Compassion & Kindness: Radical Concepts?
July 3, 2013 in Inspiration
This week, I received this shining piece of hate mail in response to an article in one of my weekly columns.
The premise of the piece was a suggestion that, perhaps, in addition to parents taking responsibility, and preparing their kids properly for a flight and doing their best to consider the other passengers on a plane, perhaps, those of us on a flight with a freaking out little kid, could be kind and compassionate to the kid, and the parents.
Have a read:
No, I will not extend extra grace to children on planes just because I was a child once too. I was never a screaming baby on an airplane. So no. Just because I was a baby doesn’t mean I will extend anything to a child who is ruining a flight.
No, I will not give haggard parents the benefit of the doubt. Why should I when your child is making my flight miserable? You don’t know where I’m going, how important it is that I be ready and refreshed when I arrive. You give me the benefit of the doubt and either sedate the baby or don’t fly with it.
No, it would not be the “end of the world” to talk to the parent instead of giving a dirty look. If I say an “encouraging word” to the parent, they will be the one giving me the dirty look because nobody wants to be told that their special little snowflake is being disruptive, no matter how polite you put it.
I’m not bringing things for someone’s baby either. That’s ridiculous. I’m not spending my money on toys and markers that are not going to help the situation anyway. Why don’t the parents buy toys and markers?
I will treat children like people when they act like people.
This was only the first verse of her grand opus. There was a second post that I’ll spare you.
Needless to say, I laughed.
And then, I started thinking about it. Really thinking about it.
Her response is a lot of things that don’t bear raking over the coals one more time. I’m in no way out to bash her, and I’d appreciate it if you refrained from doing so in the comments as well. The question I’m left with is not, “Is she right?” The question I’m left with is:
When did compassion and kindness become radical concepts?
I’m as annoyed as the next person by ill-behaved children (and adults) and we’ve done our best to train our children to “act like people.” But isn’t the essence of “acting like a person” to show kindness and compassion to one another?
It’s not just the kids on planes thing. Although that’s fast becoming a hot button in the travel world.
- It’s our impatience with folks in the check-out line of the grocery store.
- Our tendency towards road rage instead of letting two people crowd in.
- Our insistence on “me time” and “personal space” over community or family involvement.
- It’s our annoyance at being interrupted again.
- Or at the Starbucks guy messing up our latte order.
- Or our flight being delayed half an hour.
- Or the waitress taking too long with our drink order.
- Or the boss who loses it a little over something small.
What ever happened to giving people the benefit of the doubt?
Whatever happened to assuming a mom was having a bad day when she’s harried in the store? Or assuming that kid screaming his head off in the drug store might be sick and waiting on a prescription instead of losing his cool? Or considering the possibility that the slow waitress is covering for a short staffed situation?
A friend of mine shared this video with me. It’s almost 10 minutes long, but I encourage you to watch it:
I’d like to make a suggestion, for me, for my kids, for you, for your kids, for all of us:
Let’s go completely counter cultural and commit to compassion and kindness as our knee jerk response to life and frustrations.
Not just compassion and kindness for the people who are clearly suffering and “need it” but over the top, completely unrealistic, unmerited compassion and kindness. Even for people who are hateful in their tone and approach. Even for people we “know” could be doing better, or more, or are responsible for their own mess.
What would happen if we went really crazy and offered that really annoying kid on the plane a smile and a pen and paper to draw with instead of a scowl and a withering look to his mother.
Trust me when I tell you, you have no idea what is really going on in someone else’s world.
Can I tell you a story?
About a year and a half ago I found myself in the unlikely situation of being a transporter. Have you seen the Jason Statham movies? Yeah, like that, only without gasoline explosions or hot Italian girls. I was transporting Ukranian boys across international borders and continents. It’s a long story, that starts here, if you want to read about it, but I’ll cut to the chase:
I found myself in the Zurich airport with a five hour layover and three, nearly feral, boys. My friend was with me, she had just adopted them and we were making our way home after a months long marathon between continents in which their Mama had left six of her children (one still nursing) in the USA while she lived off of tinned food in a bare apartment in backwater Ukraine, earning the right to rescue her other three sons. It was a heroic act. She was exhausted.
Imagine five hours in the airport with three boys who, just four days before, made their first trip away from their orphanage.
- Imagine trying to get one to ride an escalator when he couldn’t understand where the stairs were disappearing to.
- Imagine trying to get them through a revolving door without squashing one.
- Imagine trying to communicate to them where their luggage disappeared to, what the TSA search was about and why they had to take their shoes off.
- Imagine trying to get them through a public bathroom with their first auto-flush toilets, or automatic water faucets.
- Imagine the fun and mess they’d have with soap dispensers and light switches, neither of which were part of their repretoire of experiences.
Now imagine one, covered to the elbows in soap, slithering out of your grip and running from the bathroom and down the length of the airport, while you were trying to keep another from locking himself into the toilet, and the third is discovering that the taps will spray water across the entire bathroom if you squeeze the fat part of your palm against the faucet.
