As a traveling parent, assumptions are made about my child before she even enters a room and how we will respond. Eyes turn towards families then roll with disgust as a child sits down at a lounge or in a first class seat. When years of patience, training, and preening come together, it is the proudest moment for a parent.
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We Take Our Daughter Everywhere
On all but one trip, the Freddy Awards in 2016, we have taken Lucy with us. It started when she was just eight weeks old on a trip to Curaçao and has extended to more than 27 countries, many of which we have visited several times.
If we go, she goes.
Our Travel Puts Her In Adult Situations
As a result of our travel habits, Lucy might find herself at a plated dinner in the Cathay Pacific First Class lounge in Hong Kong or sitting through a conversation that bores her senseless with hotel management as we return to favorite properties and make new friends. She loves sitting in “the bed” seats from business class, after all, she has to fly in the same cabin as her parents.
She is spoiled. She travels better than we did until we were in our 30s. She has no idea the kind of hell we put ourselves through to save $10 when we were younger. All the same, where much is given, much is required.
Quiet Section of the Lounge
While The Club at Pittsburgh International Airport is expanding soon, for now, the lounge can be very full. On a recent visit with my wife and daughter, we were permitted entry but it was so full that the only seating left for three was in the dark-lit business center among a dozen other professionals all working away.
The nervous parent in me emerged as we carved out space for us and I took her by the hand to the buffet to get some food. My little angel grabbed broccoli and olives (I should take some cues from her) and we walked back to the seat hand-in-hand discussing that we needed to be quiet back at our seats.
For an hour, she dipped broccoli florets in ranch and the only sound she made was biting into a crisp stalk. Others in the lounge took phone calls from the desk while they worked – as they well should. It’s a lounge, not a library.
Still, my parental pride brimmed and overflowed. Her behavior in travel situations is the result of hard work, lots of preparation and resisting the urge to slap those other passengers that roll their eyes before my daughter has done so much as entered the room.
You can postulate that my not-so-humble bragging is through my rose-colored glasses; you can assume my evaluation is overstated. But you would be wrong.
To my fellow parent travelers that are nervous about taking their kids into lounges or premium cabins: it’s your duty to raise them in a manner for which they know how to respond in that environment. And to my fellow loungers, don’t assume that kids will make a mess or ruin your business call – they may delightfully surprise you.
What do you think? It’s easy to find examples of kids misbehaving in lounges but have you found some that have been excellent? Is bad behavior the responsibility of the kids or the parents?
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Kudos to you for teaching your child the acceptable behaviors required for different situations. Unfortunely, most of us travelers have experienced parents who think their child should be allowed to behave as if every place is their personal playground, not only in the lounges, but on the plane in the aisles – and I’ve seen this in high end restaurants. For every parent who does it your way, there are 5 who think their darlings should rein free without consideration of those around them.
Too true, on our ICN-DPS flight a kid was running through the cabin with reckless abandon. Parents and staff unfazed, I was horrified.
I guess that’s the problem. How do explain to people that you’re the exception? Normally, I’m vehemently against small children being in lounges or premium cabins, since so many are given free reign to run, scream, and act like they’re in a playground. Obviously, the kids are not at fault themselves, but what to do? When my wife and I flew Korean to Atlanta from Seoul, there was a woman in business class who expected the FA’s to coddle her often screeching infant while ignoring her child herself. The FA’s did so, other passengers, including ourselves, were aghast. What reasonable course of action would you suggest to prevent this?
You don’t explain that you’re the exception, you assume nothing will be wrong until it is. You have to assume the best every time and be disappointed when the situation is disappointing. We were on a seven-hour flight from ICN-DPS and one family had a child they let run through the cabin mindlessly, as a passenger, I am annoyed – as a parent, I am furious. It makes me, and every other parent look bad while my kid sits at her seat choosing dinner from the menu while ‘diablito’ slaps armrests and screams through the aisles. How do those people take their kids anywhere?
That’s an awful lot of disappointment to take.
Like your family, we have an only child and started traveling by air with him at 12 weeks old.
My bragging moment was the trip where our son situated himself into his window seat while I went back a few rows to speak to my husband. When I came back, he was sipping a club soda, reading the safety card with his seat belt on. I think he was around six years old.
As a parent of an only child that is mature and a rule follower, it’s been very easy to travel. There is a big difference in multi-children families when a child’s unique personality often steamrolls the best of parental teachings.
I would have been moved to tears if I came back to find Lucy buckled in reading the safety card with a club soda but then again, that’s what we have instilled and she is a great kid. Sounds like yours is too.
I stopped reading when I read that you left your 12 week old alone while he was drinking a club soda.
@Mitch, I stopped reading when I read you let your 12 week old drink beer.
Here is what I think: She is going to be a model later in life. Runway girl ahead!
Was at the club lounge at the Hyatt Regency in Vancouver this morning. There was a kid (4-5 years old) who overall was well behaved. However, twice when his father’s back was turned, he reached up and touched several food items without taking them. So as far as his father knows, he was perfectly behaved. Some of us know otherwise.
Look, children are not people. They should not be allowed in any place where people are. I was never a child when I was young, thank goodness.
People have such a distaste for children, it’s a good thing “their” parents did not share the same distaste. As a parent of 3 little ones, sometimes they are good and sometimes they are not, that is life, they are children.
People who have not had children have little tolerance for them. People who have are more understanding. My thinking certainly changed after I had kids.
My view is also that families are just as entitled to fly business class and go to lounges as anyone else. I’ve also known expat families where the kids became accustomed to flying long-haul from a very early age, primarily in business, and they do fine.
As to spoiling them, my kids seem to think that you can only fly up front if you use these things called “miles” or have status and things called “certificates”. It is not for rich people, it is for smart people who get it for free. And one of my older children, who traveled in international business class a number of times before going off to college, is happy to fly international coach – unless, she said, she is traveling with me. This is also the one that picked up all the tricks about airlines and miles from when she was traveling with her parents.
That’s great that your daughter is so well behaved. As a parent of two very different kids my suspicion is that is mostly because of who she is not so much because of any of your “training”. Our first born is the same as her- calm, cool, collected, prett6 much from a very young age. The second one, not so much. Even at almost 8 still a handful in many situations, even with a ton of interventions and therapies. My non-scientific guess is that 85% of their personality is there from birth.
I think dogs are causing more problems in Lounges and planes than babies lately!! It seems everyone needs a large dog with them to travel anymore,,,NUTS