The Tyranny Of Making A Toddler Wear A Mask

My family’s story of mask-mandated hell trying to get back home from a foreign country.

I was up “Argentina early,” 6:50 a.m. on Wednesday, March 9, 2022. I couldn’t sleep. In fact, I hadn’t been sleeping well for days. I needed to clear my head in a brief moment of quiet before my two-year-old daughter woke up, most likely crying, the clarion call to begin a new day.

My wife slept in a queen-sized bed with her; I was on a mattress on the floor because the three of us wouldn’t all fit in the bed.

We were in an urban hotel room. Sufficiently comfortable for a few days, but beyond that, it wore out its cozy, budget-friendly appeal and simply felt too small for a family of three.

I was still reeling from an event that happened nearly a week ago, something that should have gone much differently than it did.

On the evening of March 3rd, we missed our American Airlines flight back home to the United States from Buenos Aires because my two-year-old daughter wouldn’t keep a mask on her face. How could we expect her to? She doesn’t understand why she needs to wear a mask, and more to the point, she isn’t cognitively developed enough yet to even reason with. But that doesn’t matter to American Airlines, which enforces a strict policy of “face-covering at all times while indoors at the airport and onboard your flight” for everyone ages two and up.

Teaching a toddler to wear a mask is like teaching a monkey how to drive — it’s just not going to happen. Well, not with the results you’d want anyway. If you’ve been around a two-year-old you would know this, so the discussion about masks for kids of this age should end there. Yet it doesn’t.

Over the past two years of this coronavirus pandemic we’ve been told to be flexible as science and data catch up to viral transmission patterns, in real-time, around the world. We’ve been asked to jump through many awkward hoops, all in the name of “keeping everyone safe.” But when do reasonable safety measures cross into unreasonable — where do we draw that line? It sure seems to me that placing a mask on a child who can’t understand the public health crises we’re in crosses into the unreasonable territory.

Baked into our mask-wearing, social-distancing, obsessive hand-washing, multi-vaccinating measures is abject fear. It’s this fear that turns otherwise rational people into cornered animals, lashing out against anyone who attempts to question a mask-wearing policy for even our youngest members of society. I witnessed this sad, fear-driven state of humanity the night of March 3rd.

“Sir, my duty is to keep everyone on this flight safe!” exclaimed an American Airlines employee, as if my child was a ticking time bomb that could take everyone out at any moment.

We were just minutes away from boarding our flight back to the U.S., held up at the gate because my daughter wouldn’t wear a mask.

“Es mierda!” I yelled in Spanish, not mincing words for how I felt about this ridiculous policy.

We’d desperately tried to keep it on her but she kept tearing it off, as a toddler is wont to do. So there we were, unable to board this flight that had been kept on the ground for us, right up to its take-off deadline, because our two-year-old wouldn’t keep her mask on. Let me say that again to underscore its absurdity:

We missed our international flight home because of a maskless toddler.

It wasn’t because she’d tested positive for Covid-19 or was around anyone that had in recent days or weeks. She took a $45 PCR test 24 hours before our flight, and it came up negative. Does that not mean anything?!

We were led out of the airport like criminals by American Airlines staff, passed the airport employees who tried to help us make that last flight out of the day after we missed the two previous U.S.-bound flights. They had deer-in-headlights looks on their faces. It was our own Hester Prynne moment, a walk of shame toward Ezeiza International Airport’s entrance at nearly 1 in the morning.

Our last stop was to get our bags. Just like the Attestation Form we were forced to sign upon check-in — which had no legal language in it about mask-wearing — we had to sign another form releasing American Airlines from any liability. It was an appropriate metaphor for the airline’s role in our suffering.

Where is the compassion in any of this? I kept thinking throughout this whole incident.

Hey American Airlines, there are three healthy humans here, and they just want to get home.

We’re not bad parents, but this whole incident made us feel like we were. Exhausted mentally and emotionally, we were wholly unprepared to spend another night in Buenos Aires, let alone another week.

I wish I could say that the inhumane treatment ended on that night, but it didn’t. In the week after the incident, I plead my family’s case to multiple, uncaring customer service representatives at American Airlines. They were completely unwilling to refund our tickets, book us on another airline, or find some other reasonable solution.

Worse yet, I was made to feel like it was entirely our fault. “Sir, are you aware there’s a pandemic going on?” one rep asked. Another told me our toddler needs to have a legitimate reason, as defined by the American Disabilities Act, to not wear a mask.

“This is a toddler we’re talking about,” I told the guy.

“You need to submit a doctor’s letter explaining her cognitive impairment to our mask exemption department in the email I just sent you,” he said, as if reading from a script.

“They’ll get back to you with a decision in 72 hours after reviewing your case.”

So we jumped through that hoop, spending half a day trying to find a doctor who could see our daughter on short notice. She was finally seen, we got the letter, and I sent it off before the end of the business day. Then I rebooked our flights (spending $130 for the fare difference), thinking we’d gotten what we needed and wouldn’t have any more problems.

We got an email back the next morning:

The documentation submitted doesn’t meet one or more of our qualifications and won’t be approved at this time. As a reminder, a qualified individual is a person with a disability who cannot wear a mask, or cannot safely wear a mask, because of their disability as defined by the ADA. These letters may also be reviewed by a third party medical advisor.

