- A father is captured during a flight in London, allowing his child to crawl down an empty aisle
- The tactic of calming the restless baby sparks debate as people cringe
- Others insist the father is “smart” because he “keeps the child quiet” around passengers
There can be nothing worse than the piercing screams of a restless child on board a crowded passenger plane…
And yet one father’s innovative tactic of keeping his son blissfully distracted and quiet during a flight to London has still managed to divide opinion.
A video posted by Darcey – aka @darceomatic – on TikTok shows a man trying to entertain his child during the flight.
Uploaded in October 2022, the video has since racked up nearly two million views, more than 172,000 likes and more than 1,700 comments from viewers impressed or concerned by this somewhat innovative parenting style.
In the footage, titled ‘Parenthood seen on a recent flight in London’, the father is seen sitting upright in an aisle seat as the child curls up on the floor next to him.
Dangling his left hand, the father lets the boy crawl a ways down the empty aisle – before pulling him by the pants back to his seat so the child can climb back up the aisle.
A parent has sparked an online debate after being caught using an innovative tactic to keep his young child occupied during a flight to London
Each time the toddler escapes his father’s grasp and begins to crawl out of his arm’s reach, the man pulls him back one more time before letting him go.
The child zooms down the aisle at lightning speed, but not without being sharply rescued by a parent accustomed to their toddler disappearing from sight in the blink of an eye.
In the 35-second video, the father and child repeat the maneuver several times, leading commentators to believe the technique was performed in flight to keep the restless child occupied and calmed down.
The carpeted aisle serves as a seemingly safe, soft platform for the child to play and walk around – but not according to some people who consider the floor ‘dirty’ and ‘full of germs’.
Triggered by the child crawling and being pulled back while his hands were firmly on the carpet, some in the TikTok community cringed at the father’s lack of concern about possible germs.
One user commented: ‘My OCD is overwhelming. Germs,” while another said, “I think about all the dirt that must be on that floor.”
Another person wrote: ‘People walking up and down what about his hands,’ while a fourth said: ‘Think about the fact that the carpet is full of nasty germs from the bottom of people’s shows. Thanks dad.”
A fifth person said: ‘I can’t help but think about the dirty carpet and the cringe. They hardly clean those planes.’
Dangling his left hand, the father lets the toddler crawl a distance down the empty aisle – before pulling him back to his seat by the pants so the child can climb back up the aisle
More than 1,700 comments were left from viewers who were impressed by the father’s quick thinking or worried about the child coming into contact with germs
However, other people praised the dad for his near-effortless “parenting hack” for those on board planes with toddlers.
One person wrote: ‘Pretty clever. Keeps the child happy and calm,’ while another said: ‘That’s excellent parenting haha.’
A third commented: ‘He’s making that baby tired, he’s actually a pretty smart parent,’ while a fourth person wrote: ‘At least he’s calm and having fun. If he shouted, everyone would soon start whining.’
This comes after an irate airline passenger insulted a mother in October for changing her ‘screaming’ son’s nappy in her seat.
The furious traveler took to Reddit to share her ‘terrible’ experience, with many users calling out the mother’s misstep and others calling for child-free flights.