Empathy for Children, not Penalties, on Planes
From news.com.au this week came the headline ‘Noisy kids? You should pay extra on planes’ – an opinion piece by Claudia Connell. She rejects one airline’s new offer that she can pay extra to travel in a quiet zone free from under-12s. Instead, she suggests that families with noisy children should pay the higher penalty, not the people like her "just wanting a quiet journey". Claudia writes that she is “not a person who hates kids,” has “nieces, nephews and godchildren that I adore”, and has “made peace” with the fact that she won’t have her own children. She’s just not fond of crying kids on planes. She’s “sympathetic” of a mother struggling with a bawling baby, but refuses to “accept that it’s now my lot to have my quality of life diminished by having other people’s families forced on me.” Her ticket price should not include “13 hours of hell”, she asserts. Read full article
THE SECRETS OF HAPPY FAMILIES
Keeping your children entertained on long car journeys or during the hours spent waiting to board a flight can be an extremely tricky exercise, so instead of resorting to the age-old game of ‘Twenty Questions’ Bruce Feiler decided to draw on the most creative minds in the gaming industry to make travelling more fun for his whole family. Read full article
Children and Hotel Rooms - Cancel the Champagne
There was a time in my past when a visit to a hotel was all about fluffy robes, long luxurious baths, champagne and room service. It was decadence, lazy afternoons, sleep-ins and in-house movies. Quite often there was a meal, which went late into the evening, wine and maybe even cocktails in a little bar, before walking hand-in-hand back to our room. Now a visit to a hotel room involves much luggage and in our case two adjoining rooms, a bag of snacks and colouring-in books to keep the kids occupied. Gone is the champagne and lazy mornings Read full article
Sorry, Your Son Won't Be Travelling With Us Today
What follows is a lesson on adhering to the warnings found in the small print of your travel documents. We had a family holiday to Bali booked a year in advance, you see, and it was our dangling carrot, guiding us through end-of-year malaise, the mishmash of bubbling mince on the stove top, the rush to beat the traffic for music lessons, the tedium of swim squad and the daily ironing of uniforms. Ever get to that point of the school term where you feel as though you’re limping towards a finish line? Read full article
Travelling With Children - Empathy for the Parent Please
By Sophie Lee: When parents discuss the relative horrors of long haul flights on which their young children accompany them, I can only murmur sympathetically. You see, my in-laws, bless ‘em, live on the other side of the world, which entails an annual commitment to twenty-four hours (or, as I prefer to think of it, 1440 very long minutes) of claustrophobic hell at high altitude, and there’s no amount of hot nuts that can make those minutes go by any faster Read full article
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