Children Do Not Belong in the Workplace

It seems that lately, in the news, our child-worshiping society has gone too far with one particular news story. The news story in question is the one surrounding the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York where an air traffic controller allowed his two young children to actually direct pilots into landing at the airport. Allowing children to do the work of highly skilled and trained adults is not something to be taken lightly, and the air controller's actions were not taken lightly by his superiors, either. Glenn Duffy, the air traffic controller, has been suspended for allowing his two children to do his job. This begs the question, why exactly did he allow two small children to be in charge of something he himself should have done?

Duffy's excuse is that his children were at home from school two consecutive days, and that there was no one at home to watch them. Allowing children in the workplace is one thing, even though many companies and government offices do not condone the presence of children because they can cause distractions and lower productivity levels. A parent dragging a child into the workplace just to show off the child's abilities is, well, something entirely different, which is exactly what Duffy did. Maybe he thought it would be cute for his 7-year old son to give direction to incoming pilots on February 16, 2010. Apparently he thought it was cute enough for his daughter to do the same job on the following day. Of course, since all of the directions on the radio remain recorded by the FAA in the event something goes wrong an a pilot ends up crash-landing, it was inevitable that Duffy's actions would be found out sooner than later. The pilots who were given landing directions by the children may have been amused to the point where they wished they could bring their children to work and do the job for them (heaven forbid a 5-year old child be allowed to fly a 747 in the air!). The FAA's response to the whole deal is that Duffy did not act in a professional manner by allowing his children to take control of the air controller's radio and that he should, in fact, be penalized for his actions.

So what happens when somebody's child keeps pestering the parents to visit the workplace and maybe look into the career of the father or the mother as a potential field to go into? Common sense that this sort of thing is reserved to children in the teen years, not still in grade school. Maybe it is not enough that so many children are being pushed into an early adulthood (though it is bad enough when parents consider their child to be a miniature adult version of themselves) by their own parents. The reality is that there are too many factors involved in Duffy's case, from the apparent attention soliciting of his children to his lack of prioritizing in the workplace. A parent who bring a child to work due to a day off from school normally does not, under any circumstances, allow the child to actually take over the job being done, especially a job where other people's lives are involved. It could also be that Duffy, like so many other parents of his generation, has somehow managed to allow his children to be the center of his life to the point where he cannot compartmentalize, which simply means that he should have sent them to a corner to play a game while he tended to his duties as an air traffic controller. Duffy will have plenty of time to think about his careless actions at work while he is on suspension. And the FAA investigates the case. It does not matter if Duffy's kids were under supervision while he was not doing his job. In the meantime, maybe Duffy will reconsider bringing his children into his next workplace, if he ever gets his job back at JFK International Airport.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/wpix-boy-jfk-air-traffic,0,1996461.story

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/03/03/air.traffic.child/