Disillusioned Children

As I have noted, I have been traveling recently. There was a small child crying as my flight into Raleigh, North Carolina approached its landing. The kid must have been about five years old and was fidgeting and crying. And rightfully so, it was a very turbulent landing. The child's mother was anxious to have her kid stop squirming and crying so she told her child, "Look what you are making the plane do."

She actually said this to the kid.

She told her daughter that the plane was shaking uncontrollably because she couldn't stop crying. Now some people would argue that this was a traumatic and horrible thing to do to your child. 'What kind of parent puts that kind of guilt on their child', my friends say. But I am not concerned with the trauma and the guilt caused by this act. No. in fact, I have an almost opposite reaction.

What if this kid grows up to think she has superpowers? She is going to her kindergarten class on Monday proclaiming, "I can control airplanes!" How bummed is that kid going to be when she realize she doesn't? Or even worse, how scared is she going to be when she does behave during a planes descent and there is still turbulence?

That parent shouldn't be yelled at for scaring their kid, they should be chastised for setting their little one up for unbelievable disappointment when find out that you can't control airplanes.