Comment by trollbridge
9 hours ago
My kids are far from perfect angels, but they do just fine on a 5 hour flight with some colouring books, a small container of legos (with pieces pre-chosen to be ones we're okay with losing), and then the excitement of getting to order ANY drink they want (from their point of view).
I have 3 kids and it has dramatically changed my world view. They are all very different, despite being raised exactly the same. 1 or maybe 2 would do fine for 5 hours with colouring books and legos. The third absolutely would not. We still limit screen time to almost nothing so I'm not necessarily arguing with your overall point. But my honest reaction to comments like this or, worse, from people who aren't parents, is you really don't know. I'm not a single parent but, yea, imagine raising multiple kids who aren't as easy as yours on your own.
This is the reality of parenting. I didn't believe it in my 20s when a manager at my company talked to me about this phenomenon, and then I parented more than one kid. It was a real eye-opener to live through what had only been an intellectual exeercise before. For a bunch of kids, the standard stuff works. Then there's the rest.