You seem to be deliberately ignoring the crucial detail that he was conveying the child from the place where he found her toward a nearby playground, on his own, away from other adults.
I repeat that I’m not in the least defending the father’s unjustified attack on him, but it’s not difficult to figure out why it can be alarming to see a strange adult apparently going off on his own with a child who doesn’t belong to him.
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If there was not a group nearby, or the group nearby was not helping, then what, just stand there and keep yelling?
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Yup. Easy-peasy.
[QUOTE=k9bfriender]
Like I said, this is why I wouldn’t get involved, I don’t know all the protocols
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It’s not a “protocol”: it’s common sense. Small child wandering around unsupervised, you care about the child’s safety but you don’t want to appear to be trying to entice the child away, what to do?
Duh, stand there and make a scene so that everybody’s aware of the child’s plight and it’s obvious that nobody is attempting to sneak off with the child unobserved.
[QUOTE=k9bfriender]
I probably actually would not have noticed her plight in the first place
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Then this scenario doesn’t apply to you. Nobody can fault you for ignoring a situation that you weren’t even aware of.
Something similar happened to me last month. It was my late day to work and I was taking my dog out for a walk when I noticed a child walking up the apartment stairs. After I got my shoes on and turned around I noticed he was crying and said that he couldn’t find his mommy.
I said, “lets go find her” and he grabbed my hand and would not let go. As we went downstairs I talked to him to distract him by asking his name and if he new which unit was his. He immediately relaxed and told me his name and we chatted about various topics. I asked how old he was and he said 4. He took me to the building he said was his and guided me to the 3rd floor. I knocked on the door and no response, so I decided we needed to go back to my apartment and get my phone. I was planning on calling the sheriff. Going back downstairs we talked more and I called out “is anyone missing X? He’s here.”
I did find his mother and the two hugged very relieved. I don’t recall the mother thanking me but the friend who was with her did.
Now, if I was attacked and the truth was revealed and I got a proper apology I’d consider it resolved. However, if I was attacked and even after the truth was revealed and no apology was issued you bet your fucking ass I would press charges.
Now the samaritan in this case from what is reported did some stupid things that I wouldn’t have. With that said, for those who could see a lost child and only say “good luck” then fuck you!
What happened to this man should not have, and he (in his refusal to press charges or seek other legal redress) should at the very least be stuffed with our finest meats and cheeses, covered in our most tepid tar, our softest feathers, and ridden out of town on the most comfortable rail available.
Which means he was badly mistreated because he innocently did idiotic things that incited abuse—or he tried a kidnapping in the worst possible way. Good God, everybody needs a spanking.
On the first news site where I read this story almost every comment assumed the dad was black and the victim was a white guy.
I think a lot of people jumped to that conclusion because of their own prejudices, but I have to admit that the quotes from the dad and the quotes of the language used in the FB messages had me leaning that way.
Yes, it’s a bunch of hoops. Look at this, for instance :
Definitely a bunch of hoops. The logical, simple, procedure, would be to pick up the child and ask around, ask him if he sees his parents, bring him to some official if there is one. Not making all sort of special moves to show that you aren’t abducting him.
And you shouldn’t ever be contemplating the possibility that you’ll be hit repeatedly in the face by the father, while several poster already stated that they understood this father’s reaction, and might do the same. It’s not understandable at all, in fact. Given how rare abductions by strangers are, the probability that the stranger with your lost child is actually trying to be helpful is around 99.999%. So, that someone first reflex would be to hit the stranger is pretty insane. Even if you can’t help having doubts, you should silence them and thanks profusely, because you’re the one seriously at fault for having lost your kid (and inconvenienced the stranger as a result). The probably that he might be at fault is incredibly low, so there’s no way it should be the default assumption.
I guess it shows that I’m past 50, since I suspect that many people posting can’t even remember a time when a male didn’t need an escort of elderly women to approach within 2 meters of a kid.
Either it’s very abnormal that a stranger will help your kid and you shouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t nor criticize him for not doing it, or it’s normal that he does and hitting him shouldn’t be an even remotely conceivable outcome. You can’t have it both ways.
