to be annoyed with child kicking my seat for seven hours on plane?

[Jonnyfan]

Just returned from Dubai. On flight a young child persisted in kicking/pushing feet into the back of my seat for much of the first couple of hours. Eventually politely asked mother, who was seated beside him, if she could try to stop him. She was most put out and replied that it was a long flight and difficult with children, (she had two other adults with her as well as two boys). She then moved him so that he was behind my DH, who then had severel hours of the same before politely commenting that it was very irritating behaviour. Mohter gave me the evils through the disembark/baggage reclaim. I travelled extensively with my children from four months onward and never felt that others should be made uncomfortable by them

YANBU. On a recent long haul flight we had an extremely snotty faced (I mean literally hanging with mucus!) 6 year old repeatedly hanging over the top of our seats to intrusively look at what we were doing. No manners some parents.

YANBU! Some people leave their manners at the airport.

YANBU, what a nightmare.

YANBU and the mother of the child was being VVVU.

YANBU. We flew to Boston many years ago and a child did this to me. I was too wet to complain :(

YANBU I had this all the way from London to Glasgow on a coach once.

Haaa, you lot are great, you make me smile. Ended up behind same child on escalator and dad pointedly ushered him and his little mini-wheelie case out of my way; I felt like the child-catcher.

What disgusting behaviour from that mother - I would never let my kids be so disrespectful. With parents like that how will the kid ever learn to be respectful?

That woman should be ashamed of herself

Actually, I should probably have kicked the case...

YANBU, I've just returned from a school trip to Ceuta, N. Africa, so flight was Luton > Malaga, followed by ferry. Just the 2.5 hour Easyjet flight from Luton was ruined by utter brat in my row, window seat, with her father in between us. She squirmed and did not sit still at all for the whole (evening) flight, kicking her sister in the seat in front of her until she turned round & smacked her. The father did nothing, and even my teacher death stare was of no use. So glad I teach teenagers, my students aged 14 were slumped nicely and immobile, completely satisfied with their iPods etc. I could not understand why the father didn't encourage / ask / tell her to damn well SIT STILL ! I travelled the world with my three, now grown, and never had this nonsense at all, even on long flights to the Far East. Needless to say she was being fed junk sweets etc. the whole time just to compound the problem...

Tomorrow I'm off to France, will board Brittany Ferries @ 8pm, eat meal then retire to cabin to avoid (British) brats running around until after midnight :(

This is why I pay extra not to fly cattle class.

I have been the mother of that child though, in our defence, the seat is exactly the length away of the small childs legs when they stick straight out. I am in no way defending the kicking, I know it is extremely annoying and have always done everything possible to stop it. However, it has sometimes happened ocasionally and accidentally by my extremely well behaved DD and she got evils which was a bit uncalled for. My son however, takes extreme delight in doing anything asked not to, so the best action is generally to not mention and distract, and to hope the person in front is not of an over sensitive nature.

I did vow that, on my last long-haul SoupDragon, when my return from Delhi was dominated by a flying lung. Check out Jeremy Clarkson's chagrin when he paid 6k per seat for 1st class to Barbados only to find the Flying Lung was allowed to scream for the whole flight in 1st while mother sat doing nothing though ... Gaah !

YANBU the mother of the child was though! She should have stopped him doing that. Very unreasonable for whoever was sat in front of him.

You put up with someone kicking your seat for 7 hours? You're far more patient than me then, as I'd have booted the little bugger told the flight attendant.

Soup Dragon, I don't fly economy either but the kids on BC or 1st can be just as bad!

ah, you see i only go up to premium, economy. Enough to add extra legroom and ditch the riff raff but not enough to add the entitled upper classes :o

mmm, that figures soup : clever plan !

Ach, I have been the kickee also, asked child to stop, asked parents to stop, ASKED cabin crew to stop and they said there was nothing they could do, other than ask parents again. Which they did, made no difference. Not ok in my book.

My child would not do that (once or twice as a mistake is a mistake. repeatedly is on purpose...), also I flew loads as a kid and would have been in big trouble. No it's not easy flying with kids, but - as with all other walks of life - you DO need to respect other people's space and comfort. So hillyhilly, I think you should not accept that bad behaviour. I dread being sat in front of you.

YANBU.

Bad mannered parents!

My parents had this coming back from Spain last week. When they politely requested that the child stop, the father of brat threatened to "take them to court", I jest not! And proceeded to call over the cabin crew to try to get their names - quite how he was going to use this information, I'm not sure.

I do appreciate the difficulties of travel with small children; we lived in Africa when twins were tiny and travelled extensively. However, I felt that the mother thought it was fine for us to suffer the kicking/pushing. the family could have swapped the seating so that the child was behind his father, rather than the other way round, if she felt it was acceptable for the kicking to continue.

Seriously bricking it here. I'm taking DD (4 months) to the UK on Sunday and am dreading unsympathetic fellow travellers. Please tell me you would understand a tiny, screaming baby if her Mummy was trying very hard to shut her up calm her.