Windows open? Case closed!
That’s a good question. Is it a more dangerous world today, or are we just more afraid? Could it really be that we’ve just become paranoid?
I honestly don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibilities, and this has kind of been on my mind for the last few weeks, since I saw Bowling for Columbine. (Incidentally, I had a reaction of mild horror to most of the film, alot of it based on Michael Moore’s actions in the film. /shudder I think it was very thought-provoking, especially his diatribe about the aura of fear we’ve created in this country, but I don’t necessarily subscribe to his agenda nor his methods.)
At any rate, I think 3 is a bit young to be left alone in the car while Mom runs into the store myself. 8+ possibly, and that’s if I’m just running into 7-11 or the like.
You never know when there will be a long line or something in the store that detains you, and really, why risk it? Isn’t the extra few minutes it takes to take your kid in and out with you worth the peace of mind?
While I wouldn’t want to be overly paranoid, such a simple thing doesn’t seem worth the potential risk of something occuring imo. I’d be alot more worried about the kid slipping the car into gear and rolling into traffic than an abduction in any case, and that’s the far more likely situation of the two. Kids love to pretend to drive the car, and often play with the shift while doing so. It’s also alot more potentially deadly, in a grisly way because of that, in my opinion.
Also, for what it’s worth for the sake of the “it’s a more dangerous world” argument, I found this link listing Estimated Missing Child numbers for 2002, wasn’t able to easily find numbers for the late 70’s, early 80’s though. Admittedly, I didn’t look THAT hard, so they could be out there. Here’s the link to the .pdf
Because circumstances do matter. Doesn’t it matter if the kid is one year old or ten, or if the parent is going into a store or walking five feet away to drop a letter into a mailbox, or if the keys are in the car or not?
They sure are. NYC is a hell of a lot safer than it was in the 70’s, when I was a kid.
I don’t approve of someone leaving a small child alone in a car, but I also don’t know the situation. When I was a single parent I took risks I wouldn’t take now that I have more resourses.
The other thing to consider is 90% of child abductions are done by a parent. Those numbers seem to be going up. Stranger abductions are pretty much steady. Of 54,000 children taken last year in the United States, 60 were taken by strangers unconected with another crime. 99% of all sexual abuse of children is done by people they know and trust. The world may be more dangerous than it was when we were younger, but I am begining to wonder if that is true. Is the real difference that we have so much more we can control, so we try to control more. My daughter will not have measles, mumps, chicken pox, ruebella, or polio, or a host of other deseases our ancestors dreaded. She has better access to food and dental care. She is more likely to grow up than any generation that came before her. I think sometimes we scare ourselves with boogy men because many of the real dangers are gone.
I wonder what the people in the “Is this such a big deal” camp would think if this had turned out differently, though. If the child had been harmed in some way, would it still be no big deal? IMO, taking that chance is the issue here, not the end result. And I don’t think it matters what the circumstances are, whether the mother does this all the time or if it was a one-off.
I’m a firm believer in not tempting fate. If I have a 95% chance that leaving my child alone in a car won’t be a problem, why take that 5% chance?
I park my car in the public lot across form our apartment. If I am alone with my baby and have left something in my car, I either take her with me to retrieve the forgotten abject or just let it wait until my SO is home. Sure, if it’s 10 at night and the baby is alseep, it would ** probably ** be OK to leave her and run across the street for a few minutes. But how do I really know that? How do I know that this isn’t the night when my luck runs out and I get hit by a car on my way across the street? Again, why take foolish chances.
I am very grateful that, as furlibusea pointed out, my daughter has an excellent chance of growing up. But that’s all the more reason to be not to take foolish risks.
My parents didn’t have a car when I was three, so they couldn’t very well have left me in it … on the other hand, I was toddling off to nursery school, unsupervised, by myself. (It wasn’t far away, well within toddling range.)
It is a fine and laudable thing to be protective of one’s children, but I wonder sometimes if we’re being overprotective … frankly, I don’t think I was a child in some lost Golden Age where everything was much safer (though I do believe we didn’t hear so many stories about child abductions and so forth … )
Anyway … I’m not going to join in a total condemnation of the parent in the OP, not without knowing all the facts. There are dangers in this world, true enough, but it’s important to be realistic about them.
I would not do what this parent did and not just because of the pervs and/or other criminals, but because kids that young and even older cannot be trusted not to bring harm to themselves. But, as a parent, I have a horror of the perv and/or other criminals as well.
I just want to point out that your numbers are way off. It isn’t anywhere near a 5% chance that if you walk away from your child for 5 minutes that they will be kidnapped or hurt. It isn’t even a 1 percent chance, it’s more like a couple in a million; despite what Oprah tells you.
While I personally would find it VERY difficult to justify walking away from my baby or toddler at all, by the time they are in gradeschool they should be trustworthy enough to be left alone for a few minutes. If you haven’t taught them by then not to talk to strangers, look both ways, stay out of refridgerators, and never play around in a parked car, then that’s your fault as a parent. They certainly can’t be expected to act like adults at that age, and should be watched accordingly, but they should be expected to behave and understand that doing something daddy says isn’t safe is likely to get them seriously hurt or punished.
