The trials and tribulations of travelling with a flirty, dirty one-year-old toddler

First published in Daily Maverick 168

Our little boy has just turned one, which means he doesn’t yet need his own seat, which is great because we save on costs. We owed my mom a visit in Pretoria and she couldn’t wait to spend some time with her grandkid, but on the other hand it would have been more worth it if the ticket had come with a sitter, two beds for my partner and I and perhaps, as an extra kindness, sleeping tablets so we could just pass out for the one-and-a-half-hour flight from Cape Town to Lanseria.

We have a few friends with kids, so we were educated on what would be the best time to fly with the little guy. The top tip was to make sure we booked our flight according to his nap time (which we did), to have enough bottles on hand regardless of how many he actually drinks per day, because the sucking helps with any earaches the air pressure may cause, and to have enough snacks and toys to swap out every 15 minutes or so.

The first two pieces of advice worked quite well. He experienced zero pain because of the sucking and just as we took off, he lay in my arms fast asleep while all the blood drained from my body and I became as numb as a shop-window mannequin, too scared to move in case I woke him. My partner and I obviously used this mercy to put our heads together like a pair of conjoined twins and close our eyes. But my head fell forward as fast as a fly fisherman casts his line in the water, and the jerk woke the tot up.

He needed a nappy change immediately to remove the cow pat and save all the other passengers from potentially hating us even more for travelling with a child. I know how this feels. My sentiments about kids on planes have always been the same. Hated people who did it. But life changes and, in turn, when travelling, you ruin everyone else’s life instead.

Because I’d so kindly offered my body as a mattress, my wife decided to take him to the bathroom. This was another tip we got from one of his godparents. “Just take him for lots of trips to the toilet like an adventure.” Nope. After much fighting and fussing in there the nappy was changed but both my family members returned absolutely traumatised by the experience. He was wailing, big buckets of eye rain falling from his eyes. And she just went silent. This lasted quite a while. When I asked if she was okay, she said: “I just cannot believe that actually just happened. The fear hit me hard. If he makes a little pants pie on the way back it’s going to be my turn to change him in that little aeroplane cubicle and that’s all I can think about.”

It took a while for things to settle down a bit. A droëwors snack and gorgeous vintage Beetle toy did the trick for a bit.

It wasn’t long before he noticed a beautiful flight attendant take her seat right in front of us. More than the stench of his little nappy and extremely loud wailing, the experience with the flight attendant was by far the most embarrassing.

He basically cat-called her for the rest of the flight. “Wow,” he said, staring. He tilted his head like a rag doll, constantly trying to get a better view. And the “hellos” in his weird British accent didn’t stop.

Obviously, because we don’t want him turning into some toxic creep man, we try to teach him about consent and boundaries and how no means no. But with a one-year-old it’s totally hopeless and I actually started to feel bad for the woman, who seemed to force conversation with her co-worker just to avoid eye contact with a one-year-old who was behaving like a weird old man. Are we raising him badly? Have we done something wrong? Do we somehow model this behaviour? And why doesn’t he grasp the idea of consent?

Wow. DM168

Haji Mohamed Dawjee is an author and freelance journalist.