Crying Child
Previous StoryNext StoryNothing is worse than being stuck in an airplane with a screaming child. “That mother needs the kid under control,” he said loud enough for the young mother to hear the comment.
The little girl making all the noise was about 18 months old, and no amount of consoling from her frazzled mother would soothe her.
I was flying home from a conference in Atlanta and felt sorry for the young woman trying to get her child to stop crying. But, unfortunately, acquiring “Mom” doesn’t mean you always know what to do. It’s too bad babies don’t come with a manual. Sometimes it is just hard to pinpoint exactly why they are crying.
I don’t think the child was throwing a tantrum in this case. There were three other children on the plane crying at the same time. When the plane began to take off, they screamed uncontrollably, then settled down for a while. When the aircraft began to land a couple of hours later, those three children began to cry again.
A pediatrician I spoke with said the children were probably experiencing a lot of pain in their ears. “When the child has a cold or is congested, he said, the fluid in the middle ear tube (the Eustachian tube) that leads to the back of the nose and upper throat doesn’t work or ventilate. It becomes blocked, and the pressure causes the child to feel pain.” It’s called barotrauma.
It happens to the ear when there is a change in altitude (air) when climbing in a plane during takeoff or descending for landing.
It can also occur when driving in the mountains, or caused by water pressure when scuba diving.
The parents can help by giving the child a decongestant before they travel,” the doctor explained. But if the parent doesn’t do that, the next best thing is to provide a pacifier or bottle when the plane begins to take off and when it lands. In the case of the older child giving him a piece of gum would help to equalize the pressure.”
Planes are pressurized, and the airline stewardess told me she noticed that this often affects children, especially when landing. Unfortunately, the man’s comment only made the mother feel worse. The noise was very irritating for him and the other passengers, but she was doing her best.
Sometimes it is easy to criticize people from a distance. However, his comment directed at the young mother made me think of how women spend most of their lives feeling guilty for what they did or did not do for their children.
When our children were little, I didn’t know what to do. They would cry or fight with one another or refuse to eat their meals, and I wished there was someone to call. As a young mother with four children 18 months apart, one of my goals was to one day invent a hotline for other young mothers.
I could imagine this red button on my phone. When I didn’t know what to do, I would press the button and say HELP! Then someone who had already been there would patiently tell me what to do. Of course, I didn’t exactly do that, but becoming a grandmother has been a pretty close counterpart to that hotline.
Author for Morningcoffeebeans.com