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Traveling across the country in an airplane with children can be harrowing, embarrassing and downright uncomfortable.

That is just what the young mother sitting in the row behind me suffered as we traveled from Florida to New York recently. The situation was no one's fault but her own, yet we all had to suffer with her. There's nowhere to hide when you're locked into a flying machine.

It seems that each time I fly, the aisle between the rows of seats on the plane gets narrower. Calling the area from my seat to the back of the seat in front of me leg room is a joke, especially when the person in the seat in front of me decides to take a snooze and pushes the back of his chair into my lap. It's easy to understand why travelers are grumbling about airplane service. There is none.

Some airlines have begun charging extra for aisle seats. That will certainly win points with travelers who have figured out the one way to be at least a little comfortable when they have to fly.

Most seasoned travelers would rather be seated on the aisle than next to the window, even when the scenery is fantastic, for good reasons. It's easier to get to the bathroom. You don't have to disturb your seat mates when you get up. You can actually stretch your legs out when they get too cramped. And, best of all, you can get out of the plane faster.

But back to the mother who sat with her two children behind me. She started out on the wrong foot by seating her 22-month-old daughter, imprisoned in a car seat, by the window. The 4-year-old sister had the middle seat. The mother took the aisle seat. We all paid dearly for this seating arrangement. The younger child screamed "Momma" at the top of her lungs throughout the flight. The mother didn't or wouldn't move closer to the child, even though that was the obvious solution.

The mother was distraught and embarrassed at the reaction of the other passengers on the plane. Although I knew she had brought this situation upon herself, I felt sympathy for her. One look at her face told me she was miserably unhappy and feeling terribly inadequate. She didn't know how to handle her children. Family dynamics like those displayed between the mother and her children didn't start at the beginning of the flight. They were established long before boarding the plane.

Young children need a parent's strength and touch to make them feel safe. If this mother had seated herself between her children she could have attended both children at once. As it was, she had to climb over the older child to get to the screaming one. This was difficult at best but she never thought to move to the middle seat. Or perhaps she didn't want to be close to this demanding child. There certainly was a test of wills going on between the children and the mother. It looked like the children were winning the battle but losing the game. Their mother wasn't getting the message.

There are so many ways she could have saved us all from suffering her child's screaming fits.

A toddler's attention is easily diverted. A mother's open handbag is a magic place to a small child. Reading a picture book could have amused both girls. Crayons and paper are a must on such a journey.

But the most important factor in keeping children content is to pay attention to them. This, the mother didn't do unless the children acted out. Such a simple solution, being an attentive mother, would have made her journey and that of the other passengers on the plane a pleasure instead of a pain.