Passengers on a flight from Guiyang to Shanghai this past Saturday locked a crying toddler in an airplane lavatory in order to quiet her. The toddler, who appeared to be about one year old, was traveling with her grandparents and had been in tears non-stop throughout the nearly three-hour flight.
Video was posted to China’s Douyin, similar to TikTok. A women is heard telling the toddler, “We won’t let you out unless you stop crying,” as the child struggled to reach the door while sitting on the woman’s lap. Once the girl calmed down, the woman filming the video picked her up and warned her, “If you make any noise again, we’ll come back (to the bathroom).” The video, posted to show how they managed to quiet the child (in positive light), went viral due to outrage.
According to Juneyao Airlines, which confirmed details of the incident in a statement, the toddler’s grandmother agreed to the women taking her grandchild to the bathroom to “educate her.” The airline said that the grandmother stood outside the bathroom door during the entire incident. The carrier later issued an apology, acknowledging an “oversight of the crew” for allowing it, and condemning the behavior of the two passengers.
Online outrage prompted several viewers of the video to file police reports against the women, though the Guizhou Airport Public Security Bureau did not press charges, citing the grandmother’s consent.
The grandmother defended her actions in her now-deleted Douyin post, saying she wanted to ensure a restful flight for the other passengers.
- She claimed that many passengers were using tissues to block their ears from the noise of the crying child
- Some had moved to the back of the plane to escape the sound.
- She wanted to take action rather than be a bystander.
I just wanted to calm the child down and let everyone rest.
The incident has reignited discussions in China about so-called “bear children,” a term used to describe young children who cause disturbances in public.
I’d point out that the lavatory doesn’t block sufficient sound to keep noise out of the cabin. At age one the punishment probably isn’t effective. Brief time outs do work, especially approaching age two. And the question the girl’s family should be asking is what they were doing leading up to the flight, in terms of consistent expectations-setting but also preparation with activities that both engage but also mellow (because travel can be overwhelming to a toddler, with all the strange people and unfamiliar places).
Should have dropped the little vermin in the cargo hold.
Bad parenting
Not everyone should have children.
Enough Said.
THREE HOURS on screaming and wailing? At what point should something be done? Do you just let the kid continue to scream? How about if it was a 10 hour flight?
The airline should know better.
Mainland Chinese are by far the worst culture in the world. They are a cancer invading the globe
I’ve had the screaming 14 month old lap child on a Europe – West Coast trip via NYC. My daughter lost it after about 12 hours of travel. And nothing worked. For hours. It was horrifying for my wife and me, but I’m sure it was worse for anyone around us. Until you’ve been in the situation, I’d be real slow to judge about how good a parent someone is. Or what can be done. You just have no idea.
As for locking a toddler in the can for 3 hours? That’s plain wrong.
You know what? I’m okay with this. The only way to get a toddler to stop biting is to bite them back. No matter how much you hover and scold toddlers will simply keep biting until they are bit a wee little bit hard and it hurts. Taking the child out of the main cabin to change her environment didn’t hurt her any. Sometimes kids do need a bit of a shock to pay attention and stop what they are doing, i,e. screaming. In a restaurant if your child acts up you take them out of the restaurant into the parking lot until they settle down and you can take them back in.
There is this thing nowadays called gentle parenting, I am not a fan. Basically the kids run wild, the parents do not react and you hope one day the kids grow out of it. To me it is simply lazy parenting. It is laziness. It is hard to parent, takes effort and honestly is exhausting. I have flown transatlantic with my children from a year on up in age, regularly. Yeah it’s hard, I managed, sure they cried sometimes for a while on the plane but nothing like this child.
Wrong, and criminal to lock a child in a lavatory. The parents or guardians are reprehensible. Also people, USE CONDOMS.
Wicked people doing horrible things. But remember you reap what you sow.
Thomas is right. I’ve been there myself with my own kids when they were younger. And I parent as hard as I can. You feel terrible, but in the end, there is only so much you can do.
The grandparents were not the ones that could comfort the child correctly. I’m not sure that reasoning with the child did anything for the child, only for the adults. The toilet was a limited environment that gave the child a very limited feedback loop. After a while with no feedback from the environment (nothing changing), the child became calmer. It is also common for children to become calmer after a good crying session. I sometimes babysat for a toddler boy when his mother came over and then went shopping with my wife. When I held him, he was instantly calm. With my wife he would fidget and cry sometimes. He was also the same with his mother but was a bit calmer. I have no idea why he found my holding him so comforting. He preferred me holding him to his mother holding him. My wife found the situation amazing.
It’s a tough situation. My cousin and his wife did a non-stop NY to Sydney flight with their 2 year old and it was a disaster, with the kid getting so wild that the flight attendant quietly threatened to throw him out the window. On the other hand, unless you are around kids a lot its hard to explain what is involved in managing active ones. As a toddler my first was so energetic that I got a leash and harness system to keep him close (then at the mall he’d get on all fours and lead me while barking). People who had little kids would ask where they could buy that, those without would scream at me. He’s now a judge so I guess it didn’t do any harm.
I for one honestly can’t believe that a person would stoop to locking a toddler into a lavatory cause they can’t handle doing their job as a parent properly, even though I honestly get that being a parent is tough,but locking a child away is reprehensable & Inexcusable at the same time and those parents or parent should have their child taken away from them
A screaming child who just won’t stop is a nightmare on an airplane. That’s a perfect example of why small children don’t belong in premium cabins but I’m not sure that torturing the kid is an effective way to handle things.