Expecting me to help the kid in some way but not lead them anywhere unless maybe it’s a different situation and not offer to hold their hand and definitely don’t touch them unless there is, in your (not my) opinion enough danger to warrant it, to make a public scene solely to assuge your nasty bigotry against me, and all of the other requirements is setting up a bunch of hoops. And don’t forget the other bullshit that would get me called a jerk in a similar situation. If the kid had a scraped knee and I didn’t help with it, I’d be a jerk, but if I did then I’m instantly an evil kid-toucher. If the kid is crying and I offered to hold their hand or a hug, I’m an evil kid-toucher, but if I didn’t comfort them, obviously ignoring a crying is jerk behavior. (And I definitely don’t want to be anywhere near a crying kid when the pitchforks come out).
I mean, how fucking stupid do you have to be to say “well, I’m bigoted against you, and if you don’t play to my disgusting, unfounded bigotry by doing exactly what I want I’ll call you a jerk!” Or “If you don’t help the kid who’s actually my responsibility you’re a jerk, but you have to follow this shifting set of procedures that I won’t tell you in advance, and if you don’t guess exactly then you can end up beaten or arrested”. You’ve failed in your duty as the caregiver for a child if they’re off running around in the first place, trying to pass the blame by calling me a ‘jerk’ for not doing your job for you is absurd, but gets even more absurd when you add on that I have to do the job to some weird set of standards that you pulled out of your ass.
And just to make this clear: You’re saying that you wouldn’t, if there were no risk of being attacked for doing so, offer a crying stranger a shoulder to cry on? Or offer to hold the hand of a kid who’s lost? That it’s perfectly obvious and sensible to you that these are things you should never, ever do?
I am not ignoring, deliberately or otherwise that he was conveying the child around, while looking for her parents.
I am saying that there are protocols, like this one that you keep going on about, that not everyone knows. There are conflicting protocols in this very thread.
For instance, you say that you should stand next to the child and yell for help. What do you do if the child starts to wander or even run away. I don’t know what to do there. Following her could look bad, as could grabbing her to keep her close. What is your recommended action there?
Alarming, sure. Should be alarmed enough to get your kid, and if you felt that alarmed, then you should keep that in mind when you leave her on her own in public in the future.
Common sense is everything you knew when you were born. Everything else is learned.
If I had been in the situation, and felt an obligation to render assistance, then I would have asked her to follow me, or taken her hand to lead her to other people. I would not have thought of standing in one place and yelling, hoping that someone notices me and comes to my aid. I would have taken her to security or concessions or the announcer’s booth or something like that. Somewhere where there is staff or authority figures to assist.
To me, that is common sense. Take the child to where she can get help from those more qualified than myself, duh.
I have been informed in this thread that what I would consider to be a common sense way of solving the problem is the wrong way of going about it. What the guy in the OP thought was a common sense way of dealing with the problem was wrong, and in this thread, every mistake he made is armchair quarterbacked and criticized. People are agreeing that the father’s actions were wrong, but that they were understandable, given the guys actions, and the possible perception of those actions.
There may be other “common sense” things that you would say “duh” about that I may not have learned. There may be other mistakes that I could make that could get me into trouble, and if I came here and said, “I was trying to help out, and did ‘x’, and that worked out poorly for me.”, then I would learn in that thread that, “duh, you don’t do ‘x’, you do ‘y’, that’s just common sense.”
There are protocols that you have to follow, that are different for every parent and situation, and getting them wrong has serious consequences. I mean, what if he’d been a bit less common sensical, or a bit unluckier, and no one remembered him trying to get help for the girl? Then he finds himself on the wrong end of the law too, and the cop helps the father beat him up, then he gets charges pressed for kidnapping.
I am sorry, but in this day of parents being overly paranoid about their children, they have made sure that strangers will avoid getting involved in their child’s welfare if they are being neglectful about it themselves.
Tell you what, if you want to let your child wander outside your supervision, with the expectation that strangers will help if she is in trouble, then attach a note with big writing on her back, giving the protocol that you want a stranger to follow to assist your child. Don’t make people guess. Don’t assume that everyone has the same “common sense”.