She has six kids. I have four. It was not our first rodeo. We KNOW kids and we have a masters degree apiece in managing several at once in difficult circumstances, these three tested our mettle.
I’m not even to the part of the story where the boys were licking salt off of the airport floor when their very first bag of pretzels in their life spilled out around their feet.
Did I mention that one of the boys is deaf? And the other two spoke only Ukrainian?
The revelation…
The revelation, and my moment of clarion humility, came when my friend and I found ourselves sitting next to each other, at about hour three of our layover. Each of us was holding a child in our laps, mine was having a five star meltdown, screaming his head off. Hers was simply trying to escape, and the one who was happy and mischievous and thought it was great fun to run from us as far and fast as he could we were containing between us, using our elbows as cattle gates. We looked at each other and laughed. What else could we do.
We were getting dirty looks. People were mumbling. I cannot imagine what they must have thought, but I know what we must have looked like.
We must have looked like two mothers of the absolute worst behaved children in the world. I’m sure the assumption was that we were terrible parents, abusive, perhaps, for physically containing the children. There must have been folks who couldn’t believe we’d have the audacity to subject anyone else to the terrors of these ill trained, ill prepared children. How inconsiderate and selfish could we possibly be?
The truth couldn’t have been more opposite. I’ve never prepared for a journey with my own children like I prepared for that one. I pulled out all of the stops and used every trick in my well traveled book. So did my friend… and they still escaped, screamed bloody murder and ran through that airport like absolute wild monkeys.
But there was one woman, we didn’t even have the presence of mind to get her name, who came and sat with us, offered the children paper and pens from her purse, played sign language games with the boys and laughed and smiled as they repeatedly expressed loud approval and awe at their very first sight of planes lifting off of a runway.
- She stopped long enough to hear our story.
- She suspended judgement long enough to discover the truth.
- She took a radical leap of faith and acted first out of compassion and kindness to a situation that for all the world begged censure and judgement.
You never know what is going on behind the scenes of the behavior that is offending you.
Perhaps it’s my friend, saving lives and changing the history of the world. But you’ll never have the privilege of participating in the gift she’s trying to give if your first response is to put up your walls, protect your rights and retreat into your palace of “me.”
I’ll never forget that woman. She was an angel to us that day. Beyond her sweetness to the boys and the calming presence of the temporary diversion she presented, she taught me a powerful lesson about judgement vs. compassion, demanding my rights vs. extending kindness.
So what’s my point? I don’t know. I’m not trying to make a point so much as to ask a question.
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Many years back I worked for a man (who I really did NOT care for very much), and who’s ethics were generally questionable. He did, however, pass along one piece of wisdom that I’ve tried to apply in my life ever since. He would tell us after an irate customer (retail store) would rant at us over some seemingly little detail that most of their anger actually came from elsewhere, we were simply the ones ‘blessed’ by having hit that person’ trigger. I’ve been guilty of a short fuse in similar situations myself, but have been lately teaching myself to tune out the distraction and smile through it as best I can. It works.
OK I am so sorry but I can not agree with a lot of this. I understand what you went thru with the kids but that is an exception to what normally happens. I am sure that if someone asked the air hosts they would have been given the reason they were so out of control then it is understandable, still not OK but understandable.
But the last flight I took was 9 hours and yes, we were stuck on an airplane with 3 totally out of control kids. Running up and down the isles, constantly screaming and throwing things inside the plane while the parents sat there playing a game on their laptop.It got to the point where the captain came out and told them to control the children! Their excuse was the same as most others, they are just children!! My own children were never, ever allowed to behave like that anywhere more less an airplane, a movie or a restaurant. They were behaved children that I paid attention to. My children were taught not to bother or disrespect others.
When you are flying you know nothing about the other passengers. I was on my way to bury my mother and was quite upset but did that matter to these parents? No, because they were too busy playing a video game to take care of their children.
And I am so sorry but there is zero reason anyone other then the parents should have to bring things to occupy the children. That just blew me away because it is the parent responsibility to teach their children how to behave and to bring them things to occupy them and not the responsibility of a total stranger.
I am a very compassionate person but I paid just as much for my flight as the person who has the out of control children.
Loved this article! If we all replaced our own rights with radical compassion and kindness, the world would be a much more pleasant place to be. 🙂
Cindy, I agree with you completely. It is no one’s responsibility but the parents. I too worked very hard with my kid to teach them to behave appropriately and we never had an “out of control” moment on a plane. Not once. I’m so sorry you had a bad experience. I would say that the truly out of control moments are also the exception to the rule. We fly far more than average and have only seen one or two “really bad” parenting moments on planes…
The thing is… that regardless of whether its kids and the plane, or the death of your parent, or the person in traffic… I still believe that the right response is compassion and kindness. That doesn’t mean we don’t address issues (kindly) or ask people to get a grip (compassionately) it’s not conflict avoidance… it’s about the tone and the intent in that moment… that’s what I’m lobbying for.
