More Proof That Southwest Has the Best Flight Attendants

When you become a parent, you begin a lifetime of experiencing new “firsts”: the first time you leave the house without the pacifier (the horror!), the first time your baby has a huge diaper blowout in public when you absentmindedly left the diaper bag at home, the first time your little one tells you “I love you.” You take the good with the bad and move on to the next thing, because there is always a next thing. But one “first” that few (if any?) parents look forward to is taking their small children on a flight. You never know what you’re going to get.

Sure, childless people hate flying with kids on board. But parents hate it more. Period. If you want to see a stressed out person, all you have to do is board a flight and sit across from a man or a woman who is traveling with a child under the age of five. While you can drown out the sounds of incessant crying with your noise-canceling headphones, that parent has to try to calm and entertain that baby for the duration of the flight. That includes taking laps up and down the aisle when she’d much rather be sleeping or reading in peace. That means coming armed with bags of snacks and hours of cartoons loaded onto the iPad. And it means often feeling horrified and at a loss when that little baby just can’t handle being on the plane and has a full-blown meltdown. Because you know what? Traveling stinks. Think about how uncomfortable the whole ordeal is for you. Now imagine what that’s like for a small human who hasn’t mastered self-control, ear-popping yawns, and the ability to sit still for long periods of time. It’s pure torture.

Occasionally, when flying with kids who are melting down, a stranger shows a parent some much-needed mercy. We’ve all heard stories — there was that one man who walked a toddler up and down the plane’s aisle so the pregnant mom could get a little rest. Or the woman who let a baby sleep on her when the dad couldn’t stop him from crawling all over her in her window seat. Most recently, a flight attendant for Southwest Airlines stepped up and helped a parent whose baby girl couldn’t get calm.

According to a recent Facebook post, a mother traveling with her two small daughters didn’t know what to do when the baby had a crying fit that nothing could calm.

This Southwest employee asked the mother to come to the back of the plane with him. I looked back and saw him blowing bubbles for the little girl until she stopped crying as he was also giving tissues to the mother and consoling her as she was crying too.

Carrie Jaboor, who was seated behind the family and who posted the update, spoke with Scary Mommy:

“When I saw the flight attendant ask her to step to the back, I could tell the mother (and myself) thought she was going to get in trouble but then I looked back and couldn’t believe that he was blowing bubbles. It just made me so happy to see a flight attendant take a situation that could be construed as annoying/disturbing for some people and handle it with love.” Jaboor said the flight attendant’s bubble trick made her day too. She was moving away from Orlando with that flight, and says seeing flight attendant’s kindness helped lift her spirits.

Sometimes all it takes is a stranger to make a flight a pleasant experience.