An airport is not a creche – don’t expect strangers to control your kids

The school holidays are over. It’s safe to go back to the airport.

If you’ve got an aversion to children playing tag through your legs as you’re lining up to board, or having your pathway to the cafe blocked by a screaming two-year-old rolling on the floor, it’s probably best to avoid holiday travel when the number of undisciplined children running around airports naturally peaks.

Some parents treat the airport like one giant unpaid creche.Credit: iStock

And it’s no time to be grumpy and judgmental.

Most parents do their best and don’t take their eyes off their high-spirited children for an instant. These are the ones who look panicked and mortified when their toddler stands in the middle of the departure hall throwing a titanium-strength tantrum.

Toddlers are going to toddle chaotically, no matter how much their parents try to corral them.

Babies will cry, whether they’re in the line for immigration or in the front row of business class. It’s their method of communication. Sometimes you need to let them vocally express themselves, or they become even more wound up.

Looking daggers at the parents from across the aisle doesn’t help you or them.

Making it more complicated, parents now also get flack for using old-fashioned child calming methods such as sedating antihistamines, or using reins, which were a safety measure of the past. Both are frowned upon today.

Apparently reins stifle the child’s natural urge to explore, which to my mind is exactly why you use them, when it’s likely they’re going to explore that four-wheel drive hurtling down the street towards them.

Worse for parents, airline schedules and immigration counters generally don’t run their operations around an individual baby’s body clock. So, even the best organised parents can have their well-laid plans undone by flight delays.

Do you think parents love taking their holidays when every other family does?

You’d have to have a heart of stone not to feel sympathy for harassed parents dealing with the usual aggravations of travel while having to be nurse, food provider, psychologist and entertainment director at the same time.

With a rampaging toddler, the parent is sometimes right behind them with all the luggage, too slow to catch their mini-sprinters.

There are those parents, however, for whom the airport is one giant unpaid creche. The kids run free while their parents head for a bar or cafe, assuming someone else will look after their progeny if the little darlings get into trouble, which they probably will.

While I find this kind of arrogance astounding, they’re not wrong. Other parents are alert to free-range kids and potential accidents, even if they’re not their own children.

I’m always stressed when I see children doing something dangerous, such as fooling around on escalators, or if they threaten the safety of someone else, such as pushing a frail traveller.

If their parents are truly missing in action, and the kids are heading for an accident, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a stranger stepping in to avert disaster. Polite people hesitate because they worry it’s not their business, or that it might be seen as a comment on another person’s parenting.

Strangers can be good circuit-breakers when a child is out of control. Rather than glaring, it’s helpful if you join in with some distracting manoeuvres when a baby is crying inconsolably on a plane.

What’s really irritating, though, is the umbrage some neglectful parents show when a fellow traveller stops their child from doing something reckless, such as jumping on the baggage conveyor at self-check-in.

“How dare you discipline my child!” the parent’s expression says it all. Perhaps they’re embarrassed. Perhaps they don’t like being called out on their parenting. Usually, their first response is to berate the child.

How is it the child’s fault? It’s hard enough for adults to endure interminable lines without losing their cool at times, let alone a young child who won’t develop the skill of patience for years (and may never will, judging by some adults I’ve seen.) A child sees a vast, shiny airport as an exciting place full of new things to explore. And it is.

Visiting airports and flying on planes can be great learning experiences. I find it touching to see parents responding to a barrage of “whys” from curious children by explaining patiently the whole process from passport gates to how planes refuel on the tarmac.

They learn about the world, and we learn tolerance.