Welcome to the no-so-friendly skies. Here is an astonishing story about kids and their moms getting kicked off the plane for being unruly.
Two-year-old autistic toddler Jarret Farrell wasn't a happy traveler - and nothing his mom tried to calm him down worked. And what did the airline do? They kicked them both off the plane!
"[The flight attendant] kept coming over and tugging his seatbelt to make it tighter, 'This has to stay tight.' And then he was wiggling around and trying to get out of his seatbelt. And she kept coming over and reprimanding him and yelling at him" Farrell told ABC News' Raleigh-Durham affiliate WTVD.
Farrell said that a pilot came into to the cabin and told Jarret, "You have to get in your seat, young man." Farrell said she started crying then, which just exacerbated Jarret's behavior. "He just melted down. He saw me getting upset. He was upset. He was on the floor rolling around," Farrell told WTVD.
That's when the pilot turned the plane around and headed back to the terminal, where Farrell and her son were escorted off the plane.
Link (with video)
If they'd been more patient and understanding? Sheesh, it's not YOUR plane, it's a plane with like hundreds of people who need to get somewhere on time. If you have an autistic kid, then it's your responsibility to prepare the flight attendants, to prepare the pilot, to get a seat that's as far away from people as possible, and to NOT CRY if you know it's going to set your kid off.
Would you be saying the same thing if the kid didn't have some overdiagnosed, pop-psychology disorder? Let's say the kid had just been an ass, just like many other kids that age. It doesn't matter if the kid or his mom have a convenient excuse for his behavior, they still broke the rules. If she can't control him in public places, he needs to be restricted to private transportation.
The child's reactions to his environment were a clear sign that he was uncomfortable, upset and possibly frightened. Had the pilot taken continued with the flight, the situation could have degraded to the point where the child had a complete melt-down and injured himself or someone else.
The pilot has a schedule to keep. The mother and child can take another flight after the child has calmed himself.
Either way, I support giving screaming children the boot from airplanes.
There seems to be a basic lack of understanding from the critics in this thread. Previously on Neatorama -
http://www.neatorama.com/2008/03/02/in-my-language-the-video-that-made-scientists-rethink-what-they-think-they-know-about-autism/#comments
By that logic we should be giving drivers licenses to the blind. After all it isn't their fault, and they have to get around too.
I have a wife that gets anxiety attacks. I have to call the airline to work with them on seating arrangements and special requests. If my wife wigs out, then we miss the flight. Folks need to think about the other 100 people on the flight that mind the rules.
The only amazing thing is that the airline did the right thing.
Yeah, the kid's autistic. That means he *can't* *do* *something* *things* that normal people can do. One of them is obviously ride on an airline.
The woman should be charged with endangering the kid's welfare, the kid put in a home than can handle his needs, and the woman put in prison.
"Autism spectrum" is the new ADD. It's an excuse for parents who don't feel like taking responsibility for raising their children properly to blame everyone else for not treating their precious snowflake like a prince or princess. Adults who don't feel like conforming to social norms can self-diagnose themselves with Aspergers and *poof* they have a free license to stay at home and play video games or become bloggers.
If they had been allowed to stay on the plane, some other passenger might have lost it after being forced to listen to a screaming child for hours in an enclosed space. And that might not have ended well. Heck, if I'd been on that plane, I probably would have had a panic attack and begged to be let off. I can't stand listening to other people's children screaming.
With so many autism diagnoses these days, maybe they should just make "autism only" flights. Then they could take their trip and save the eardrums of the general public.
Autism is on the rise and we're discovering that many schools and even many doctors are ill-prepared to deal with it. I can't imagine that flight attendants are receiving any more training themselves.
With 1 out of 122 kids born every day being diagnosed with some form of autism, service industries are going to need to become informed and learn how to deal with these situations. That's just a fact of life.
Another fact of life is that the mother should have been better prepared for this. It would have been very easy for her to let her pediatrician know they were going to be flying soon and get some meds just for that occasion. Some parents don't like that, of course, but it's the reality of living with autism.
As for the “overdiagnosed, pop-psychology disorder” post....I really hope you're just confused and not typing with your head up your butt.
You need to read something other than Kanner (or do you still think autism is caused by "refrigerator mothers"?).
Why take off with a situation that's already well out of hand?
Good call for the airline.
I can't help but think that this problem could have been prevented had the parents put their child in a FAA-approved 5-point harness car seat, one with which the child was already accustomed, and one that is harder to wriggle out of.
*Based on my reading, the FAA opted against making this a mandatory measure .. some poppycock about it being a deterrent against flying and an incentive to drive, which is more dangerous.
She should be put in prison? Really?
