I think you are on to something here. I suggest on flights that people can rate other passengers through an app, just type in their seat number and give a rating. Much like the feedback system on eBay or Uber. Then, when you go to a seat map to select seats for a future flight, you can see the ratings of all other people who have already chosen seats. Certain seatings zones can also be set up for passengers with a minimum rating, and passengers with the ratings under a certain threshold would have to sit in the back.

straitjacket and muzzle?

I simply withhold TV and movies from my children for several days prior to flying. When they fly they are glued to the inflight entertainment and doesn't bother anyone.

Agreed. In fact, the worst are always adults. Whether it's baby crying half of the 12-hour flight, kid behind you playing with your seatback's tray table, whatever it is, it doesn't bother me that much. They're just little kids, they're not trying to be jerks obviously.

What I can't stand are those who make a face when I refuse to swap my aisle for his window, neighbor who smells like he hasn't brushed teeth in a week, dude spreading his legs well into my space, guy who gets upset at me for reclining my seat even though it's a 10-hr flight and the seat in front of mine is also leaned back. Can't stand them, because these are jerks.

If people don't like being around children, public transport probably isn't the way to travel...

If you can't teach/control your children to act civilly, public transport probably isn't the way to travel.

The solution isn't external, its internal. Stop being irritated by things you cannot control. Go to your happy place in your mind. Its the same place I visit when I go to the dentist. Its lovely there.

These two things aren't mutually exclusive. Unfortunately there's no practical way to absolutely avoid disruptive behaviour (from adults and children alike) on an aircraft without avoiding air travel altogether, or only traveling on a private jet.

For what it's worth I've yet to have my travels disturbed or disrupted by a misbehaving child, but I've seen plenty of atrocious behaviour from adults around the world in airports and on aircraft - drunk and disorderly in the lounges, queue skipping, taking up overhead locker space, dropping bags on people's heads, using mobiles long after the 'flight only mode' announcement is made, screaming obscenities at missing baggage staff, being sexually inappropriate towards cabin crew, standing up and demanding to use the toilets while seatbelt signs on at takeoff/landing... the list goes on and on and on.....

;)

Is there some sort of Flyertalk rule that we have to do this thread anew every week or so?

Back when I didn't know any better and would grab the window seat, I once kept a toddler (say 24-28 months) quiet by opening and closing the window blind - for 3.5 hours! The mother (aisle) had him and an older boy (say 4 years, middle seat) in three seats in a 737. The younger boy had started crying/screaming after take-of, I assume because of the air pressure change. She thanked me after the flight, as did a few other passengers. My arm was phuking killing me though!

By far the best way to reduce irritation with children is to have children yourself. I never believed it, myself, but now I've gone from gritted-teeth-and-earphones to ha, look at that meltdown, that was him last week, glad it's not today, eh?

Kids are far from automatic irritation, and not having any I don't have any particularly special sympathy. I've sat in the same row or within a few rows of lots of kids who were perfectly well behaved, or made a small amount of noise during the pressure changes, but were otherwise well behaved. I've even had kids protect a middle for me, like when I was in an aisle on WN, mom with lap kid takes the window and says "she's well behaved, but I can sit somewhere else if you want". She stayed, kid was quiet, and we had a middle empty.

Most recently, flying BOS-LAX (~6 hour flight time) I had an E+ window and had a couple with a lap kid sit in the middle and aisle. When the service cart came by, the FA let me know that the guy on the other side of the aisle (two people sitting in that row) was offering me the aisle over there to get away from the kid, who was perfectly fine. I was settled in, the kid was fine, and the guy who would have been in the middle wasn't small (not POS large, but would have been cramped), so I told the parents I'd take it if they wanted the extra space, but was otherwise fine. I stayed where I was, kid was active but not annoying for a little while at the start and then slept like a rock. Mom next to me was smaller than the guy on the other side, so I wasn't getting elbowed.

I'm longing for the good old days when the kids either stayed home (IE, with relatives) while the parents travelled, or else the parents stayed home too and didn't travel.

At least that's how it was done in my family.

Those days must have been quite a long time ago. My first flight was in 1969 at the age of 2. I don't think my then three-year-old sister or I caused any trouble except for me tossing up my pancakes on the tarmac when we got off the plane in DC. It was some kind of work trip for my dad, and for some reason we all came along except for my little sister, who was several months old at the time. While I can still describe some of the details, some of the circumstances are a little ambiguous. Reportedly, we flew in first, but we certainly didn't have a lot of money.

Yet another pointless anti-kid thread. Would somebody please lump all forty thousand of them together so they don't keep cluttering up the fora?

As for coloring kids differently on the seating map, silly idea as most of the time you're not required to put an age on the ticket for U.S. domestic travel as there is no longer discounts for kids. My experience for intra EU travel is the same, but I can't say with certainty that's the policy for all intra EU travel. Additionally, if a kid is really going to scream, just being a few rows away won't do much to lessen the problem.

As others in this thread have mentioned, adults under the influence of alcohol cause far worse problems. Twice in recent years I've been on flights that were delayed because the police had to called to haul off a belligerent drunk. What's worse, a crying baby or a missed connection?