The airline said that the girl's grandmother had given the two women permission to "educate her".

An incident which saw two women lock a crying toddler in an aeroplane toilet has sparked an online debate in China on how to manage children in public spaces.

The incident went viral on the Chinese internet after one of the two women, Gou Tingting, posted a video of herself carrying the girl inside the cubicle.

In her post, she presented herself as trying to help others on board, but was swiftly met with backlash.

  • BertramDitore@lemmy.worldEnglish
    443·
    3 months ago

    Last time I flew, I had a screaming baby in front of me, a screaming baby behind me, and a screaming baby next to me. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t relax, and my noise-cancelling headphones did very little to help. Know what I didn’t do? Complain, berate the parents, or confine the babies to an unsafe and enclosed space.

    Babies cry. There’s usually nothing they or their parents can do about it. That’s life. Flying sucks, and this is just a part of it.

    • meathorse@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      3 months ago

      Good on you! I’ve found the best thing to do with upset babies is try to engage with the kid - ask the parents first(!) but babies are fascinated by new people in a way that parents can’t fulfill.

      Story time: I had a crying 6mth old next to me earlier this year so I pulled out the safety sheet (asked the mum if I can show him this), channeled my inner Wiggles and kick-started it with a big, excited interruption to his crying: “wow, look at the plane!” The unexpected, strange interaction short circuits their focus on being upset and he just stopped and started at me like “wtf is this dude on?”. Once I had his attention I started pointing and describing all the pictures, then gave him the page. This turned into a 10min game of point at the picture, say the word or a story then hand it back. My names and descriptions for the people on the page got more crazy each time - after all, his were nonsensical too! I even got a few giggles as I kept it animated with hand gestures and big smiles. That turned into pointing out the windows or different things in the cabin.

      The kid eventually got bored of the games after about 15-20 mins but had already forgotten he was upset and then peacefully interacted with his mum again for the rest of the flight. I got back to my book while he had the sky mag to read along like me and would still point out different pictures to me or check my book, puzzled why they were no pictures!

      I even scored a tiny-dude high five as they were leaving which everyone knows are the best high fives.

      Best flight I’ve had all year!

  • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.worldEnglish
    91·
    3 months ago

    Having spent my childhood in Asia, child abuse is more or less normalised there. The social expectation is that adults are infallible authority figures and children are meant to be obedient at all times (i.e. absolutely quiet).

    I also wonder if 20th century social and political turmoil caused many Asian parents to have anger issues and in turn, cause generational trauma. One reason I dislike the idea that Boomers were handed everything to them on a silver platter is because it neglects the fact that much of the world were former colonies. And the post-colonial status of many countries had been very rough-- experiencing inter-ethnic and international wars, proxy wars (Vietnam War and Soviet-Afghan War comes to mind) and corrupt dictatorships that do not invest well in their people causing poverty.

    These turmoils and trauma caused many unresolved psychological issues. The victims of these strifes then become parents, who take out their issues to their children. And in turn, these children become parents who believe that hitting their own children constitutes as good parenting, because that was how they were raised.