This still reminds me of the family that left their child at Epcot for 3 hours while they drank in Mexico. They got him an Agent P phone "after dinner" and told him that he could keep playing until the fire works but needed to stay in the country they were in.
They wanted him to play that for 3 hours in ONE country? Ugh! China can work for about an hour (at least when it was KimP) but Mexico?
The parents who would leave a child unattended at the mall are probably not the same ones complaining about stranger danger.
It's been said already, but literally it was exactly the same parents in the OP's experiences.
Where do you live where you can buy drug and guns in the mall?
She said that it was in the area of the foodcourt she was in.
The first experience was at her store.
The second experience was at a 2 story place with a coffee shop where she was.
The third experience was a food court in a bad part of town.
I find it intriguing that so many people think this is all from her store at a mall.
But I mean, in general. If you saw a lost child what would you do?
I learned from my mom. You stay close to the child, you work to alert the authority figures. So, a cast member at Disney, a store employee if you aren't an employee, a manager if you are. Never EVER touch the child. Never ever EVER have the child leave the area. EVER. (unless I was a Disney CM whose job it was to take the child to the lost parents area) Just watch over the child.
What would you have done if the 21st time your 'grand' went down, he got complacent, he fell and his face got chewed off? If you were my parent, you would not be taking my kids any place ever again.
Exactly. Glad the kid didn't go that 21st time.
Then you put the kid in an impossible situation because then she had to choose between obeying the no talking to strangers rule or being really rude to the nice lady asking about her toy.
If she's not mature enough to do that, then that little experiment has shown her to be too immature to be on her own. Yay! The OP helped.
I can see Mother's panic here-she left child to look at the toys....you then walk her to front of store-near doors to outside-if I was that Mother I'd be upset also.
Altho you were doing what you thought was OK-Mother saw her kid being led away and she panicked. Does not make that a bad Mom
When on earth did she say the front *of the store*, or that "the front" was near the outside???
The mom was a bad mom because she caused panic and tears in her child for NO good reason.
"Half an hour later, 6year old is wandering around in tears."
That is what the OP said. We don't know where she was wandering, how far out of the toy area she got. The OP later described the store, so really, the little girl could have been anywhere in the store.
My name is Cijay. It's okay to use it, we do that here.
OP, your name really looks like C l jay to my eyes; I feel that it might be C i jay, but I can't seem to focus on it (might be time for new glasses). So I don't see your name as being a name. OP is simple, easy, and time-honored. I don't think you're getting bent out of shape about name vs OP, but I wanted to explain why I'm using OP.
If you aren't comfortable with your child being approached by a store employee, don't leave them alone in a store.
Supervise your child on an escalator by being with them to help them if they get in trouble. Watching them die from the top won't do a thing.
If you don't want strangers to talk to your child, don't leave them out of your sight line in public places.
Yes.
Yes. and
Yes.
Heck, most of the time nobody really cares who started the thread. I know I don't usually look, so using OP is going to be used.
Agreed. 100%. I like not knowing who the OP is, because it allows me to give a bias-free answer.
The child on the escalator, you were not even at work in all these jobs you work at, therefore, you were not security there. If you thought that an ounce of prevention crap was needed, why didn't you call mall security?
She DID have them called. She was at a coffee shop, she asked the server to call security, security came or answered the server over the phone who told the OP. She did exactly that.
Yet when she returned, her 5 year old was talking to a strange older woman, which the mother realized is not a normal thing an older woman would do.
Huh. Where do some of you live? Here in my area we talk to others. Even a kid. Especially an "older" woman. In my circle, we watch out for others. I also know that kids, playing with new toys, WANT others to notice the toys and admire them. I bet the kid liked having the toy admired.
I have left my three kids at a table in the food court too go and get food
1. yikes
2. 3 kids is sooooo different than 1. Unless there's a big age gap between #1 and #2, you don't know this, but when you just have the 1, they can feel so small for so long. And 1 kid is just so much more vulnerable.
But there are certain things that just don't soak into your consciousness until you actually experience them.
Totally forgot what I was going to write and had to go back and find it. Editing this in.
Your situation...you left your child, and felt mama bear that someone was talking to her when you got back. Your takeaway was that things you did when you were single were wrong.
I would take away that leaving my child like that was wrong. This is so close to the OP's situation it's hardly funny. The kids are being left in a situation where strangers might talk to them, and this is a big bad NO for the parents, but the parents are LEAVING them! It makes absolutely NO sense to a parent who sees it the other way, or to anyone who sees it that other way.
If I were the parent in the OP's situations, or in your situation with the daycare provider, to me, it would be a ME fail, not a universe/other person shouldn't talk to a kid, fail. That's MY fault. I'm the parent that left the child, when I'm so afraid of the world that I can't handle it if a person talks to my child. I'm the one who will be changing my behavior. That's MY takeaway.
Because some of us parents have trust that the things we have taught our children prior to this event (and I mean lots of little work not just a quick chat 5 minutes before walking in) is enough to allow the leash to be extended to this degree.... but enough that while I am in the same building that the stories we have read about "stranger" danger and keeping themselves safe, and the guidelines and discussions we have had with them around what is and is not appropriate (and I dont mean the being disruptive that is a separate issue they should have dealt with) will be enough to keep them safe.
The poster described the issues with thebhilding she was talking about.
And this new article is what comes to mind when I read what you said.
"2-year-old Teekah was last seen at the New Frontiers Bowling Alley in Tacoma, Washington with her family on January 23, 1999.
She was playing a race-car video game in the arcade section of the bowling alley around 10:00 and 10:15pm. She was a few feet away from her family and six feet away from the bowling alley exit.
Her mother, Theresa English said she looked away for a moment and Teekah was gone. She hasn't been seen since."
I now know friends of the family. The family members were right there. They saw her, then she was gone. Minutes. In a familiar place. With tons of family members all around. (family party, hence the late night for the bitty child...my own son is a night owl and always has been, as we are, so while I understand that early-to-bed people might question that, I don't)
Furthermore if you tried to take her by force she knows that manners are not the most important thing and if she was to feel really uncomfortable in a situation to scream at the tops of her lungs.
My son once SCREAMED "You are not my papa!!!!!!" in a public place in the middle of a tantrum when his dad picked him up to leave. DH and DS don't look alike to those who don't know them. No one stopped them. Know why? Because many MANY children will do exactly that at some point with their own parent. It's almost a rite of passage, and it's one no one knows how kids know to do it. We didn't talk about "stranger danger" with DS; kids are at far more risk from those in their inner circle, and he was never alone anyway. Our slow steps to independence have been taken at the YMCA and Disney, both of which have great methods for kid-finding. And at older ages than 6. Anyway, because we never taught him anything specific to yell if being taken (especially at that age), we have no idea how he came up wth that whammy, but plenty of other kids we know (but DS doesn't) have done exactly the same thing with their parents, so it's kinda weird.
Sometimes I think that parents need therapy from some of the things their kids do LOL...DH still has some form of PTSD from that moment, LOL, as well as the moment a lady in our former apartment complex called the police on him because "there's a man at the playground who doesn't match any of the kids", and he was the man. Poor DH.
