Sadly, a four-year-old British girl is missing, and her family is trying to find her. Hopefully they’ll find her soon, safe and sound.
However, this part of the article struck me as really off and I’m not even a parent:
There was nothing in the article to indicate that anyone thought this was at all abnormal. In the US there are pretty decent odds that the parents would have been charged with a crime for leaving the kids alone.
Is it considered acceptable to Brits to leave your preschooler and toddlers in a hotel while you eat dinner? I realize they said they “periodically” checked on them (see photo captions), but apparently not frequently enough!
So what do you think, was this couple astonishingly lax or are Americans overprotective?
This is really big news here at the moment. I don’t think that leaving children like that is at all typical. There has been muted criticism of the parents, but the tabloids don’t seem interested in a pile-on given the circumstances.
As Struan says, it’s a big story here (with new developments in the last few hours).
The restaurant they went to was something like 50 yards from the apartment. Little different to going down to a lower floor of a high-rise hotel. Or putting them to bed in their own rooms at home and spending the evening in another part of the house.
It’s quite a big story here too. Today’s (Tuesday’s) paper carries a story from the Telegraph in London that’s pretty damning of the investigatory efforts of the Portuguese police.
In my mind - Absolutely not. This struck me as odd too. I was surprised to hear that the parents had left the kids unsupervised.
It’s especially surprising that it was in a foregin country. Nothing against foreign countries but the very fact that it is foreign suggests it’s level of enlightenment in the area of personal security is unknown or less known to holidaymakers.
I sincerely hope the abducters of abby have not mistreated her and that she’s still alive.
I’ve noticed European parents doing this in enclosed resort complexes, taking baby monitors to the pool or the restaurant. Personally I think it is a little strange to do this where toddlers are concerned, because they are mobile enough to wander off.
A tiny bit off-topic but I can’t help thinking this is getting such a huge amount of attention because the little girl happens to be so photogenic.
Except that it was in an area of Portugal which is essentially Little Britain, with cobbled streets and little cottages. Hardly any actual Portuguese live there. It’s quite understandable that they acted as if they were home.
Well… yes! Or else hired a babysitter; any resort will gladly provide one for a price.
Toddlers are essentially perpetual threats to themselves: old enough to be mobile, inquisitive, and energetic, but young enough to be totally clueless about danger. I realize these kids were sleeping, but that doesn’t preclude their waking up.
The situation is obviously not analogous to putting your kids to bed in a different room of the same house: first, when you are home you hopefully have control over/notice who is going in and out. These parents obviously did not notice someone entering and leaving the hotel room. Second, at home you can usually hear your kid (if the layout of the house doesn’t automatically make that possible, you get a baby monitor). Obviously, these parents could not hear their kids either.
No parent deserves the price they are paying for their negligence, and I am glad the press is keeping quiet on the issue, but count me among those who cannot understand how they thought their children would be safe with so little attention being paid.
I heard some interesting comments on this from another source, apparently the parents are generally regarded as being over-protective of their kids - the info comes via someone who knows them from a doctor’s e-board thing. Anyway, it also appears that the whole ‘leaving their kids unsupervised’ angle is being seriously played down because it will detract from public sympathy.
If anyone remembers the Jamie Bulger case from many years ago, the very same reasoning was used to downplay the fact that Denise Bulger was apparently in the shopping centre on a shoplifting spree using Jamie’s pushchair as a store for her stolen-to-order loot. The fact that they were petty criminals from a council estate was largely left out of media reporting just because it was felt the public wouldn’t feel so strongly for the family if they knew their real circumstances.
When I saw the map at the bottom of this BBC article, I thought that they had to be taking the piss.
Another building, where they are quite distracted enjoying themselves, is not somewhere they should have been when they had their three young children under their care. A trip over every half hour isn’t remotely comparable with being downstairs in your own home.
I have only seen outright criticism of the parents from the Letters page in newspapers - I suppose it is one way the paper can print the otherwise unprintable.
I don’t think I can blame the parents too much myself. Presuming the child has been kidnapped, it must surely have been premeditated. Maybe if she hadn’t been taken then, the perpetrator would have simply chosen another opportunity.
The news today is this. I haven’t read the tabloids today, but I’d wager they are strongly suggesting that Robert Murat is involved with the abduction. Middle-aged man, single, living with his mother? Must be something wrong there…guilty?
Back in the 1970s, this was totally normal. My parents used to go to a party in the same street and check back on us every half-hour or so. During my wedding, my sister left her young kids in the hotel room, and checked back every half hour or so. Someone determined enough could have grabbed us in either circumstance.
The shutters of the little girl’s room had been unscrewed from the outer walls. If the parents had been in the room watching TV, they still might have lost the little girl, and nodoby would be blaming them. No parent is so paranoid that they sit in the same room as a kid all night.
chowder, if your post is serious, I believe you’re falling prey to the exaggeration of predatory paedos in society. It’s the same as it ever was.
In my view the reason there has only been muted criticism, is that the parents have co-operated with the press so they are selling plenty of papers. If the parents had tried to keep the press out of it, I think they would have been portrayed as negligent monsters. I don’t have a particularly high opinion of the press.
There’ll be a backlash soon, mark my words. The press always eats its ‘trusties’ in the end. I don’t doubt there are tabloid journos digging in the McCanns’ wheely bins at the moment, waiting for the right time to pounce.
