minecraft all day" are not mutually exclusive. ;)
I was talking to some folks recently and one was complaining about a small child who had kicked the back of her seat repeatedly on a flight she was recently on, and how the parent should have put a stop to that. I'm not a parent, but I do feel like some (not all) kids are just...unstoppable in that scenario. An old-fashioned person like the one I was talking to would probably think you should beat the child if they won't stop otherwise, but even if I thought that was an appropriate parenting technique, these days doing it on an airplane would probably get you on a viral video and possibly worse. What is there to do but remind ourselves that we were once children and benefited from the same tolerance we should show now?
If the child is small, why isn’t it possible for the parent to physically restrain them from kicking?
Well, for one thing, they will start screaming and upset everyone in the plane (as you would if someone attempted to physically restrain your legs for two hours).
Maybe this would work with some kids and some parents but I'd find it physically challenging to restrain a toddler or small child's legs for any significant period of time.
I had a similar situation and the way I tried to go about it was say "ow!" quite loudly and comically. I tried to turn around to face the kicking kiddo, but airplane seat designs make this pretty much impossible.
The parent was apologetic and the kicking did stop - but to be fair she wasn't super young (old enough to stop when I made noises, anyway).
I think ignoring it is the strategy that's least likely to stop the kicking. You can try to entertain the child in other ways.
(Childless person that hopes parents don't find it too weird when I try to interact with the child if their child comes up to me or makes eye contact)
A thing I often observe in childless people planning for their own children and future parenting styles is that they make WAY TOO MANY assumptions about what their child will be like (this sometimes but not always survives contact with actual children). Usually they assume the child will be like they remember themselves as a child. Buddy, you cannot be making plans that specific.
>I’m all for children having separate bedrooms, but sometimes you live in the Bay Area and you couldn’t afford a bedroom for each child without crippling debt.
Simply do not have more children than you can afford to give separate bedrooms. No one would agree with the statement "I'm all for children having clothes, but sometimes you just have more kids than you can afford to buy clothes for." Privacy is a human right. Children are people. (Also freedom of association is a human right and basically the entire way the family is currently structured flagrantly violates it, but this will be the subject of a future post.)
>my child is watching a noisy YouTube video because my phone doesn’t have a headphone jack and it was this or a meltdown
Buy an adapter. They're like $10 on Amazon.
Great read. Coincidentally I have an essay coming out about bad parents and their teens, think you’ll enjoy it. Perfect timing!
The thing that is hard for me to understand re babies crying on planes is why parents don’t take obvious steps, like giving the kid a mild sedative to help them sleep through the flight or, if that’s not an option, just holding your hand over the baby’s mouth to lower the noise level. Instead parents seem to respond to crying by …jiggling the baby, which doesn’t work. Why are they not doing the obvious things?
Jiggling the baby *is* an obvious thing, though! It is actually very calming for babies under many circumstances. It is thought to, among other things, mimic the familiar, comforting movement of being in the womb while the parent is moving or walking. I don't have a primary source for this, but it's very common parenting advice you see in What To Expect, Mayo Clinic guides, etc.
Also, you can't really cover a baby's mouth without risking suffocating them, pllus it can just cause them more distress that prolongs the crying.
I can't really speak to sedatives, but I would very disinclined to put a sedative in my son's developing nervous system unless it were medically necessary.
Trying to say this as non-judgmentally as possible, the reason is that these options risk killing the baby.
I'm curious what specific mild sedatives you would advocate. The obvious candidate seems to be diphenhydramine (Benadryl). (And maaaybe dimenhydrinate (Dramamine.)) Both are first-generation antihistamines / anticholinergics. Benadryl cannot be given to children under 2, is not recommended for children under 6, and is not recommended as a sleep aid for children under 12. (In fact, the package directions of Benadryl say: "do not use to make a young child sleepy.") In some children, instead of drowsiness it can cause paradoxical agitation. It also has a lot of other potential side effects. (Essentially all of this is probably about the same for Dramamine, but I guess it's less popular as a sleep aid so there's less written about it.)
Diphenhydramine is one of the constituents of Dramamine, so all the same warnings and recommendations would apply.