And the reason that I would not be aware of it is specifically because parents are paranoid and overly protective of their little darlings in such a way that if a stranger takes notice of a child in a public place, they can get, at the very least, a dirty look from the parent, and can easily lead to having the police called on you, or a hostile verbal confrontation that can lead to physical violence.
So yeah, children in public to me are essentially in a blind spot. Not that I don’t notice them enough to avoid running into them or running them down, of course, but any child in public is, to my mind, “Not my circus, not my monkey.”
OK, so you’re a jerk who wouldn’t offer comfort to someone crying, but you want to call me a jerk for not risking my life because some kid is wandering around a bunch of people. I’ll remain both human and alive, thanks asshole. And if these rules are “LOL” obvious, why haven’t you called out any of the people who’ve talked about holding a kid’s hand, or pushing a kid out of the way of a car? They clearly didn’t get the memo about the “LOL, of course” rules that you think everyone knows.
If you want to call me a jerk for not comforting a crying stranger, say, on the Metro or something, then more power to you. I would respond with “I don’t think it’s jerkish to not give a hug to a crying stranger, but whatever”
And please point out where I called you a jerk about anything?
And if you don’t know that you shouldn’t touch people without their permission, then I honestly don’t know what to tell you. Are you one of those people that constantly play punches people in the arm? Or bear hugs everyone you meet? If so, then we are obviously not going to agree on this topic. I’ve noticed that people who do that don’t seem to see anything wrong with it, even when people tell them “Can you please not do that?”
“Keep your hands to yourself” is a key rule I’ve voiced to my children since they were old enough to understand it. Not sure why it would change for adults.
Statistics vary, but several sources suggest that the odds of your child being kidnapped are about one in 300,000. To put that in perspective, the odds that you’ll choke to death are around one in 3,400.
Any of you in this thread who have said that they understand the Father’s initial reaction to seeing his child with a stranger clearly do not understand what actually constitutes danger to a child!
I don’t think a truly random stranger is much less safe than a relative given the same amount of time. However, relatives are around the children for a lot longer and so have more potential to do harm. In addition, sure, if you knew that the stranger were random and came up to them and said “hey could you watch my child for a sec?” chances are everything would be okay, but there’s no reason to believe that of someone who actually approaches the child. In that moment, per minute, they are in more danger than with a relative IMO.
Unless of course, you as a parent have lost track of your child, and the child is off wandering by itself, crying for help. In that case, strangers approaching your child are less likely to be harmful, and more likely to be attentive, in that moment, per minute, than you yourself.
But it’s not a key rule my parents have voiced to me when I was a kid. And you can’t expect that everybody is following the rules that you personally are teaching to your children.
According to my set of learned behavior, when you face an upset kid, you comfort and rassure him, which very likely means touching him. So, not touching him goes against this learned behavior, and goes against my “common sense”, since it’s mostly the same thing. I have to think that in this day and age, people are both terribly paranoid and terribly possessive about their children, and try to guess what is supposed to be an appropriate course of action.
As much as it seems natural to you for whatever reason, the idea that touching a strange kid is something you should never do feels both counter-intuitive and absurdly extreme to me. It makes me spontaneously think : “special snowflake”. Might be a matter of age, of culture, whatever…But you can’t expect everybody to have the same views you do on this topic, and call that “common sense”. That’s something you learned yourself, presumably by virtue of growing up in a world where touching a kid is becoming unacceptable based apparently on a mix of emphasizing both bodily autonomy and stranger danger, possibly also by growing up in an urban rather than rural environment as I did (“it takes a village to raise a kid”, etc…).
And this “common sense” might very well change again in your lifetime, in whatever direction. It’s not common sense, it’s social conventions. They change, and not everybody is on the same page.
Let me get this straight – you’re saying that there are rules that have been around for years and years that you shouldn’t hold the hand of a lost toddler?
Where can I read these rules? Are they something that police departments put out? Child protective services? Someone else?