Editor’s Note: We’re digging into our ample archives to find some great articles you might have missed over the years. This one comes from 2014.

Never did I think the person holding a screaming baby on a cross-country flight taking off at 5:30 a.m. would be me.

Yet there I was, returning to New York City with body odor ripening as my deodorant quickly vanished under the stress of what would be the flight from hell.

Ah, the joys of flying with your baby.

“Why me, God? What did I do to deserve this?” I thought while people searched for their seats and visibly prayed it wasn’t next to this dude with a 1-year-old screaming for freedom from his Baby Bjorn.

When the couple sitting next to me realized they were stuck with us, I apologized in an attempt to win some sympathy. It didn’t work. All I got in return was a look of disapproval.

After everyone buckled in and the lights dimmed for the takeoff of our five-hour flight, I followed our pediatrician’s advice and gave my son an eight-ounce bottle of milk. It was the first time since I woke him at 4 a.m. that he was silent. During those brief 10 minutes, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and calmed down.

It was then I realized nobody was going to say anything to my face and, besides, who cares what other people are thinking? If someone said something about me and my caterwauling baby son it would made them look like an ass. We were simply trying to get home.

Once I calmed down I could feel my son, who was strapped facing forward on my chest, fall asleep. I took another deep breath, closed my eyes, and slept for about an hour.

That’s when I had to use the bathroom.

The screaming baby airplane bathroom blues

When I closed the bathroom door the only thing I was thankful for was that I am not claustrophobic. Have airplane bathrooms shrunk? Maneuvering inside such a small space with a 22-pound kid strapped to you is like doing yoga inside a box.

My first option was to take my son out and place him on the floor while I peed. That thought went down the toilet when I looked down and saw water. And probably worse.

The second option: pee with him still strapped on. I hate to admit it but this wasn’t the first time I’ve done this. So how bad could it be?

I had to maneuver around to avoid peeing all over my son. Wailing soon ensued and my nerves shot through the low, slanted roof as I attempted to relieve myself. I was astonished that I managed to shoot in the right direction. “Damn I’m good,” I thought as I zipped up.

Now, time to change my screaming baby boy.

As I searched aimlessly around the small space for a changing table, I started to think I was still half-asleep. I splashed some water in my face to try and snap out of it. After another fruitless attempt, I opened the door to ask the flight attendant for help.

“This particular plane doesn’t have baby changing tables,” he said.

I closed the door, closed my eyes and took a deep breath. All I have to do is be quick about this, I thought. Piece of cake.

I took my son out of the Baby Bjorn and turned him toward me. “Sorry. There is no changing table so we’re going to have to do this old school on the toilet,” I said. I hugged him, placed the changing pad on the toilet lid then placed him on top. He had this look on his face of “what the hell are you doing to me?” that reminded me of Stewie from Family Guy.

Then he slipped off the toilet seat.

I imagined people in the last 10 rows of the plane hearing his screeching and thinking the worst. Sweat dripped from my forehead while I got him off the pee-covered floor. I cursed United Airlines.

After finally changing my son, I looked at myself squarely in the mirror and vowed out loud to myself, “Never again will I fly alone with my child.”

I know one thing is for sure, next time I see a father flying alone with a screaming baby I will go out of my way to say hello, tell him what my experience was like, and offer whatever assistance I can.

Photo: © Irina Schmidt / Adobe Stock.

By the time I settled into my seat, my flight had already been delayed twice. I took a deep breath, trying hard not to notice that if my flight had left on time, I’d be home hugging my kids by now.

It’s OK. I had an awesome two-day getaway with some fellow dads. This was the price: four flights in 48 hours. I was at peak exhaustion now, peak frustration. Maybe even peak hangover.

Then I saw the crew who would be sitting behind me.