There are certainly MANY situations where leaving your child alone even for a second should be considered negligence, but this overprotective ‘ALL situations warrant it’ attitude is perposterous and in many ways just crazy.
You know stick monkey, I’m one of the few mothers in my son’s school that lets my kid walk to school on my own, and I think its because of the attitude you mentioned.
I started letting him walk to school by himself because the boy turned eight and I realized that he had no idea how to walk across a street. He knew to stop and look and listen, but he hardly ever did, because he’d always had my hand to hang onto while we crossed the road. I thought about how I REALLY LEARNED to pay attention to traffic, and unfortunately its through those screech and halt type scenarios that it got drummed into me to pay attention. I walked him to school for a week, and after that he was on his own for the .45 miles it takes to get to school.
Sometimes I get that gut-wrenching feeling …“What if someone snatches him, what if bigger kids pick on him??”, and its horrible. But what are you gonna do? Not let him out of your sight until he’s old enough to pack heat?
I do think that three years old is a little young to be leaving a kid in the car, on principle. I have to say I don’t think there’s anything wrong at all with leaving grade-schoolers in a car…it certainly never hurt us or any of my peers. But I wouldn’t leave my kid now, because its against the law.
I think your kid should be at least 8 or 9 before you let them out of your sight for MORE than 5 minutes… at least 6 before you let them out of your (or other competent, trustworthy,… adult’s) sight AT ALL… At least that’s the way I’ve been going on about it (eldest is closing on 11, Terrible Twins are 6 1/2).
So I agree with the OP. You do not, not, not leave a 3-4 year old unattended!
you mean there are places that are even more dangerous than Israel?
Seriously, sounds far-fetched to me (oh, and I think walking the street in down-town Tel-Aviv is actually safer than doing the same in a large American or European city, all possible scenarios taken into account - but that’s a diff’r’nt kettle o’ fish, as well as way OT…)
Three is too young to be left alone, and kids of any age should never be left behind for longer than a few minutes when it’s hot outside. That being said, I’m going to have to agree with the few who are protesting the “It’s all the same, what horrible parents!” attitude. The world is not significantly more dangerous than it was when we were kids, and in some places it has become a bit safer. And if we’re talking about the very, very, very small risk of leaving a mid-aged child alone in a car for a short period of time than I think it’s only fair that we talk about the very, very, very small risks that a child not left behind also faces. They could be…
hit by a car in the parking lot
snatched by someone in the store
sucked into the escalator
attacked by some random stranger, etc. etc. etc.
No one can prevent every possible misfortune from befalling their child. Sometimes, crap just happens. But I think painting someone as a horrible parent because they choose to be protective or paranoid about different things than you (generic you, of course) seems a bit hypocritical. Maybe they’d NEVER let their kid pet a dog in the park, or ride on a roller coaster, or eat fast-food hamburgers, or play in the ocean–all of which carry some chance of injury or death. Should they then be allowed to claim that you, who does allow one or more of these things, are negligent for not protecting your kids from these possible dangers? I hope not.
That being said, the situation Baker witnessed did seem inappropriate given the child’s age. Hopefully the woman will see herself in your letter and think twice next time.
Those were just numbers I pulled out of my ass for the sake of making a point—that if I have an x percent chance of something not happening, why risk the 100-x% chance that it will.
Hey, that’s nothing—at least she didn’t leave the kid in a burning car!
Sorry to hijack your Q, but why would you question something like that?
Yes, and thanks for understanding that I was asking for clarification on your original statement and that I wasn’t intending to be snarky.
You’re right in a way, the age of child does matter insofar as when, if and how long you might leave them in a car. But like others have said, a “young” kid (what, I think most of us were considering a “child” and therefore why I was questioning your statement), say 10 and under, shouldn’t be left alone in a car for any reason, ESPECIALLY with keys left in it.
As they reach a more mature and responsible age, the lengths they can be left and the distance from the store etc can increase depending upon the area in which one lives etc).
For instance, even though my son is 12, I wouldn’t leave him alone in the car here in the winter. Why? Is he responsible? Sure, but it being winter, the car would need to be left running so he wouldn’t freeze, and that could be the time some car jacker decides to hold a gun on him to get him to open the door, and takes off with my car (and perhaps with him in it)!
Seeing as there have been cases of kids being snatched right out of their OWN bedrooms, what would stop a determined perv if he should see some kid, even an older one, sitting alone in a car playing a gameboy, or reading??
I just refuse to take that chance with a kid.
age, circumstances (weather, location, length of time), specifics about the child (ill? developmentally disabled? healthy? etc) all matter when assessing risk.
We all risk something every day, yes, even with our kids.
Good parents try to minimize the level of risk by assesments of probability of something awful happening vs. how serious of harm, vs. amount of difficulty to decrease the level of risk. here we have a condition where probability of something dire happening is probably pretty low, the amount of difficulty to decrease the level of risk is probably minimal (she coulda taken the child with her to the store), and the ‘level of potential harm’ can be quite high.
