August 21, 2018 Airplane (Part 2)
After my family checked into the airport and boarded our flight home from Illinois we got situated in our seats. My husband sat with our two year old in the seats on the left side of the aisle and I sat with our four year old on the right side of the aisle with the baby in my lap.
All. Heck. Broke. loose.
The baby started to cry, the 2 year old couldn’t hold still and started yelling at the top of his lungs pretending to be a dinosaur and the 4 year old was upset that he couldn’t sit by the window since there wasn’t one in our row.
Surprisingly I held myself together pretty well…
About ten minutes after taking off, with my kids still out of control, an old man sitting in the seat in front of my four year old son turned around and looked at me quite angrily. Because of the loud airplane engine (and my crying baby) it took me a minute to realize that he was talking to me. I asked him to repeat what he said, and with increased anger, he said, “Get your son’s feet off my seat!”
I looked down at my four year old and realized that because of his small size his feet stuck straight out in front of him and rested on the back of the seat in front of him, the old man’s seat. When my son had to shift or move he had to push on the man’s seat to brace himself and this was clearly irritating the man.
My initial reaction
With my baby still screaming, I felt my face flush immediately and my anxiety returned.
I reached down, swatted at my four year olds little legs and angrily told him to stop pushing on the man’s seat.
Just. Like. That. My patience was gone.
My sweet boy, who was just trying to shift in his seat, looked up at me with hurt and confused eyes, wondering how his action could have been so bad.
To make matters worse, as I continued to try to calm my baby and send threatening glances at my two year old across the aisle to get him to sit down, the old man started to shake his head making me feel worse.
I proceeded to find as many names to call the man as I could; these names I will not write, but I did this in a subliminal attempt to hurt him since he had hurt me.
My face felt like it was going to explode.
Why did I react?
I finally got my kids to settle down and my baby fell asleep, allowing me to, for the next three hours on the flight, figure out what had triggered such a reaction.
I found that I was overwhelmed by two things after this interaction:
1. I suddenly felt like it was my responsibility to make this man happy again. I had absorbed his feelings. His irritability towards my kids became my irritability towards my kids, his dislike for them, became my dislike for them, something that was clearly evident in the way that I treated them after he spoke to me. I put his needs above my needs and the needs of my kids.
2. I felt like a horrible mom. My response wasn’t fair to my four year old. He was just trying to get comfortable and I didn’t have the patience to explain things to him.
What did I do?
I couldn’t possibly carry the burden of making it a perfect flight for the man while taking care of my kids in a kind manner. I had to separate my feelings from the man’s. This required two things:
1. I had to try to understand the man and allow him to carry his own feelings- I was used to being jumped on, spit on, and yelled at 24/7. He was not and he had every right to be uncomfortable with their energy. I needed to let him carry that discomfort. It was not fair to make myself carry it.
2. I had to remember what was important to me- my kids. I love them.
How and why did this help?
This took me the whole three hour flight to do, but doing this exercise helped me get rid of the feelings that weren’t even mine, allowing me to be the mom of my kids and kindly remind them to be respectful.
I now saw my kids through my eyes at this point, with love and more patience, no longer swatting angrily at my sons legs that continued to touch the man’s seat. No longer worried about making it the perfect flight for the man. Instead, I calmly asked my four year old dozens of times to put his feet down and asked my two year old dozens of times to sit down in his seat.
Throughout the remaining flight, the man continued to throw angry glances back at us including my husband as my two year raised the arm rest and let it bang back down creating an irritating sound. But before I responded to the event I took in a deep breath and then kindly asked my two year old to stop.
I was able to forgive the man for being so angry and stopped calling him names in my head. My natural self would have harbored bad feelings towards him, but instead at the end of the flight, my heart rate was calm and I was even ready to kindly smile at the man; although he dashed off the plane without even looking back. Looking back on this experience I am at peace knowing that I did my best for the man, for my kids and for myself.
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