[Danielle F.]

Let kids be kids, but when should parents draw the line?​

AIBU, which stands for 'Am I Being Unreasonable', is the perfect platform for sharing your thoughts and opinions! So, for today's AIBU discussion, we have this story from Reddit/Mytzu:

'Today I went on a holiday with my wife, we sat to our designated seats and in front of us there were three kids with the mother sitting on the raw parallel to them.'

'Two of the slightly older kids (10 to 12 y.o.) were well behaved, but the youngest (8-9 y.o.) was such a spoiled little monster.'

'Shouting and screaming if he would not get what he wanted, not listening to the mother to stay quiet, or in his seat for taking off, pressing on the seat in front of him with his legs, and so on.'

'I was quite irritated and appalled by such bad behaviour and just looked at my wife with my eyes in disbelief since the mother tried to keep him under control.'

'The flight took off, he got his iPad and watched cartoons, I had my headphones on and fell asleep.'

'As the plane landed quite far on the landing strip, we had quite a while to wait.'

'The kid started screaming and shouting for this and that, throwing a tantrum and I just had enough, sat up a bit, looked at him and said “Yo kid, you need to shut up.”'

'The kid stopped, said nothing and the mom said “He is just a kid,” but if you can not control your kid to the point I hear him through noise cancelling, it is a bit much.'

'In my opinion I did everyone a favour, even his siblings were tired of him, with his brother saying “I mean, he is not wrong, but not exactly right” which I found it a bit funny.'

'Also the boy that I told to shut up, sat on his seat facing me and stared at me for a while in defiance, I suppose? Doubt I created a trauma or anything.'

'In short, I told a kid to shut up on a plane after he kept shouting and his mother could not bring him under control. Am I being unreasonable?'

 

[ozieagle]

No!

Unfortunately kids, these days, are not taught discipline. You technically aren't even allowed to say NO to them.

 

[PattiB]

Eight to nine year olds should definitely know better, his behaviour is what one would expect from a 3 year old. Flying is already tedious, without badly behaved children acting out. One can tolerate babies crying and toddlers getting tetchy, but I’d have probably thrown this brat off the plane.

 

[relljube]

Perhaps a better way would be to point out to the kid that he was being totally disrespectful to his mother. That way at lease the ineffective woman may have been recruited as an ally instead of alienating her. Having said that I would also hail the cabin crew member to seek their assistance in calming this little mongrel down!

 

[PattiB]

No!

Unfortunately kids, these days, are not taught discipline. You technically aren't even allowed to say NO to them.

There are other ways of saying no, just takes a bit of thinking on the caregivers part.

 

[MariaG]

It is in the educating.
When we were in the car, anything beyond calm conversation was not accepted. We never travelled by plane, however the same rules applied to bus, train, ferry, and, also dining out.
We grew up easily accepting what is acceptable behaviour.
My family followed the same guidelines because that is what they grew up with.
I'm not sure about telling the child to shut up. Perhaps different wording, but the action was warranted.

 

[novezar]

You should have done it a lot sooner.

I've had the situation with an others uncontrollable kid, I just said in a loudish & sterned voice with a good old "Hey".

It does work, with a stunned look from the mother.

 

[Charlotte59]

I never travelled by plane with my kids however, we did take long car rides (10 hours sometimes) and i never had a problem like that. They knew from an early age how to behave. Yes, they were disciplined for misbehaving, but they learned what was socially acceptable. These days you only have to look at the kids the wrong way and they get upset. It's past time to bring back the "certain actions come with consequences". My kids never ad electronic devices to amuse themselves either, they ad portable board games. The bottom line is, kids need to be disciplined in order to learn what is acceptable and what isn't.