Exhausted parents entrust their two children to a stranger for the duration of their flight: 2 hours of tranquility
A woman told Reddit how a complete stranger "entrusted" her two children to her during a scheduled flight from New York. This seems absurd given the many warnings that adults personally give to children: "Don't accept candy from strangers" or more simply "Stay with mom or dad and don't trust anyone you don't know". Fortunately, the unknown woman was perfectly capable of handling this strange situation, but the fact remains that it does not happen every day that one is entrusted with the care of two children by chance. The reason, however, is simple: the mother was too tired and the father took the opportunity to take a couple of hours off babysitting his kids too.
But does this seem normal to you?
via Reddit
Flickr / Carissa Rogers / not the actual photo
Reddit user "Mindfulterapeuta186" spotted a family with two children as they stood in line for airport security checks. She had noticed that the mother seemed to be very tired, slumped on a trolley waiting to continue on in the queue, while her husband tried to keep her awake, and her two children who would not stop harrassing her. Although it was 6:30am in the morning, and the woman had only had two hours of sleep, she thought she could help calm the children down, given her professional experience as a primary school teacher for children with special needs. In fact, she stepped in and did this without too many problems at all: shortly after the intervention, the two brothers, Daniel (6) and Eric (9), began to chat peacefully about a video game they very much loved - Minecraft. The therapist's skill with the children did not go unnoticed and a woman behind her, who had witnessed the scene in the company of her son, thanked her. The two then began a pleasant conversation about the nature of therapeutic work with children.
An hour and a half later, the therapist got on the plane and noticed that the mother of the two children was already asleep sitting in her seat, five rows behind her. After a while, she saw her father come up with the two children. Her first child, Daniel, sat next to her, while her father stared at the therapist for a few uncomfortable moments: "Is something wrong?" she asked. Then something unexpected happened: the man took the boarding pass from the hands of his second son, Eric, exchanges it with him and tells his son to sit in the aisle seat next to his brother. Then, he rushed off to the row where his wife was.
In short, the father had deliberately left his two small children next to a person he had only met an hour before.
The therapist grudgingly accepted the situation, but was pleased that the siblings behaved excellently during the flight. After explaining to them how the TV screen worked, she allowed herself take a nap. Two hours later she woke up to a bottle of water and some cookies in front of her: the children had thought about getting her a snack and she really appreciated it. At one point, the mother of the children began to stress about not seeing her children, but then she was able to calm down once they were spotted sitting next to the therapist. At the end of the flight, the mother apologized to the woman who had had her children sitting next to her for the whole flight. Her husband had heard that she was a very good elementary teacher and could handle restless children and had thought it would be a good idea to leave his children in her hands for a couple of hours.
The therapist concluded her story on Reddit: “On the way home, once they got off the plane, the Mom kept reminding her kids of the danger of talking to strangers and how they have to be careful in places as big as the airport. Daniel gave me a paper heart that he cut out of a New York City magazine, so now I have a new best friend. "
