A favourite comedian of mine recently posted an article on his blog about a trip he took to Australia, and a passenger on the plane. The article is a touch on the vulgar side, so I won’t copy/paste the text here, but I highly recommend reading it.

The short version is that, on his flight, he was seated next to a woman with a 7-year-old girl. Everything was peachy, the little girl was polite and well-behaved, and he was having a good flight. But, when dinner was served, the woman became indignant and refused food for herself and her daughter because it had meat in it, and there was no vegetarian option. The little girl asked if she could have chicken, because she was hungry, but the mom refused because “it’s disgusting”. Hours later, they came through with a snack (sandwiches of some sort), and the mother again refused to let her daughter have anything. A few more hours went by, and it was breakfast time, and this scene repeated itself. At this point, the little girl was starting to feel ill, and the mother started going seat to seat begging for food, trying to blame this on the airline. Other passengers, who didn’t see what was going on, offered bits of their breakfast, which the mother rudely refused because “it’s disgusting”.

This story was originally told in a humourous manner, but it really disturbs me. I’ve seen all sorts of bad parenting, but the idea of a parent witholding food from a seven-year-old girl on a 12-hour flight based on self-imposed dietary preferences is just unforgivable. This is the kind of stuff where Child Protective Services needs to get involved, just like with those psychos who refuse medical care of any kind for their children based on religious beliefs.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 22nd, 2008 at 10:00:41 and is filed under Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.