The Upside to Flying With Young Children

There have been many horror stories spread around the blogosphere about flying with children, and I have to admit I enjoy reading all of them. I even have a few of my own thanks to our frequent cross-country voyages. But this is a different kind of story. It is a story about how flying WITHOUT children can be so much worse...

I was recently flying alone with my two boys (ages 4 and 2), returning home from a trip to the West Coast. Our first leg was from Portland to Chicago. It was a long stretch for the boys to be sitting in a confined space, so I was completely absorbed the entire four hour flight with keeping them busy and relatively quiet, doling out sippy cups, crayons and goldfish like a Vegas blackjack dealer.

Imagine my surprise after our landing to hear the elderly woman sitting behind us sobbing, mumbling over and over how she thought she was going to die.

I vaguely recalled some turbulance in the air and a storm brewing outside our little airplane window and I was really annoyed that the fasten seatbelt sign stayed lit for most all of the flight so I couldn't take my kids to the potty. Yes, the landing was bumpy, but when my boys landed smack in the back of the seats in front of them, hadn't they jumped out from their seatbelts themselves?

Surely, the little old woman must be paranoid, maybe even suffering some dimentia? I jumped up out of my seat to look around. We were at the gate, but everyone on the plane sat still in their seats and the cabin was completely quiet. A guy in his twenties a couple rows ahead of us was hyperventilating...or maybe dry heaving...into his barf bag. Other passengers looked visably shaken.

Wow, I thought, there was a potentially catastrophic event going on all around me, and I was completely oblivious inside my little caccoon with my boys and our portable DVD player and fruit snacks and CARS coloring books and handwipes. People around me were likely praying for a safe landing and for their lives to be spared....and I was praying that my 4-year-old wouldn't burst from the five juice boxes he consumed during the flight before we could locate a bathroom. The childless folks around me were probably wondering if they would get to see their loved ones again and I was wondering if crayon came off of airplane tray tables.

I have a whole new perspective on travel with children from this experience. Really, traveling with toddlers is the only way to fly....