I know it is not fun for passengers to have a screaming child aboard their flight, but locking them in a bathroom is certainly not the answer. Samuel S I certainly disagree with the racist comment you made about mainland Chinese people.
When banishing a crying one-year-old passenger to solitary confinement in an aircraft lavatory for three hours, how do you prevent this kiddo from drowning in the toilet blue juice?
It’s Chinese. All you need to know. The same people who urinate and defecate in public.
People and babies breath through nose, not mouth. Just tape the horrible, bad child’s mouth. Horrible and very inconsidered parents.
I read this post repeatedly and I still don’t understand. Was the child locked in the bathroom ALONE or with an adult? You say “A women is heard telling the toddler, “We won’t let you out unless you stop crying,” as the child struggled to reach the door while sitting on the woman’s lap.”
First of all I assume you mean a woman not a women and it sounds like that woman (another passenger?) had the baby in her lap at least part of the time, maybe the whole time, and it may have only been a few minutes. If that’s the case what’s the big deal?? If she wasn’t in there alone, aside from the question of letting a stranger take your grandchild into a bathroom and maybe crawl on a shit and piss covered floor (which I wouldn’t personally do but I see parents let their kids crawl around all sorts of disgusting places), I don’t understand the outrage. So what’s the crime and outrage here– that the hysterical baby was allowed to be handled by another woman? If the baby was locked in alone that’s a whole different story.
I guess the title is intentionally misleading to imply a baby was locked in a lav alone for the whole 3 hour flight? Sounds like a baby cried nonstop for the majority of a 3 hour flight and at some point was given to some woman who took her into the restroom for some lesser degree of time to try to calm her down– and it worked. What am I missing?
As much as y’all love hating on the Chinese I don’t understand the holier than thou outrage.
Agree 100% with Larry. the child was not locked in alone. The stranger woman was in there with her. Kids gotta learn limits to their behavior. They have to learn limits, and the stranger woman was willing to help out and teach the child that lesson and was holding her in the bathroom with her. Kudos to her!
Agree with Larry
The story CLEARLY states the grandmother was in the bathroom WITH the child the whole time
Nobody locked the child in alone. As others have stated, sometimes you remove an out of control child from one environment to another to calm them down.
An interesting, and in this case, an effective solution. And, yes, I’m a mom
CNN ran this: https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/30/china/china-crying-toddler-airplane-bathroom-hnk-intl/index.html “Two strangers locked her in the bathroom.” What clickbait bullshit!!! They went in with the child, were there with her the whole time and the grandmother agreed and was standing at the other side of the door.
Unconventional and not something everyone would feel comfortable with? Probably. Criminal or negligent or disgraceful? No way. This just shows some real judgementalism, cultural insensitivity and sensationalism created in our social media age. This is about as meaningful and interesting as the posts about people who put their bare feet up on the seats. Nothing to see here. Move on.
No one has mentioned a potential cause of the child’s screams. It’s possible the altitude caused ear pain, which happens frequently to young children because they don’t know how to get their ears to pop. Instead of torturing a frightened, possibly in pain, baby how about trying comforting solutions?
Two words: Mainland China. For those who’ve lived it, no further explanation is necessary. For those who haven’t, no explanation is possible.
This is monstrous. The kid is screaming because she’s scared of the new and unfamiliar situation. Making things only scarier and more unfamiliar is unbelievably counterproductive for a kid that young. Complete failure of parenting to come unprepared, sans toys or distractions, or prepare the kid in any way for the new experience.
Cool! I’d love it if there was a ‘baby section’ on planes that is sound proof, like baby cry rooms in churches. It’s probably the best situation to keep the screaming babies away from everyone else. There really is no reason to bring toddlers on planes. They just shouldn’t travel like this. There really needs to be a minimum age to travel.
I’ll say, at least the parents were doing “something” versus quite a few who “just tune them out…” and ignore them. At someone has the guts to do SOMETHING. Maybe it’s not something everyone agrees with. Fine. But it’s better than have the constant screaming for hours on end and just ignoring it like many guardians do today.
Frequent flyers mostly have earbuds and music in case of a nasty situation like a screaming kid on a flight. Kids get upset, they don’t know how to talk yet, they make noise. Just a fact of life. Get over it and be pro-active. Don’t blame the peeps in charge of the kid.
The critics have got it all wrong: This is a shining example of progressivism and modernism in Chinese parenting. Think: Just a few years ago, they were aborting female fetuses, and suffocating female newborns. My, how far Chinese parenting skills have come in the 21st century!! Let’s hear it for how great it is to be a baby girl in China today!
Good Grief! A nation of snowflakes we have become. Certainly not capable of competing with the Chinese. My generation: “if you keep crying I will really give you something to cry about.” A toddler is fully capable of changing his behavior to avoid pain. A worm can learn that.
I see nothing wrong with this. It’s a creative solution to a difficult problem and no harm done. No need for them to post a video about it though.
Jack: “My generation: “if you keep crying I will really give you something to cry about.”
So true, so so true.
and it isn’t their ears either, all that crying and screaming would have popped the ears. An actual ear infection in a child this age presents differently. The kids cry for a while, then they settle down. Then 10-15 minutes later they start crying again. it seems the ear infection pain must ebb and flow.
Please stop imposing the western norms of raising a child and exercise some cultural sensitivity. In Chinese eyes, it takes a true village to raise a child. In this case, the entire plane should take action to discipline the brat. Posting this video online is in poor taste.
And going back to what my mother taught me: if you cannot afford manners, you cannot afford to fly.
Idiots blame parenting but at one year old you dont respond to training. Youre just a sack of instinct.