‘Parents let their toddler run wild on our flight… I’ve never seen anything like it’

“The kid was standing on the tray table and JUMPING UP AND DOWN,” the shocked airline passenger shared in a viral video.

I’ve got three kids and our extended family lives in Canada, so we’ve done a lot of flying with children.

In 12 years I thought we’d seen it all.

Like the time one of the kids screamed for what seemed like the whole 15 hours. Or the time I thought it would be a good idea to walk my then-toddler up and down the aisle, not foreseeing that he would want to stop and try to rifle through people's bags on the floor and I’d have to wrestle him away at every single row.

And then there was the time our then-eight-year-old got motion sickness for hours and vomited, holding the barf bag in one hand, playing video games on the screen with his other hand.

But then I saw footage of a toddler jumping up and down on a tray table on a flight and I realised that my three wild boys are actually quite tame.

The short video was uploaded to the subreddit, “Public Freakout”, and showed a child standing on the tray table of the seat in front. The long-suffering man in front sat in his seat looking straight ahead as though his seat-back wasn't being violently jerked back and forth.

Want to join the family? Sign up to our Kidspot newsletter for more stories like this.

The toddler was jumping on the tray table. Photo: Reddit

Toddler goes wild on flight

At first, the child was bracing himself, holding the headrest and jumping as hard as he could, like he was trying to break the tray table.

It must be made of sturdy stuff because the table arms didn't even bend.

Then the child turned around and faced his seat, looking like he was going to leap off before the clip ended.

Apparently this wasn’t just a one-off behaviour, and the kid didn’t sit down in his seat and watch a screen after getting his jumps out.

According to the person who filmed the child, the behaviour went on for the whole eight-hour flight.

RELATED: Baby overheated on flight, rushed to hospital

RELATED: The real reason flight attendants sit on their hands

RELATED: Flight attendant gave birth to baby in toilet

This is the kind of video where you go straight to the comments section, and these comments didn’t disappoint.

“I would feel like a failed parent if my kids were doing this and I was just straight up allowing it,” one person said.

“This is how kids are at that age, but this is not how parents should be when their kids are like this,” said another person.

“No, people just don’t want to be bothered by their own children. So they ignore what they are doing to others,” was a third person’s reply.

Some people were shocked that the man could just sit through the disturbance.

“How that man remained calm is anyone’s guess,” one person said.

Originally published as ‘Parents let their toddler run wild on our flight… I’ve never seen anything like it’