This week I’m “liveblogging” my trip to Ukraine. Unlike traditional reports, these posts will be shorter and more frequent.
We’ve seen flight attendants take publicity shots inside overhead bins, but I’m surprised more parents have not tried what I just saw: placing their young child in an overhead bin so the toddler could sleep.
Reckless? Mother Places Three-Year-Old Toddler In Overhead Bin
The Ukraine – Poland border is approaching. People are tired. There are many young children onboard this bus, most of whom have behaved very well thus far. But as the afternoon gives way to night, these children want to sleep and the tiny bus seats onboard this coach are hardly conducive to that goal.
So one mother just took her three-year-old daughter and set her in an overhead bin. Obviously, this is not allowed on flights…or busses either…but the girl is now fast asleep. Rather than just leave her unattended, her mother is standing up in front of the overhead bin, ready to catch her if we hit an unforeseen pothole on the road.
This has been going on for 45 minutes…that’s dedication.
Somehow, this all seems so fitting onboard a 15-hour bus ride in which several seats are broken (the seat next to me cannot stay in an upright position) and the weather outside is foul.
I’m not condoning such behavior (I would not put my own daughter up there), but I’m also more amused than horrified. It is a risk, but it’s not such an obscene risk that I condemn the mother. Try taking your three-year-old on a 15-hour bus trip when she is tired and get back to us.
But maybe I’m wrong. I’m a big proponent of lap infants versus buying separate seats for those under two, which I know has earned me reader rebuke during travels with my family.
What do you make of this incident here? Big deal or no big deal?
Well at least she can hold it for 5 hours. I’ll give her that.
My momma did something similar back when I was four or five when we were moving from New Orleans to Chicago. We were not making ends meet but because my momma got a job up in Chicago there but my seat on the Greyhound bus on the leg from Nashville to Chicago was missing the seat part to sit on. She would make my siblings and I shuffle seats but when that got tiring, she did the same thing here in putting me in the overhead bin to take a nap while she stood there for an hour to prevent me from falling out.
Point is, I agree that I understand that it may be dangerous, but I don’t blame the mother trying to let their child rest in some way.
By Boomer and Gen X standards, no big deal at all.
One of my ex-girlfriends back in the 1970’s used to go to a casino on Fremont Blvd in Vegas where you could drive up to a slot machine and play slots in front of your car while the kids slept inside AND get drinks brought to you by the cocktail waitress. Convenience! At least it was outside to handle the smoking issue.
Vegas is one of those places where I think smoking is always going to remain legal indoors. Smoking and gambling just go hand and hand.
At least there was no smoking on the bus!
I believe 1 casino tried to go no-smoking and it didn’t work out. I suspect that smokers are the type who are addiction/impulse prone and generate the most gambling revenue and they’d be correct at least in my case. I hate smoking and would carefully set limits on my losses, maximize comps, and utilize every coupon. The few times I went to Vegas, I spent little aside from the shows.
I’m still tripping that the Vegas casino would bring “drinks” to you in front of your car!!! Drinking and driving wasn’t such a big deal in the 70’s.
This will be a ride you never forget.
If she’s standing there to catch her, is that all that different from kids sleeping on the floor in between the seats on planes on longhaul flights, back in the day?
Back in the day? I did this a couple years ago!
When I was a kid in the 80s I remember FAs setting up blankets on the floor for me in front of the exit door at a bulkhead. Happened several times on the way to Tel Aviv.
Sometimes when flying coach I wish I could climb up there and go to sleep just to stretch out. On an airplane of course.
I once crossed Turkey (Ankara-Tabriz, Iran) in the luggage rack of a train. Of course I was 22 at the time, but it was only a weekly trip on the Luxembourg-Kathmandu route and I wasn’t going to wait for the next one. It actually was fairly comfortable too and the conductor had a good laugh when my hand came down with the ticket.
As a college student I used to travel Amtrak coach from Miami to Boston, usually a 24+ hour journey. The coach seats didn’t recline enough to sleep, and there was plenty of floor space between seats, so I used to put a throwaway old blanket on the floor in front of the seats and lie down there. I was actually able to get some sleep!
Before I read your article I was incensed. Then, I was filled with compassion for that Mother and her child. In an Already horrible situation, when so much has been stripped away and so much death and destruction witnessed, her actions are obviously only done with Love.
War or not this is just plain wrong! What if the driver swerved? The mother would have been jerked to one side and the toddler thrown right out of the bin!
What if the driver had to slam on the breaks? The child’s head may slam into the bulkhead ahead breaking its neck or damage to the skull or brain!
War or not this is just plain wrong!
In the 1970s, Mexican teenagers would travel in the luggage compartments of trains between Nogales and Guadalajara,Mexico. I handed my bag to such a kid, and he placed it in the pile of luggage he had neatly arranged. Nothing was missing, when I got the bag in Guaymas.
Big deal. If they hit a turbulence both the standing mother and the unsecured child could be hurt (read the recent event on a LH AUS-FRA over TN which forced an emergency landing in AID).
I agree! But they were in a bus not a plane.. ?
As a child in the 70s i rode and slept in the back window deck of a 69 Buick cross country several times. Slept on the floor of amtrack from Dallas to stl so I see nothing wrong with this at all.