Strangers lock toddler in plane bathroom to stop her tantrums
The video of a controversial incident on a plane has caused outrage, as two women reprimanded a screaming toddler by locking her in the bathroom on the aircraft.
On a Juneyao Airlines flight from Guiyang to Shanghai, China, in late August, a one-year-old child, who was travelling with her grandparents, reportedly sobbed non-stop during the nearly three-hour flight according to the NY Post.
After being fed up with the toddler's tantrum, two women who were strangers to the family reportedly transported her to the bathroom to “educate her.”
Shockingly, the child’s grandmother consented to the treatment.
The punitive pair then shared the video of this alleged “potty training” on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok.
In the clip, the women can be seen seated in the locked lavatory with the screaming infant, as one of the women is heard saying, “If you stop crying, aunty will take you back to grandma” and “We won’t let you out unless you stop crying.”
As the girl stopped crying, the woman filming the video picked her up and told her: “If you make any noise again, we’ll come back (to the bathroom).”
One of the women was initially proud of her cruel and unusual-seeming form of discipline, as she wrote that the tantrum was so disruptive that “many passengers were using tissues to block their ears” while others “had moved to the back of the plane to escape the noise.”
According to a statement from the airline, the little girl's mother, who was not travelling with them, reportedly sympathised with the self-appointed aeroplane posse’s behaviour.
Since the video went viral, and was subsequently deleted, Juneyao Airlines’ reps have since condemned the pairs’ actions and apologised for the incident and “oversight of the crew”.
Despite the video being wiped from the social media site, many were quick to slam the behaviour of the women, saying their discipline was completely unacceptable.
“Adults in their 30s can have emotional breakdowns, but people don’t allow toddlers to have theirs,” one person commented,
Another wrote, “The grandmother and the two aunts should be sued, and social services should intervene. If there are parents like this, children will suffer in the future.”
“When will these people understand that babies have the right to cry and the right to travel, they are part of society, and so are babies!!!!!!!” declared a third.
Image credits: Weibo