I went to school with a kid that had no concept of social interaction, didn't use contractions, and often verbalized (correctly, I might add) his punctuation. You would ask him what's up, and he'd look up, as if there were something there. Every. Time.
People made fun of him all the time, but I actually hung out with him. He was brilliant. He was learning his 4th language in the 9th grade. Mandarin. He often asked what I thought about string theory and various other highly speculative fields of physics. I learned a lot from him, and I'm glad to have called him a friend. Sadly, he had no concept of friendship, and I was just Matthews comma Thomas to him.
I've seen an autistic child just "lose it." It is a very dangerous situation because the child will just throw themselves and have a tantrum to the point that they WILL injure themselves. And they will not stop until the situation is changed. There is no way that flight would have worked out if the child was doing that at the beginning of that flight.
Also, as any other passenger on that plane, I would have probably requested they turn around anyway. The airline maed the right decision. The mother will need to learn that "special needs" children have ... special needs.
Yes, there are real cases of autism out there. Just like there really are people out there with ADHD. But, if you were to take in all these media reports of parents screaming about unjust treatment of their "autistic" child, and the utter stupidity of the idea that one out of every hundred-twenty-two children are suffering from it, you'd have to assume there's something in our nations supply of air.
This boy was a possible danger on the plane and the crew and pilot did the responsible thing of having him removed. If the boy can't take being on a plane for whatever reason he certainly shouldn't be forced to endure what was apparently causing him great distress. If the pilot had to tell him that he had to be in his seat that means he WASN'T IN HIS SEAT! The plane can't take off unless all passengers are in their seats, with their belts on! IT'S A SAFETY STANDARD!
Had the plane taken off while the boy wasn't seated he could have been seriously hurt. If a minor accident had occurred and he hadn't been belted into his seat, a big scare and a little bump would have turned into a potentially life-threatening injury. And who would Mom have blamed? Certainly not herself. Not her fault for bringing a child onto a plane who maybe shouldn't be there. Not her fault she felt he should be free-range on a plane and was hurt as a result of disobeying safety instructions. Odds are on Mom would hire a lawyer and sue those nasty plane people for allowing her son to get hurt, or worse - killed. A few million will replace an autistic boy nicely won't it Mom?
Mom had no right to expect a few hundred-thousand people to be delayed while her son "adjusted" to his surroundings. It's not just one flight that gets delayed, it's every flight that plane makes for the day. All those people with connections would miss flights, or those flights are held up to allow them to catch it but then they're delayed and behind schedule for the day, etc., etc., etc. Do you see the picture? Do you want to be held up and possibly miss a flight because some kid wasn't ready for a plane?
I know we love to hate the air industry nowadays. It's fun to bitch and rant and rave about the lack of common sense and intelligence displayed by the industry. But not every Mom and kid kicked off the flight are poor innocents at the hands of cruel child-eating monsters. Some of the kids just have really ignorant mothers who don't care about their safety.
It is clear that you have no clue what Autism even IS. If you insist on having an opinion about how to raise a child with Autism the least you can do is educate yourself.
Sometimes, there just really is nothing you can do about an autistic child having a tantrum. There are times when they will be happy and fine doing something 99% of the time and then just one time, they will go berserk and scream bloody murder. It can be entirely unprovoked and unpredictable. Autism is also a spectrum disorder. One kid with autism may never tantrum, while another tantrums 10 times an hour.
Can they be dangerous? Yes, I have the scars to prove it. But our program still took over 2 dozen severely autistic kids out in the community nearly everyday. We've had violent outbursts in malls, parks, carnivals etc. Do you want to know how many times a bystander ever got hurt in my entire 6 years? Zero, never. Because we were trained to deal with them given any circumstance.
I myself, took a child on a plane to Disneyland as he was invited by Dreams Take Flight (program that takes disadvantaged kids to Disneyland for a day). He was fine on the flight there, but the flight back, he got out of his seatbelt, screamed, bit me etc. I used my training and dealt with him the best I could. You know what the flight attendant told me that day? She said "Thank you for doing what you do and being so brave. You're doing a wonderful job". That is an attitude people can choose to take.
On the other hand, I've been with an autistic girl who had a meltdown at a park, and a woman once told me "That child should not be allowed in public ever!". The girl had harmed noone. Just caused a scene. I wanted to punch the woman in the face. Because where does it end? These kids, who already have challenging lives in every aspect, need to be kept in cages? Would that work for the public? Would you be more comfortable never being exposed to the "non-normal" aspect of our species?
