Parenting while traveling

I am looking forward to traveling with Lindsey tomorrow to Arkansas to see my dad. She and I will have some time on a plane to perhaps watch some DVDs on my computer, play some games, hopefully have a good time.

My co-worker I just traveled with related a different story, however, when she traveled the previous week to New York.

Sitting behind her were two children and a man who she assumed was the children's dad. The plane pulled away from the gate then sat on the tarmac for an hour prior to finally taking off. In the interim, the boys, who she says were quite young, the oldest probably no older than 5, began crying for their mom. It soon became apparent that these children did not know the guy sitting next to them, and he seemed to not be familiar with little kids.

Passengers had to stay in their seats as they were close to their turn to take off, so once they were airborne the man called a flight attendant over and informed her that the children were apparently flying with no parents and needed help. (Their crying could be heard this whole time and for many rows in both directions.) They got the children's names, looked up the passenger log, and then went TWO ROWS AHEAD of Britt, where the parents were sitting together, listening to their iPods and generally having a good time.

The flight attendant apparently came up to them and said quite sternly, "Your children need you. You need to parent them."

I cannot imagine.

So one parent went back and sat by one child and they moved another child up front to the other one, and in Britt's opinion the children were more ill-behaved with their parents around, so they clearly weren't accustomed to structure or instruction.

Pathetic. I want to smack them.