As a father of three, I’m sympathetic to the perils of those traveling with young kids, especially on a plane. My wife and I took three children from Cincinnati to Honolulu, after all. A long day of air travel with kids is a grind. People aren’t always nice, and kids, well, they’re kids. That is why when a family with two kids, roughly 4 and 6 years of age, occupied the seats behind me, I didn’t really think too much of it. I had seen this group in the terminal, and they all seemed perfectly reasonable.

Yeah … about that.

Humans aren’t really meant to jam themselves shoulder to shoulder in a thin, metal tube and be hurtled through the atmosphere via flame and thrust. Adults accept this as part of modern life. Kids aren’t so enlightened. Therefore, they intuitively know, deep down in their DNA, when the door of a plane closes, it’s time to freak the hell out.

Getting their kicks

First, I began to feel a lot of pressure in my lower back. I tried to convince myself I was in an experimental massage chair, but the 6-year-old girl behind me was just kicking my seat. It was firm. Inconsistent. Sometimes violent.

I patiently waited for one of the adults to ask her to stop. Surely these reasonable parents would notice the constant pounding on the back of my seat, and surely (don’t call me Shirley!) they are the type of reasonable parents who don’t want their kids annoying passengers on a full flight. I mean, that’s what you’d do, right? Right!?

Yeah … about that.

Even after I made eye contact with the dad, the kicking continued. My eyes clearly but silently said, “Hey man, I get it. This sucks. I’ve been there, and I feel your frustration, but could you please ask your kid to stop kicking my seat?” OK — an objective reading of my mask-covered face would probably read more like, “If your kid keeps kicking my seat, we may need an air marshal. Or a parachute. Possibly both.”

With the comedy of Bill Burr in my headphones, I decided to let his voice take me away from the constant pounding on my lower back. I turned the volume of the Netflix comedy special up to drown out the bickering and screaming.

What I really couldn’t handle, though — the silence of the parents. I accept that kids can be a handful, but permissive parents set my blood to boil. The only thing keeping me from letting these two know how I felt about their parenting style was the awareness of being trapped on a plane in a time of great tension and unruly plane passengers. As much as I think my handsome face deserves 15 minutes of fame, I really didn’t want it to be via a mugshot after being forcibly removed from an airplane. All I could think about was Ben Stiller finally cracking in Meet The Parents, and shouting, “Bomb, bomb, bombity bomb bomb!”

When the plane landed, things got really serious

The 4-year-old boy got physical. He thrashed and kicked. He reached up to hit the flight attendant call button. Sometimes he was in the aisle next to me, his head and legs crashing into me and other passengers. Again, the parents did not intervene.

He started screaming and yelling, pushing against the immovable line of people in front, spinning around and bashing his backpack against everyone and everything. At this point, the parents finally tried to stop him. His resistance increased.

Deplaning flight a real pain in the …

The dad asked the mom to control the kid, and the mom calmly explained that if she physically restrained him, things would get worse. She was right, of course, but we had all had it by then. There was no sympathy to be found. After this kid shoved his head straight up my ass, pushing me forward while providing a complimentary rectal exam, I finally let out, “C’mon!? Geeez!”

Yeah, I know. Not much of an outburst in the grand scheme of things. But the defeated look in the eyes of his parents immediately made me regret my outburst.

Eventually, we cleared out. And, naturally, I found myself right next to the dad on the tram connecting the gates to the terminal. We made eye contact, but he looked away. At this point, in empathy, I should’ve apologized. I should’ve offered words of encouragement to my fellow dad.

Yeah … about that.

I didn’t say anything. That I regret. I should have said, “Well, that was fun, but it’s over now.” Anything. Just some words to diffuse the tension. Just some words to make him feel like he wasn’t a failure, that we all didn’t hate him, and that other parents felt empathy and not judgment. Instead, I stood there, silently, with angry, judgmental eyes.

This man didn’t curse at his kids. He didn’t raise his hand with a threat of violence. No “I’ll beat your ass when you get home.” Isn’t that a victory that should be celebrated?

