Come Fly With Me

Amid all the hustle and bustle of moving, I totally missed the fairly recent controversy about a child with cerebral palsy being asked to sit in her own seat during a flight.  The little girl is over three years old and the law requires any child above 24 months to be in his or her own seat during take-off and landing.  If the child needs special accommodations to comply with the law, parents can purchase and bring an FAA approved car seat or even have their child fly in his or her own wheelchair on large enough planes.  You can find more details here and an opinion here.

I agree with Hallie Levine.  Unfortunately, the reality of special needs parenting is that you will have to do more homework and put in more effort on your own to allow your child to participate fully in life.  Claiming ignorance of the law and of the adaptive equipment available to follow the law on the Kirschenbaums' (who are clearly frequent flyers) part is a cop-out.  It's your responsibility as a parent to be prepared for air travel with your child, not the airlines'.  So from one special needs mom to another: you knew better, you are smart enough and dedicated enough to figure this out for your daughter, but you chose not to do so because in the past you have been able to steamroll over the airline personnel and the law to have it your way.

Having said all of this, I will add one thing.

We have three children with special needs and we spend extensive time speaking with airline and airport staff informing them well ahead of our travel of our children's needs and how they can be accommodated.  This has included anything from ordering wheelchair service from gate to gate, requesting special meals to meet dietary restrictions, and calling TSA Cares to let them know of Rex's struggles with the security check.  Very rarely (and usually only in Western Europe) do our work and preparation bear fruit, if at all.

We have been left many times transferring between flights without the wheelchair service we had ordered or even without our own adaptive stroller that was gate-checked and supposed to be returned to us at the connecting airport.  We have been forced at TSA checks to unbuckle our screaming, kicking, snot-flinging, biting, hitting preschooler from his adaptive stroller, so that he could be patted down.  We have endured nine-hour flights without the special meals we had requested.  We have even been forced to open tetra pack drinks for our daughter with food allergies (literally poke the straw in the hole and pour some of the liquid out to be tested) and told we could "tape the packs back up" and still take them on the flight.  TSA was going to conveniently provide us with the tape to do so.  Are you kidding me?

At other airports, we were allowed to move our tetra packs and baby jar food through the scanner intact, but then Craig and I had to undergo additional pat downs, hand wipe downs, shoe and belt scans, etc. to make sure our kids' food didn't include ingredients to make explosives.  Our strollers had to be pulled aside to be double-checked as well. So left without a way to restrain our kids and with us standing there getting our own bodies searched, our small children are usually trying to climb on the conveyor, grabbing other people's items from the bins, scratching and hitting random travelers, running off into the terminal... all while getting the evil eye from TSA staff.  I am sorry to say, but TSA does not care.

Maybe none of this would be unexpected or upsetting except that we do do our homework and try to ready everyone possible for the times that our family travels by air.  Unfortunately, all too often our preparations are for naught and we undergo great stress before and after vacations or visits with loved ones around the world.  Still, we are willing to follow the law and to accept the trials and tribulations of air travel to allow our children to participate fully in life and experience the same things many of their peers do.  The Kirschenbaums need start doing the same.