Your parenting strategy....

.does not work. These words came out of the mouth of a complete stranger on the 2nd plane we took Saturday morning. About 45 minutes before we landed, Chloe had pretty much had enough. I managed to keep her fairly happy and calm through most of the trip until she decided she wanted to color. That's fine. She wanted her tray down like Tory and Livy. Also would have been fine if her seat wasn't about half an inch too close so the tray would not go down enough to be flat. This led to a fit. I said to her as soon as she started "Chloe...." and before I could say any more, she let out this ear piercing scream. Ok....it's one of THOSE fits. The type where if you ignore the crying for 5 minutes or less, it's over. The type where the more you try to stop it, the worse it gets. We all know, I think, the type of fit I'm talking about. Anyway, so about a minute and a half in to it, the lady in front of us tries to talk to her to distract her. Big mistake. Chloe starts crying harder. I ask her "Do you want to sit on my lap?" and she cries harder. By this time, several people have tried to talk to her and they are making it worse. We are close to minute 4 by this time. I keep nicely telling people that I'm sorry but she'll stop if everyone leaves her alone. I start getting dirty looks. I start hearing complaining. Chloe is finally starting to calm down when a woman from a few rows back comes over to me, kneels down and says "I'm sorry, but I don't think your parenting strategy works. Maybe if you held her and at least try to comfort her, she would calm down" OMG, I NEVER go off on strangers and I totally did. So much, in fact, that the flight attendant came over and said pretty rudely "Is there anything we can do about this? It is disrupting the other passengers and I am getting complaints" at this point, I started bawling. I told them AGAIN that if everyone would just leave her alone, she'd have worked through it long ago. That I was sorry my child was upset and therefore bothering everyone--this is where the flight attendant broke in with "I didn't say YOU were bothering everyone, just it was" and I replied "IT is my daughter, so YES, it is ME you are complaining about". :(" border="0"> After that, both the rude ass flight attendant and the apparent Child Expert woman left. The other flight attendant came down when Chloe had quit crying (about 30 seconds after everyone started to leave her alone, I might add) and asked if she needed some juice or if I needed some liquor . And apologized for what the other passengers and the flight attendant had said. Then he went and talked to her and on my way out of the plane when we landed, she apologized as well. Didn't stop me from complaining to the airline this morning though. It was mortifying.