But it’s about children, and a chance to tell another parent that they did a bad job! Why would they apply the same logic they do about the TSA? No level of risk is acceptable for children!
Except, of course, when children are the devil and shouldn’t exist in the first place because they make too much noise.
It matters when you start to get appreciable judgment for it. Would you remember your kid being late to school if you didn’t have the story of a stranger’s ride to go with it?
EDIT: I mean to say, it isn’t really until high school that there is some kind of reprimand for being late.
It goes without saying that the only one to blame is the murderer. But, I don’t really think she is sharp enough to make safe decisions for the rest of her children.
It’s just like the umkayy thing. Some people don’t seem to get that it is ok to make a gullible mistake. But when you are just willfully, persistently, aggressively gullible, you can’t still stand there saying, “well, hey, everyone makes mistakes.”
ETA: I notice you saying people in this thread have accepted similar offers. No, I don’t see that. I see people in this thread who have accepted rides from strangers. I’ve done that, and I say that without the caveat, “I know I was being stupid”. I don’t think I was being stupid at all. I stand by my judgments. But, I would never have fallen for such a raggedy scammy, red flag dropping scheme as the murderer pulled, because I would have on my “be extra skeptical, you have your kids safety at stake” hat.
I still don’t think the mother did anything out of the ordinary for an average person. Certainly her actions (or passives, as they were) were not so wrong as to warrant losing her children. She was taken advantage of by a seemingly-generous person. Stranger abductions are so rare that taking her kids away would serve *no *purpose besides misguided revenge.
Bottom line: if this little girl hadn’t gotten kidnapped and murdered today, do you doubt he would have pursued another tomorrow? Or next week? With a world full of potential victims, I think it’s criminally unreasonable to suggest otherwise. Maybe you’re one of the subset of people who is too “strong” to fall for such an obvious ploy. But, while lacking street smarts may be a character flaw, it is very very common. Definitely not sufficient to warrant taking away the right to raise her children.
It’s the last part of your post that drives home why this mother would be unfit to continue to raise her remaining children. Her creepo meter sounded off and instead of paying more attention to it, she supposedly let her daughter wander off out of sight. And this is in light of every other wrong assumption she made and the father apparently petitioning the court for custody because of her deficiencies.
Way to exclude the middle. I didn’t say it was completely unimportant to be on time for Kindergarten, and even if I or others thought that about that one day, since when is saying it’s ok to be late once the same as saying it’s never important at all for the first 8 years of one’s education to be punctual? How is being late once suddenly dismissing “the importance of school”? I just happen to think one day in Kindergarten isn’t a panic-level, accept a ride from a stranger because it’s your only hope of survival situation. Doesn’t mean I’m ok with being late consistently, nor do I think school is unimportant.
Successful predators are very good at picking cooperative victims, and have numerous techniques to feel out a person’s vulnerabilities. They are also very well versed in disarming their victims. It’s actually quite easy, when your mind is unclouded by empathy and morality, to cut right through a person’s defenses. Of course, it doesn’t work every time, but there are a lot of potential targets out there, and each time they fail is just more practice that refines their technique. Eventually, they’ll hit a strike.
None of us can say how we would fare in this situation, because none of us have any way of knowing how many times we’ve been face-to-face with a predator.
Seconded.
Nah. Folks can call me internet tough guy, arm chair quarterback, Billy Bad Ass, I don’t care. You can’t tell me I don’t know how I would fare n a situation like that, because yes I do. I’d be skeptical as hell, and would tell the deuce, “Nice try, buddy.” I don’t fall for “I have a hundred dollar gift card, now if you will step just this way my fine lady, I’ll showyawhatI’mgonnado!” scams. Period. I may trust a stranger one day and get played, but I would never fall for an obvious scam. If someone throws me a dozen red flags, I take notice, particularly if I have others in my care.
However! I do think I was wrong to say she shouldn’t be trusted with the other kids. That’s not my style to go that route, so I feel bad that I went there. Rather, I should say, she needs to sharpen up. I can’t imagine her pain, so I regret judging her harshly, but I know that she has got to sharpen up.
So if the kid didn’t end up dead but only temporarily kidnapped, would you say that this wouldn’t make a good argument in court for her to lose custody of her children?
Well, at least OP started this in the Pit.
Good lord, have you never made a bonehead mistake?
It was probably not the first time she had done something like this.
:mad:
:mad: Now, that’s just not fair, you judgmental bitch! How do you know she didn’t sell him the girl like an honest Mom?!
Yeah, on further thought, I wouldn’t want to see her kids taken. Maybe they can give her some parenting classes. Not sure if that would help, but she really just needs a few lessons in not being so damn simple and gullible in the face of obvious danger.
This is why the “don’t judge” mentality that often gets preached is so freakin’ dangerous.
Judge, people. JUDGE FOR YOUR LIVES!
That’s not the point. The point is sending a message to the child that school is important, and that being late is a Big Deal. And when you are trying to send that message to the kid as firmly as you can, it’s pretty easy to forget that it’s not a big deal-big deal yourself.
What sort of sub-standard crappy Wal-Mart doesn’t already have the McDonald’s inside anyway?
But yeah, mother = idiot for multiple reasons, first, for letting the daughter go, and second because she didn’t teach the daughter that going would be bad in the first place.
But in that case, we’ve probably all been face to face with a predator, but because we are not cooperative victims, we did handle it well.
And of course we’ve been face to face with a predator. Maybe not a rape-and-murder type but men and women have been molested, raped, and other on the Dope, and men and women have been robbed, mugged, and beaten. If those aren’t predators of a stripe I am not sure what is. And we remember how we handled ourselves in those situations, and whether we did something foolish or not.
Even at seventeen I knew better than to get in a stranger’s car.
The mother also forgot one of the cardinal rules of life that is almost always true - if it sounds too good to be true, it is. I’d love for a stranger to come up to me and hand me $100, no strings attached, but that just doesn’t happen. If someone comes up to me and offers me $100, I’m going to look for the strings, because there will be some.