In a world of anger and violence, these parents did their best to keep their kids as calm as possible. Sure, I was annoyed, and I didn’t agree with their methods, but who am I to decide for another dad how he should treat his kids? If I’m honest, my kids are great most of the time, but every now and then they are soul-crushing monsters who listen to nothing but the wild adolescent voices in their heads. In those moments I encourage you to offer empathy, kindness, grace. Maybe even a beer. Remind your fellow dads, fellow parents and fellow humans that we really are in this together. And maybe, just maybe we’ll change the world.

And maybe, just maybe, next time I’ll climb over my seat and start kicking that little girl’s seat until she learns a valuable lesson.

Just kidding. But keep a lookout for my mug shot — just in case.

Flight photo: © Konstantin Yuganov /  Adobe Stock.

I swore that when I became a father it would never happen on my watch but it did. No matter how much I tried there was nothing I could do to make him stop.

My son had become “that kid” on the plane.

“Jake” was the name everyone on board dreaded. Jake was “that kid” for whom my wife and I spent the entire two-and-a-half-hour flight from Florida apologizing. All we could do was repeat our pathetic plea that “he’s really a sweet little boy once you get to know him.”

It started with one of his toys. We brought his Leap Pad with us to keep him distracted. We never thought he’d refuse to turn down the volume. Maybe we should have. And we forgot the headphones. We tried, but he screamed whenever we even went near his ears.

We begged him to stop but he kept opening and shutting the tray table and even kicked the seat in front of him so much that its occupant had to turn around several times. The guy’s wife offered us her headphones but nothing could be done to stop him. Even Elmo would have had found it difficult not to give him a smack. But we managed to refrain from corporal punishment.

He blindsided us. We shouldn’t have let him. But the shock to us wasn’t that our son was behaving the way many 3-year-olds behave when strapped into a seat on an airplane. What surprised us was that on the flight to Florida two days earlier, Jake was as quiet and well behaved as we had ever seen him. After that first flight, we were actually bragging that we had “turned the corner with him,” that from then on were destined to raise the most well behaved child ever to be born. WRONG!

There wasn’t a moment on that aircraft we could relax without fear of the pilot, like Harrison Ford in Air Force One, kicking the three of us off.

“Get off of my plane!!!” he yell, veins bulging everywhere on his face.

By the time we landed at La Guardia, Lori and I needed another vacation just to get over the trip home. And Jake, he thought nothing of it. Getting off the plane, he kept asking other travelers, “What’s your name?”

Picture this: Could you imagine flying 30,000 feet above the air with your 2-year-old and they are screaming for milk?  In your morning rush to the airport, even though you brought every toy, book, and DVD … You forgot to pack the milk.  You flag down the flight attendant and explain to them with a sense of urgency that you need milk for your child.  Flight attendant replies matter-of-factly that they have very limited milk on board and it is only to be used for coffee.

Holy crap! Yep, every airline is extremely budget conscious and with that mindset, almost every airline perk or freebie has been whacked out of their budgets. So, where does that leave our children on these airlines?  Apparently, without milk, crayons, pilot wings, decks of cards, etc..

We are officially two weeks away from one of my favorite holidays of the year, Thanksgiving.  It also marks the kick-off for the intense holiday travel season.  Our family will be flying across the country to Arizona very soon which means I am in mode to arm myself with as many travel tips as possible to get through our journey with my sanity intact (fat chance).  Traveling with our 3-year-old son is never simple — add on to that a five-hour flight with a time zone difference and it could be a major challenge.  I still reflect on our positive NYC Dads Group discussion with travel expert, Pauline Frommer, regarding successful travel tips with children.

Consequently, I was intrigued by the recent New York Times article, Are We There Yet? (by Michelle Higgins) which offered some useful airline travel tips for parents plus some horrible travel stories that parents faced recently on their airline flights.  Most impressive and unique about this particular article was the domestic airline by airline comparison to determine “child friendliness” including topics of pre-boarding, seating, kids’ meals, entertainment, and stroller checking.  Additionally, there is a comprehensive International Airline child “perk” list included.  I recommend checking out where your favorite airline stacks up.

