Your Kids Don’t Want to Holiday With You

Oh man, I thought when I saw the title to this article — “My
Interminable Flight with a Crying Child” — yet another uptight non-parent complaining about the indignities of being subjected to strangers’ children in
public places. But it turns out that Chuck Cohen has some decent points–and he’s a
parent himself.

I still maintain that I have little sympathy for Cohen’s complete intolerance for crying children on his plane (“Why should kids under the age of 2 fly free
on aeroplanes? And if they do, shouldn’t we institute a decibel charge?”), since I happen to be of the school that believes going out in public means encountering small humans — and sometimes, they’re going to cry.

But Cohen may be on to something when he argues that toddlers
cry on airplanes (and in the theatre) for a reason: they don’t want to go to London, or sit still in a dark theatre for two hours. They’d much rather play on the swing set in the backyard. 

Still, Cohen’s insistence that kids — and the vacationing
public — will be happier if they are left at home may be logical, but it’s not necessarily practical. Are parents supposed to give up vacationing all together until their
children develop a sophisticated interest in London theatre and the Eiffel Tower? And what about the plane flights that are to Grandma and Grandpa's house?

Photo: Mom's Buzz