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As exciting and comfortable as traveling by plane is for adults, sometimes it proves to be equally challenging and stressful for small children and their parents. It is often seen that as soon as the flight is about to take off or prepares for landing, even children sitting quietly suddenly start screaming, shouting and crying loudly. At such times, parents fail to keep the child quiet despite their best efforts, due to which not only the parents get upset but other passengers sitting nearby also have to face inconvenience. But do you know that children crying suddenly like this is not a part of their stubbornness, rather there is a very big scientific reason hidden behind it. Let us understand in detail from the perspective of an investigative reporter why babies cry in flights and which magical parenting tricks can be very useful to you to deal with such a situation.
Know why children cry, what is the scientific reason for this severe pain in the ears.
The main and biggest reason for children crying during air travel is ‘Ear Barotrauma’, which in common language is called blocking of ears or feeling like a curtain bursting. When an airplane rapidly climbs or descends, the atmospheric pressure within the cabin changes rapidly. There is a thin tube inside our ears called ‘Eustachian Tube’, which works to keep the internal and external pressure equal. In comparison to adults, this tube of small children is very narrow and underdeveloped, due to which they are not able to withstand this change in pressure easily. Due to this, they suddenly start experiencing unbearable and extremely severe pain in their ears, which they are unable to express verbally and start crying due to pain.
This magical trick of ‘sucking and chewing’ will be very useful during takeoff and landing.
To deal with this problem, the best and magical trick suggested by pediatricians and experienced parents is to give children something to chew or suck. When we swallow something, the Eustachian tube of our ears opens and the pressure inside the ear becomes normal. Therefore, breastfeed or bottle feed your little one as soon as the flight is about to take off or land. If the child is a little older, you can give him lollipops, chewing gum, toffee or his favorite snack to eat. By doing this, the swallowing process will continue continuously and the child will not feel any pain in the ears.
Don’t forget to arrange cotton buds and ‘earplane’ plugs before leaving for the journey.
To make air travel completely comfortable for children, you should keep some very important things ready with you in advance. Just before take-off, gently put small pieces of cotton buds in the child’s ears, so that the effect of loud noise and air pressure can be reduced. Apart from this, nowadays specially designed ‘EarPlanes’ or pressure-filtered earplugs are available in the markets and online stores for children, which prevent the changing pressure of the cabin from reaching the ears directly. With the help of these small gadgets, you can keep your child’s delicate ears completely safe.
It is very important to distract children and keep them hydrated during the flight.
Apart from the pain in the ears, sometimes children get scared or bored after seeing a new place, strange faces and the loud roar of the flight. To protect from this mental stress, keep some of the child’s favorite toys, colorful books or any new gadget in your hand bag, so that their attention can be easily distracted in difficult times. Along with this, due to lack of moisture in the air, children’s throat dries up quickly and they become irritable, hence keep them fully hydrated by giving them water or juice at intervals during the journey. Booking flight tickets according to children’s nap time during travel is also considered a very smart parenting hack, because the sleeping child remains completely unaffected by this pressure change.