Parents – Feel free to share your horrible travel stories related to traveling with children … or more importantly, provide us with one successful tip.

Family-only section on an airplane? Hell, yeah, say airline passengers in a recent New York Times article.

Thanksgiving and the Holiday Travel season shifts into high gear next week. That equates to millions of babies and toddlers flying the “friendly” skies and many stressed parents working overtime to ensure a smooth flight. As a parent who travels often, we have talked about successful travel tips and best practices on this blog before.  Check out our discussion with travel expert, Pauline Frommer, how U.S. Air bends over backwards for parents or this brash, truthful, and to the point list of airline travel tips by The Angry Sahd.

Something groundbreaking in the airline industry that I have never considered is a child-free flight or a family-only section of a plane.  These two topics were front and center in a well-written and insightful article in the NY Times this weekend.  Please Refrain From Tantrums Onboard by Douglas Quenqua dissects the child-free flight and family only sections in the airline industry.  He concludes that both promising ideas will never “fly” with the major carriers in the airline industry based on lack of profitability and not wanting to discourage anyone from taking a flight.

Most interesting to me were these recent cases presented by Quenqua involving 3-year-old toddlers (since my little toddler is almost 2 1/2):

In July, Qantas settled a lawsuit from a woman who claimed that she suffered hearing loss after sitting next to a screaming 3-year-old boy on a 2009 flight from New York to Australia. (Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.) In January, AirTran removed an entire family from a flight before takeoff from Fort Myers, Fla., because their 3-year-old girl was hitting the parents, making noise and refusing to take her seat. And in March, a 42-year-old woman allegedly grabbed a boy (3 years old, again) for kicking her chair during a Southwest flight to Las Vegas.

These facts are an eye opener as well: While few travelers would advocate outright assault, a survey of 2,000 travelers released by Skyscanner, a fare-comparison site, in August found that 59 percent of passengers support creating special sections on flights for families. Nearly 20 percent said they would like to see airlines offer child-free flights.

Where do you stand?  Are you in favor of a child-free flight or a designated “family-only section” if given the option?

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

Recently, we have had a lot of travel discussion on this blog including travel tips from Pauline Frommer and some travel woes from a few of the dads in NYC Dads Group.

My wife & I embarked on a trip to Phoenix, Arizona this past week with our 16-month old son. I was so pleased with the service level on U.S. Airways that I have to share my positive experience. Most parents know that when your child is under the age of two, they are able to fly on your lap for FREE. Consequently, a five hour flight with a 26-pounder on my lap did not sound ideal, even though it results in a cost savings of $400. During check-in, we wanted to work the system to our advantage so our first question is always, “is it a full flight?” Once we learned there were some empty seats and that the service desk associate was a parent (displayed empathy towards us)- they tried to set us up with a window seat & aisle seat, with the middle seat unoccupied. This would enable us to have an extra seat so our son would not have to remain on our lap, and some extra room to spread out for books, toys, diaper changing, and nap time.

Initially, they were unable to accommodate us because all of the aisle & window seats were already spoken for on each row. Then, the service desk associate had another idea – she stated that she could page the gentleman in the aisle seat in row #18, and ask him to switch with our aisle seat in row #20. I was shocked that the U.S. Air associate suggested this, but I was certainly not going to argue with her plan. It worked & we were able to fly with the extra seat for our unpaid “lap child.” It made for a much more pleasurable flying experience!

Additionally, the boarding process with our kid was a breeze with U.S. Airways…unlike the stories I have heard about Delta Airlines. First, it was a luxury to pre-board with our child before the masses so we could set-up in our seats, and still have plenty of room in the overhead bins. Then, the gate associate did not give us a hard time as we trudged on with way more than your standard one carry on + one personal item. I would certainly recommend U.S. Airways as a partner for parents in the friendly skies!