They wouldn't be ANY safer in a padded room than out in public, and they really do enjoy being out in the community, believe me. Humanity includes ALL of us, even ones with broken minds that weren't born "normal". And they have every right to have an opportunity to do things everybody else does and we, who have been gifted with the ability to help them and handle them, WE should accommadate THEM, and not the other way around.
Those that parent or work with these kids, are trained to deal with them. Perhaps this woman had no idea what she was doing, which I hardly believe seeing as it was his mom. But I guarantee, in the end, this child would have done nothing to endanger this flight. He would have just been an annoyance. I've sat beside really fat people on flights, that's annoying too. I've sat beside drunk people. That's annoying. I've sat beside smelly people. That's annoying. You know what I do? I deal with it, because it just so happens that humans are not all just cookie cutter copies of perfection.
This is not an issue about equality for all. Perhaps you understand what autistic children are and are not capable of on an individual basis because you have worked with them. But do you understand that the FAA has set down mandatory regulations regarding flight safety? A plane may not take off with passengers unbuckled and out of their seat.
IT IS A SAFETY RISK TO THE PERSON NOT WEARING A SEAT BELT DURING TAKE-OFF!
I've flown a lot, and my husband flies even more than I do (two to three times a week sometimes) and there are reasons for these requirements. How was that mother going to handle a frantic son during take-off? What if he had gotten out of his belt again in the middle of take-off and went tumbling down the aisle where he broke a bone or two or ended up concussed? This wasn't about inconvenience to other passengers with his tantrum, it was about his safety.
Equality means nothing if the person being made "equal" is thrust into a position that is potentially dangerous. The stewardess and the pilot did not tell the mother of the child to put her son into a cage in the basement and never let him see light of day again. They informed her he needed to stay in his seat with the belt on because compromising his safety was preventing the take off of the plane.
But big pharma and its pocket $$ protection agency screw us all.
And so alcohol and coffee remain the tolerated social drugs of choice, because America is ruled by tyrannical sexual dinosaurs.
In this instance it's not the kids fault; it's the Mom's fault. She needs to learn how in the hell to take care of kids with special needs. This sounds like a weepy, bitter Mom who wants to play the victim. Woman up and take care of your kid! You're a discredit to your gender and Moms everywhere!
They did have an alternative. I know this because I have been in the EXACT same situation on a plane, like I said. With an autistic child who was much older than 2. They did not yell at him, they did not tug on his seatbelt, I told them to give him space. They respected me, asked me what I needed if anything, moved us to a seat in the back corner of the plane. Case in point, they HELPED. It's a choice they made. The crew of this flight made the safe and right decisions, sure. But they could have HELPED and they chose not to.
And nobody can tell me that just because someone has autism, they don't have the right to a free pass like that. Because they do. They deserve more, because they've had more taken away from them by no choice of their own OR their parents in most cases.
The disorder is unpredictable. There's no telling whether he WOULD be ok on the plane or not. Like the article said, he was fine on another flight. So ya, let's say the possibility of his maladaptive behaviours exist so she should find another way to travel. The possibility of his maladaptive behaviours showing up given ANY mode of travel exists. So then what? Well, maybe these kids shouldn't travel at all. Heck, there's even a possible danger if this kid is in a house, better confine him to a room. But all that space, those windows in that room, dangerous...better keep him in a cage. I know I'm exaggerating, but it's where that road of thinking leads.
I mean, we don't really need to build ramps for parapalegics, why bother spending the money? They should just learn to accept that they shouldn't have access to any place above ground level. That sound ok to you guys too?
I am not denying that the flight crew did any wrong by following regulations. But a little patience and understanding is not a lot to ask for from a group of individuals with fully healthy minds.
Flying is miserable as it is in this day and age. I don't think a flying tube full of people need to suffer delays, defying safety regulations, and a child's caterwauling tantrum whether he is autistic or not. If that mother had even an ounce of class, she would have taken herself and the kid off the flight without being asked. Autism is unpredictable, right? Well, she should not have counted on every flight going as well as his first, and now that she has this knowledge, she might want to look for other methods of transport, for her own sanity and everyone else's. We live in a society that caters to everyone that cries discrimination whether that cry is justified or not. Understanding is fine, but there are limits to that. Sorry the kid has autism. Sorry you have to deal with it as a parent. Ultimately, though, it's not my problem or anyone else's. This situation went beyond the limits of patience and understanding.
Safety regulations are applicable to all passengers, autism notwithstanding. Presumably, this mother doesn't let her child cross the street against a red light "because he's autisitic".
She and her son were dealt a bad hand and they'll have to adapt to it and not expect the rest of the world to adapt to them. I'm sure the child could be mildly sedated for future flights, and if not, I guess they can't fly. There are other ways to get around.