I can’t see a situation that isn’t helped by approaching one another with compassion and kindness.
So true Jennifer. I was very compassionate and did not complain other then to quietly ask to be moved to another part of the airplane as it was very apparent that the parents were going to do nothing but the topper was when the one boy came to my seat and TOOK my laptop off my lap to watch a movie! I fly quite often and this really was an exception to how most children behave for sure. I can’t count how many children I have taught to make spider webs, etc out of string on your fingers on an airplane. 🙂
On the flip side, I often tell the parents and the child how well behaved they were, if in fact they were well behaved. I even carry a roll of stickers to give to all children but that is because its better to reward a child then condemn a child. BTW, I did give stickers to these children but all 3 of them threw them back at me and said they wanted money, lol.
I guess what I am trying to say is that the parents also need to realize that they have no clue what others are going thru and how a disruptive child can really hurt others. If a lot of parents would just lean to control their children a bit better or pay attention to them then the environment would be enjoyable for everyone, your case excluded.
That’s what’s tough about these types of articles (kids misbehaving on flights) is that the rare occasion that it happens and the parents aren’t paying attention is what seems to get the focus. As Cindy mentioned, she flies quite often and her experience with the misbehaved children was an exception. I’ve flown a lot and I haven’t had any experiences with misbehaved children (and my home airport was Orlando, so I always had many kids on my flights). My husband had one experience with a screaming child on an international flight (and when he came home to tell me about it was when I was telling him I was pregnant – whoops!). And I had a friend who was mortified when she brought her normally well-behaved son on an international flight and he was the one who everyone was rolling their eyes at.
There’s no excuse for parents behaving badly with their kids, but I really think it’s rare. And to be fair, of all the times I’ve flown with my son, there’s really only been the one incident of someone so overtly upset that he was sitting next to us before anything had even happened. Most people have been fine when they see my kids on a plane.
I’m just thankful that my experiences with flying haven’t been ruined by kids because the parents care enough to entertain their kids. I’m thankful that 99% of the people I’ve encountered have been kind and a few of them have even offered their help when I was getting my baggage. I’m glad that most of the stories I hear of unruly children or people who seem to hate kids on flights (like the letter writer) are on the internet.
Jenn, what is the link to the post and comment?
I have been on both sides of this issue, having personally transported my own daughter home from Romania when she was 3, She came down with chicken pox and some sort of mutant diarrhea en route. No, we had no idea she was sick before boarding. Was not a fun 16 hours. She has morphed into quite a fabulous little traveler. I have noticed frequently when we go to our seats in a plane the passengers around us sigh heavily and roll their eyes. Before the trip ends they are generally conversing with us, including my daughter, and at times complimenting me. I guess I could think their original reactions are due to the entire world going child ‘unfriendly’. (Which it kinda is) Unfortunately, I think it is due to this ‘rare’ bad behavior from kids is getting less and less rare.
Cindy… I absolutely agree… parents DO need to take responsibility for raising their children to be considerate of others. I wrote something about that on our other website that might be of interest to you, it’s called The Others Focused Family. I write a lot about that sort of things… the importance of raising our kids to know their proper place in the world, as welcome members of a family, community, human race, but not in any way the center. http://www.uncommonchildhood.com/the-others-focused-family/ There will always be exceptions, people who don’t take responsibility, “bad” parents in some capacity… but I think it’s a mistake to focus too heavily on that, as if it becomes the norm.
To Everyone who’s commented…
Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts, I’m enjoying reading them and continuing to peel layers off of my own mental process on this topic.
The comments on this thread have gravitated, again, towards kids’ behavior, and kids’ behavior on planes specifically… which really isn’t the point of this piece at all, it just happened to be my example as a catalyst for the thinking. Really, it has nothing to do with what *anyone* else is doing… it’s about what is going on within ourselves. I love that you quietly did what was necessary to meet your needs, and that you take opportunities to reinforce the positive. That’s where our focus really needs to be, I think.
What I’d really like to turn the corner on in this discussion is how compassion and kindness can be used as “weapons,” if you will, to change the tone of a moment, to move people forward, to heal broken parts of interpersonal interaction… everywhere, not just in the air. Do you have thoughts on that? Please share them!!
Sean… the column is not the one I have with BnA. I intentionally did not link to it because I want to get away from the incendiary debate about how/whether kids should fly and on to the discussion of what’s going on under the hood with us, as individuals and adults, that causes us to so often come down on the side of something other than compassion and kindness when the rubber meets the road. If you really MUST read it, PM me and I’ll send you the link privately.
I must tell you that I have never once rolled my eyes, etc at children in an airplane, restaurant, movie, etc. If we can not expose our children to public places then they will never behave.
I actually transported 3 semi out of control teenagers from England to the US and was appalled by the behavior they “thought” they were going to display. All of the teens have mental disabilities and so I had made arrangement’s with the airline to announce that we had 3 very special passengers that flight and it make our trip so much better. Not a sole got upset when they were loud.