Rejected! Despite the fact that we included everything the guy said to include! It was infuriating. Now I was out that extra $130. We were DONE with American Airlines.

Not wanting to go through another traumatic episode, we didn’t show up for our rebooked flight. Prior to this decision, I’d spent more time on the phone pleading with customer service to just give us our money back.

“You bought non-refundable tickets,” said the last customer service rep I talked to. “So we can’t do that.”

“But we didn’t miss that flight through any fault of our own!”

There was no empathy — from him, from the previous woman I talked to, from the guy before that I talked to, and the guy even before that. I lost it. I yelled at the guy to give us our money back.

“You have a good day, sir,” he said, dismissively.

In the following days, I received a string of texts. They were from my mom, suggestions for what to do next. She was keeping my family in the loop. My brothers and sisters sent their thoughts:

“They should go to a local pharmacy, get a sleeping drug and/or Xanax and give it to her to knock her out for the flight.”

“Give her an iPad with some show she loves, put her mask on, and press stop every time she takes the mask off. Only press play when the mask is back on. Also drugs, like Matthew and Scott say.”

“Maybe they could try American Airlines’ Special Assistance Department. They deal with disabilities and requests, including mask exemptions.”

“He should tell them he’s calling the embassy and will also be alerting the media given the circumstances if not resolved, so he hopes someone will take him seriously enough to help resolve this ASAP.”

And word even got around to my cousin, who also chimed in:

“Tell them to fly to a U.S. border town, rent a car, and then cross over by foot.”

Subduing my daughter with sedatives. More pleading with the airline. Calling the U.S. embassy for help. Crossing the border by foot. This was all crazy.

We were reverse refugees, trying to get back into our country of citizenship rather than out of it. What for? A friggin’ mask!

Let me make something clear: I’m not against mask-wearing. I think it has been an effective tool in flattening the curve of Covid-19 transmission. What I am against are policies that fly in the face of reasonability. Like masking two-year-olds. Both the World Health Organization and UNICEF do not recommend children aged 5 years and under wear masks. The WHO further asserts, “Children of this age should not wear masks for a long duration or without supervision.” Would 10 hours, our flight time from Buenos Aires to Dallas, qualify as a “long duration”? I’m pretty sure it would.

In Argentina, mask-wearing starts at age 6. In most countries, it’s 6 (or older), too. So what special information about coronavirus transmission from young kids does the U.S. have that the rest of the world doesn’t?

“It will be over soon and you WILL get home,” my mom assured me in a text. “Then it will be time to write our senators, representatives, and let this government know what this is doing to real people.”

It wasn’t over soon. We worried we could be trapped in Argentina for the foreseeable future, until the mask mandate was lifted. I scrambled to find flights home on an airline with a less stringent approach to mask-wearing for toddlers.

I scoured the Internet, reading about airlines that might work with us on this policy. I learned there were no guarantees because they all followed the same protocol.

I landed on Delta after reading a New York Times article that claimed: “children who cannot maintain a face covering are exempt from the mask requirement.” Then I talked to a customer service representative at Delta who possessed the empathy that was sorely lacking in all of the reps at American Airlines.

“I mean, she’s two years old. Of course, she doesn’t want to wear a mask,” the woman said.

Finally someone in our corner. After this call, I was convinced we’d make it back on Delta. A wave of calm washed over me.

I wish I could say that it was all smooth sailing from there on out, but I can’t.

We showed up at the airport five hours early, as we had for our AA flight. My wife presented the handwritten doctor’s note to Delta staff. Still, they couldn’t give us a guarantee that we’d get on the flight.

OH NO! Was this going to be a repeat of our American Airlines experience?!

They told us they had to consult with doctors in the U.S. about our case. So we waited patiently for that to happen while more time went by, ticking ever closer to the scheduled departure of our flight.

Faced with another potential nightmare scenario, my anxiety mounted. I was on the verge of a panic attack. It was hard to believe our fate was in the hands of nameless, faceless doctors nearly 6,000 miles away, like some tribunal deciding whether or not to grant us permission to enter our own country.

America, “land of the free,” this surely was not.

After nearly two hours of waiting, Delta staff delivered the news: the airline had made an exception for us, for this and our next flight. “Just this one time,” we were told, my daughter wouldn’t need to wear a mask. We’d made it through the gauntlet! I took a deep breath, exhaling for what felt like an eternity. All that pent-up fear, anxiety, anger, shame, helplessness, paranoia, and sadness washed away like a sandcastle at high tide.

We’re now back — thankfully — in our American home. But that doesn’t mean we’ve closed the chapter on this incident.

Just yesterday I called our state senator’s office to deliver the message that mask mandates for young children need to end. It’s child abuse, and it’s a discriminatory policy. I also went online to research this problem. Turns out this is quite an unpopular policy, as many families have gone to social media to vent their frustrations after getting kicked off flights.

I found a petition for all airlines to raise the required mask age from 2 years and older to 5 years and older. As of this writing, it has received 9,076 votes out of the 10,000 needed to further promote the cause. I also chipped in some money to help distribute it to more potential supporters.

If you have a child of this age or know someone who does, I urge you to sign this petition or contribute whatever you can financially for this cause so that no family has to go through what mine did.

Thank you for your help!

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.