I was on a flight last week form Chicago to Kansas City.  I had an aisle seat on the “D-E-F” side of the plane.  The flight was full.  A man who was in the healthcare profession sat in the middle seat of my row and a grandmotherly type was in the window seat.  Immediately in front of me was a teenage girl, in the middle seat was her teenage brother and their mother sat in the window seat.  The short flight began as all others, but quickly turned into a very disturbing trip.

The mother began what was to become an ongoing tirade against her son.  It started slowly and softly. I thought it was just a typical scolding.  I was wrong.  I couldn’t hear their words initially because I was using ear plugs for air pressure  AND I had on a headset for music.  It didn’t require hearing the words, however, to understand that “mom” was very irritated with her son.  The look on her face and the accusatory finger point said it all.  It soon escalated.

I knew she was getting louder when I could start to hear her words through all my ear paraphernalia.  She berated her son terribly, ” … you STUPID BRAT, I TOLD you I was using the arm rest.  DON’T touch me again …”  The man next to me and I exchanged worried glances.  The boy leaned closer and closer to his sister to avoid any touch to his mother.  I never heard him say one word to his mother.  Clearly he’d been beaten down so many times by her that he just took it very passively.  What else could he do in these circumstances?

She slept for a while and her son stayed huddled toward his sister.  When she awoke she would turn to him and stare with the most hateful glare one could imagine.  Because she was on the far right and I was on the far left, I could see her face quite clearly in-between the seats.  I was riveted by her expression. Her face had a hateful grimace and her eyes revealed much deeper problems …  it was those eyes like Charles Manson or Rasputin!  I could feel her tension and it was transferring to me in the form of anxiety.  The grandmother in my row started talking nervously to the man in the center seat.  The three of use could grasp the situation better than anyone else in the area.  The mother and her children were seated in the bulkhead, so there was no one in front of them.

Then the most disturbing moment occurred.  After a string of humiliating and berating words to her son she raised her right arm over her head and her hand was in a fist.   That fist came down toward the top of his head and she came 6″ from hitting him.  He cowered, but didn’t seem surprised. My heart broke for these teens.  At the same time, I knew that this was not something new to them.  

I’d reached the breaking point. I couldn’t stand any more.  With the support of my seat mates, I approached the lead flight attendant and relayed to her the disturbing interactions in the preceding row.  She listened.  I felt only a bit better and I sat down.  Moments later the attendant went into the crew cabin and I presume spoke with the captain.  My hunch was that this was protocol for incident when a passenger acts out.  Not long after she came back to me and whispered that she’d noticed odd behavior of this woman during boarding.  She said she’d keep an eye on the woman.

When we landed in KC, I walked behind them on the way down the concourse.  She seemed calmer at this point and the teenagers continued to be subdued in behavior.  I’d made the decision that if she had done anything else physically aggressive to either of her children I’d find some authority in the airport.  I didn’t know what else to do. 

This was a woman with a significant problem.  As the man beside me said, she needs serious therapy and the kids probably do too.  This was abuse and I can only imagine what goes on at home.

I felt helpless.  I wanted to put my arms around these kids and whisk them away.  Yet at the same time, I knew they probably loved their mother and that they had to have some understanding of her problems.

What should we do in circumstances like this?  I’ve not faced anything like this on a flight before.  What responsibility do we have in such a situation?  I wish someone from social services had been there to see this and determine the appropriate action, if there is any.  Any action mid-flight could be incendiary for someone like this. 

I couldn’t help but think that this kind of verbal and physical abuse could lead this poor boy to significant problems of his own and would probably affect future relationships with women.  I’ve thought about these kids every day since this flight and I’d really like to know the answer to this quandary.  What are we supposed to do? 

A couple of days later when I was on my way back home, I saw a woman in the airport with a T-shirt that read, “Report abuse”.  That one hit home with me and it hit hard.