A mother traveling with her baby politely asked the woman sitting in front of her to turn her reclined seat back to the upright position for the child’s comfort. This was a small but telling event. The woman wouldn’t change her seat, even though her mother asked her to.
The woman told what took place.
I was going to sleep on my fifteen-hour flight, which left at 8 PM, to pass the time and make up for not getting enough sleep after traveling for 24+ hours. There was a mom, dad, and a three-year-old child on the flight. This is older than the age of two when a child can sit on a parent’s lap for free, for sure.
The child kicked my husband’s and my seats, got up on their parent’s lap to grab my hair and pull on my shirt, and pushed papers in the back of the seat between our seats, poking us with them. This went on for the first two hours.
It would be a break from the child kicking me when she moved to her dad’s lap, but then she would start kicking my husband’s seat. We didn’t say anything because we knew it must be hard to travel with kids.
About four hours into the flight, when the child finally fell asleep, I decided I could also rest. I leaned back in my chair about three quarters of the way. It wasn’t all the way, but it was just right for sleeping. But the mother wasn’t as comfortable because the child was bigger than most babies younger than two years old.
Right away, she tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to raise my chair so she could be more comfortable. And I’m sure it’s not as fun to have a kid on your lap, especially if they’re big and the flight is long.
But I stayed in the lying down position because I felt like I had to put up with her child making me uncomfortable for hours and keeping me from sleeping when I needed to.
I made the mother more squished in her seat, though, because she needed room for both of them. Was it wrong for me to refuse to move?
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