Finally, a few tips learned from travel expert Pauline Frommer and some of the well traveled dads that worked for us for additional smooth flying with our son:

• Bring lots of books and read them several times each
• Bring lots of different food options in case your child refuses their usual meals
• Give your child milk or something to drink during take-off and landing to ease the air pressure and discomfort in their ears
• When our son got fussy and loud on board, I ignored the “looks” and “comments” from some of our unfriendly passenger neighbors – Frommer suggested “ignoring the other passengers because you should assume you will never see them again” – we certainly did!
• The window seat is the best seat in the house because your child can watch the other airplanes taking off (a bonus when your plane is delayed on the runway for 45 minutes) as well as providing at least 20 minutes of sheer enjoyment as your child opens and shuts the window shade. Great for you, but annoying to your neighbors.

Happy travels to all of the dads and parents during the holiday season!

Here is this week’s “guest blog” post by NYC Dads Group member David M. This caring dad describes his recent travel success and woes…

At last week’s SAHD’s meetup, a somewhat spontaneous conversation arose — about traveling with our young kids. As a new dad with a 7-month old daughter and close relatives and friends across the globe, I was interested in hearing about other experiences and sharing my own. Luckily, our daughter is a terrific air traveler (so far) and on her three flights to date she has been a pleasure for us to deal with. On our most recent flight in fact, other passengers were shocked to see her as they walked by us to depart – she hadn’t made a peep the entire way back from Grandma and Grandpa in Florida. But I learned something very important on tat trip – in the current air travel climate of service cuts and no-frills, not all airlines are equal in how they treat young children and their parents.

I’m sure I’m not alone in experiencing the joy of becoming a dad – but there were also moments I looked forward to as part of the rights of passage of a parent. Frankly, some of these carried with them years of built up anticipation and perhaps even some resentment from waiting on the sidelines as I watched parents and young children receive “special treatment.”

I say this tongue in cheek, but truly, I was excited to travel with our daughter and be able to board the plane first, calmly check our stroller and car seat at the bottom of the ramp and settle into our seats without having to inconvenience fellow travelers too much. Well, much to my surprise, it seems that Delta Airlines no longer offers that service to families traveling with young children. When I asked the gate agent about it, she informed me that they had put the question to their frequent flyers, who in turn had voted to stop this process.

So here we were, stroller, car seat, diaper bag, carry-ons and 7-month old daughter in hand at an overcrowded Delta terminal at LaGuardia on a Friday morning in August and we had to wait to board the plane. Once we got on, we struggled around seated passengers, and already-filled overhead compartments and settled in. I should say that we had wonderfully friendly seat neighbors on the flight and that made it all fine – but the Delta staff was completely unhelpful.

On our return flight, now prepared for the general boarding policy, my partner boarded first to secure seats and overhead storage and I followed later with the stroller, car seat and our daughter – but even then, my partner was stopped by the ticket agent because he had an “extra” carry-on (the diaper bag) and we had to prove that we were in fact traveling with a child.

Needless to say, we’ll do our best to avoid Delta flights with the little one in the future. Our other flight with or daughter was when she was merely 3-days old and we were bringing her home from Nashville where she was born. We flew American Airlines then and it was a terrific experience – everyone was very helpful and attentive – something very much appreciated by brand new parents.

So it seems there’s a new parental “right of passage” in which I now find myself engaged. I not only shop for the best airline fairs, but I find myself calling the airlines and pouring over their websites to check on their policies for traveling with small children. But the best help has been from talking with other parents and finding out their tricks for traveling – so thanks in advance to all the dads’ who’ll be part of those discussions.

And in case you’re wondering, when we travel to Brazil to visit our daughter’s other grandparents for the holidays, we’ll be flying American.

It would truly be helpful to get some advice from a travel expert on best practices of flying with your kids. Parents, feel free to share suggestions or tricks of the trade for successful travel with the little ones, especially as we head into the holiday travel season.