It's rare that an airline does anything with which I agree but on this occasion, the pilot did the right thing.
This is the standard argument/dilemma for a lot of disabilities, mental disorder, racism, sexism, poverty and other discrimination issues, i.e. The world owes them so they have more special rights.
And such way of thinking is resulted from believing in free will, as they believe that their choices were limited by their disabilities.
However, from the point of view of determinism, I would say, just live with what you have, and stop crying about how much you would have if you were normal.
It's just like those ahole parents who don't leave a restaurant or theatre when their kid is screaming. Control your kid or keep them at home.
It is possible that the employees on that flight may need some kind of sensitivity training, but it is not the responsibility of the airlines to make sure their employees are able to deal with every type of disorder known to man. Every autistic kid is different. What may be soothing to one could set another one off.
Did she talk to anyone before the flight to let them know of any special needs? Did she tell them he will be more comfortable if his belt is a little loose? This type of interaction could have prevented the whole situation.
Okay, so why did the stewardess and the pilot had to be the one to point out the boy was incorrectly seated? The problem here isn't that the boy was having a meltdown due to autism - it's that the mother wasn't taking the necessary steps to correct the situation of her son putting himself a potentially dangerous situation.
@ Greg
Talk about being over dramatic....
No one has seriously suggested the mother never take her child outside. Nor has anyone blamed the boy for having an uncontrollable reaction. People here have expressed anger and disgust that the mother refused to follow safety protocol for her son.
No, a plane cannot wait indefinitely for someone before it takes off. I would suggest finding someone who flies a lot, or works in the industry to discover why that is not a possibility.
You assumed the mother drugged her child, but read the article and watch the video - as over dramatic as she is being, and the fact that she completely refuses to acknowledge she was allowing her son to be in a dangerous position, don't you think she would have mentioned that fact in an interview? It would have been another pity point for her.
I think you need to carefully reread the reactions of the people on here before throwing a hysterical fit. No one suggested the kid is locked away for life, no one suggested he less of a person than a "normal" person - but people are demanding that he follow the rules designed to protect him and safeguard him against accident.
I'm not being overly dramatic, I've run into this mentality in public when working with kids with disabilities and people here claiming she should just "control" her kid in the same fashion parents control normal kids, which isn't the correct protocol at all. It sounds like the airline crew got into the kids face, overloading his senses even more. We as a society are judged by how we treat our less capable. I agree safety measures need to be followed, but it just sounds like the airline staff was incompetent and not trained to deal with this situation.
Why was it that the staff of the flight had to be the one to attempt to get the boy in a SAFE position so the plane could take off? From that article the mother was not interested in doing anything to protect her child's safety. Yes, it's sad the boy has autism. But there is a reason that the FAA requires all passengers to be belted into their seats at the time of take-off, and it is even sadder the mother thought her child should be exempt from safety regulations just because he has autism. Not only that, the mother thought thousands of people should be held up, or their plans hurt, because her boy was, at the time, unable to sit with his seat belt on.
What if there was a doctor carrying an organ for transplant and he was depending on that flight making it's connection to save someone else's life? What if there a man who had learned his father was dying within the day and he was desperate to see him before that happened but by the flight arriving late would have missed that opportunity? How about a family who had saved and pinched pennies just for a chance to see their family? What about a service member who was returning from Iraq and had not yet seen his newborn child?
So, because one child is at the moment unable to follow FAA regulations regarding safety, all these other people should suffer?
All I'm hearing is, "but he has autism, so no one else is as important or special as he is and he most certainly is exempt from safety regulations."
1. The staff should have handled this better(as should have the mother).
2. People on this board(Bean in particular) seem to have a callous view on autism, saying its a "pop-culture diagnosis" when it reality, its a really disabling disorder.
Yes, ultimately, the kid should have been removed off the plane, but they should have been moved to a later flight after the child had calmed down.
I don't disagree that air travel isn't for everyone. I absolutely would not ever put my son on a plane. Ever. For any reason imaginable.
But, people, seriously, have some empathy. My son has melted down in grocery stores and parks and at school, and I am so saddened by the people who treat us like we are freaks. He and I both try our hardest to get through each day. Minute by minute.
But through it all, I have discovered that "normal" people mostly suck. Just as my son cannot always control his reactions, the same can be said for most normal folks. At least my son has a neurological disorder to explain his behavior.
Grow up, people.
The mother of the Autistic child should have medicated her child. Making him more comfortable. But the flight attendent should keep her hands to herself.
so there is two points against disibility act:
1.Blaming actions which are not due to disablement on disibility
and
2.Not allowing travel due to disablement
If that mam sues which i would advise her too she will get that airline closed down more than likely!