Well, beyond the usual "Special Needs child who is best ignored because any attempt at calming him down will only make matters worse", and "Parents don't actually spend much time with the child on a day-to-day basis, so haven't developed the skills to deal with him,"....
There's also the possibility that if his parents were annoyed enough at TSA, they could have been passive-aggressively letting their child freak out. A kind of "See what you've done? Now we all have to suffer!" form of protest.
I've been, on occasion in the distant past, tempted to let my kids do this (but I always came to my senses fairly quickly and realized that a calm child is better for everyone, including me).
That's exactly what I was thinking! I hope my better self would come through in such a situation, but there is a LARGE part of me that thought "good for that mom - TSA created this mess, they can listen to the results."
I was at MCO last week and it was an total mess. We had to take all the food and all electronics out. So I literally just emptied one back pack completely, because it was easier than separating out food and electronics (because really, there's not much else in there)
They scanned every granola bar and candy bar. (Fortunately we hadn't been to a halloween party, so it wasn't the huge amounts others have)
Of course, in the confusion/chaos of taking out the new stuff, I forgot to take out my nicely packed, ready to go ziplock of liquids from one of the backpacks. And they didn't notice that at all.
I can't figure out what the real motivation is with all this, but it's certainly not making anyone any safer, and considering the anger and annoyance I saw at MCO, I'm thinking it's actually making us all a lot less safe.
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