So, on the whole, yea, mommy was wrong in this case.
Again, because of circumstances:
“Oh, dear, baby Janie’s sleeping in her car seat, and I have to go inside the gas station to pay. Should I wake her up and make her cranky for the next 40 minutes, or let her sleep while I take care of business?”
Again, cite?
I know how it is to be a hysterical parent; I get freaked out as it is if my son disappears from me view for more than five seconds at the toy store. But there’s a difference between making a realistic assessment of the risk, and screaming that you can never leave a child alone in a car (regardless of age or child maturity or circumstance or location or whatever) because Evil Kiddie Predatorz™ are lurking in every bush and behind every door.
My 'rents left me and brother out of their sight quite often when we were that age, especially after school, (which we walked to and from) for a very simple reason.
They both worked, my dad full time and my mom part-time.
Did I or my brother or any of the other 15 odd kids in our neighborhood get kidnapped/molested/sexually abused/propositioned by an evil stranger?
No.
We’d spend many afternoons playing football out in the street with under no adult supervision and nothing ever happened, except for a few cuts and one really bad scrape. Oh, and the best athlete on our block kicked an estimated 70 yard field goal.
But we were never molested or anything even close to it. I did run away from home but that didn’t even last one evening, in fact I was home for supper.
We were allowed to go out by ourselves on Halloween while the 'rents stayed home and dished out the sugary treats. Nothing bad ever happened to us, except for that time when I was in high school, but that was a direct result of my stupidity and was well deserved.
The biggest differences between then and now is that the media has jacked up their coverage of missing children and made it seem like there are at least 25 molesters/child abusers/pedophiles/kidnappers for every kid in a neighborhood.
Also it’s been drilled into kids these days that anyone and everyone except their parents is to be regarded as a threat/possible molester/pedophile/kidnapper and that kids should run home as fast as they can.
Nice way to make your kid overly-paranoid and a good way to get started on some serious therapy at an early age.
Also with so many gated communities around these days, I’d expect that there would be fewer fears about abductions/molestations, etc. simply because the perceived pedophiles/kidnappers.abusers would have no access to the kids because they couldn’t get into the community to being with.
Baker: I think you should have told the kid that when his mother comes back, he should say to her, “This nice man told me all about peeing games.”
Re the debate that this thread has turned into, I can see both sides. Yes, we in the modern world have become needlessly paranoid due to a steady diet of pointless “if it bleeds it leads” television news. (But of course, we bring this on ourselves; see the lower ratings for less sensationalistic coverage.) But at the same time, if there’s an easy, obvious risk, why not take a moment to minimize it? Both positions have merit, and it seems to me that the wise person will find a balance between the views. The only place the world is in black and white is in 1950s television. 
Actually, someone else made the original statement.
And for my part, the reason I disagree is precisely because some people do mean child under ten when saying “young child” If it had been “no three year old”, “no toddler or preschooler”, I wouldn’t have had a problem at all. But NO child under ten? By eight, my son played outside with his friend. By nine, he went to the park down the block with them and went to the deli on the next block by himself. By ten, he was walking home from school. Same for my daughter. At thirteen, she started taking a train into Manhattan for high school, and he will most likely do the same. It’s ridiculous to say that those children at ten couldn’t be be left safely in a car for a few minutes-they could probably could be left safely in a car for an hour ( I haven’t and I wouldn’t, but for reasons unrelated to safety) Doesn’t mean your wrong not to leave your kids in the car at ten- but your kids have probably had very different lives than mine have.
Probably nothing, since as you say, children have been abducted from their own bedrooms, and adults have been abducted off the streets and carjacked. Yet people still sleep in separate bedrooms from their children, and parents don’t commonly sleep in shifts so that one of them is always awake. I can’t guarantee that nothing bad will happen to my children, even if I’m with them 24/7 until they’re 18. I’m not willing to deprive tham of a normal life to calm my own fears.
I guess that’s why it seems like every conversation I get into about “Should I let my kid (fill in the blank- any thing from go to sleep-away camp to play baseball to attend a birthday party at a friends houset )” seems to have at least one person who won’t let their kid specifically because he or she might be sexually abused. Since these people aren’t saying that they’re not sending the child to sleep-away camp because the child is too immature to be away from home, or that they won’t let their child go to the the birthday party at A’s house because A’s parents can’t be trusted to take care of fish, I can only assume that their child is mature enough and they have no problems with the general supervision, and just have some sort of phobia about sexual abuse. I can’t honestly say that I’ve made any decisions specifically because I was afraid my kids would be sexually abused When I didn’t leave my kids alone in the car when they were young, the possibility of them being snatched by a molester never crossed my mind. I was much more worried that they would be too hot, too cold,afraid, that the car would be stolen or hit or as they got older, that they would get put of the car and wander around. When I thought they were too young to be left home alone, it wasn’t because I had visions of child molesters breaking in- it was becasue I had visions of them either setting the house on fire or killing each other.