So, today I fall up in the P.O. to buy stamps. Some young chick comes in ahead of me to check her mail. Then she’s gotta go to the counter.
SO she leaves her BABY in the carrier IN FRONT OF THE STAMP MACHINE while she goes in to the counter.
WTF???
Who did she leave in charge of the Baby?? Why the 2-yr old of course. Who is poking Baby in the eye, and flirting with everyone who comes in the door, and I’ve got my mail checked but…
I cant leave a Baby and effin’ Toddler in the Post Office for cryin out loud!!! Somebody please sew that womans *** up !!!
Mom eventually comes out and praises the Toddler for watching the Baby. Eh ! If it wasn’t for me the Toddler would have run out to play tag with cars !!!
Sorry, no comment on the situation but I just gotta know what three letter word is so bad that all three letters have to be sphinctered out even in the pit :eek:
Oh, God, not another one of those. I wish people would mind their own business already. What the hell is wrong in this Amercian society of ours that people are so completely enthralled by what other people do with their kids? :mad:
I don’t know if you people are stimulation-deprived or just nosy busybodies or what. What I do know is that I’m usually too pre-occupied with my own shit to care what other people do, as long as they don’t do it to me or mine. And when I do notice something other people do their kids (short of being literally in the process of murdering them, perhaps), I figure it’s none of my damn business.
God, even my son, who was a mere 12 or so then, is still bent out of shape about this story: In NYC a Danish tourist left her baby’s stroller (with the baby in it) outside a restaurant while she went inside. She didn’t know she was committing a Crime, because in Europe these things are normal. Next thing she knows, the child welfare Nazis decend on her, she is detained in the country for God-only-knows-how-long, and all kinds of shit.
Mind yer business, people. Everytime I see someone discipline their kid in public, or taking their eyes off the kid for a few moments or whatever, and keep going about my business, I think, “here’s another point AGAINST the damn busybodies.” It ain’t easy to inject a little balance into the child-authorities-reporting frenzy, but one does what one can.
(Yes, I am aware that turning your back on your child could result in that child being kidnapped – a very minor chance. But unless it’s your own child you are worried about, why is this your concern?)
I’m gonna agree with Suspenderzz and add a few comments of my own.
Aaron in his carrier weighs about thirty pounds. If you think I’m going to pick him up every time I move two feet, you’re nuts. As long as he stays in my sight, I have no problem setting him down and moving up and down the grocery aisle, or from the stamp machine to the mailslot. Obviously, I’m not going to leave him in the path of traffic, because I don’t want people tripping over him, but as long as he’s okay where he is, I’m not going to move him until I need to.
Experiment: Lift thirty pounds with one arm every five minutes for an hour. Let me know how your arm feels. Hurts, doesn’t it?
MsRobyn – indeed. A voice of sanity on this subject is rare. I know; I’ve debated it a million times on about as many forums.
When kids appear to be by themselves, how do these busybodies know that the parents aren’t keeping a safe eye on them from a near distance? How does the busybody from the OP know that the mother did not have those kids in her line of vision the entire time? And even if she didn’t, why does he care?
When I go to the post office to pick something up, I’m too interested anticipating my package/certified mail (“what came today that’s good/bad?”) to even notice what other people do. Did you ever finish picking up your mail, NinetyWt? I hope your distraction caused you to lose an important piece of mail that will have a domino effect in causing you all kinds of trouble and inconvience. I think they call that karma.
So what should I do when I see a parent leave their kid in the car, with the engine running, while they pop into pharmacy, where I might add it’s impossible to keep an eye on the little crumbgrabber?
It’s unclear from the OP what distance we’re talking. But much more than an arm length away and I’d be concerned. Note, too, that the older siblingh was hitting the baby. So if mom was ‘watching’, she wasn’t watching real carefully.
Robyn w/a/d/r - my son weighed more than 10 pounds at birth, and I wouldn’t walk away from him in a carrier in public.
I mean with all the wackos out there now, and the media hyping it up about how you should always be watching your child…this women leaves her baby in a public place while waiting in line for stamps???
Stupid woman. It’s amazing that people do not know any better after all the stupid PSA’s, newscasts on missing children, etc.
The key concept here is “within sight”. I’m not going to leave Aaron in a running car; it’s too dangerous. (Yes, I know I’ve done it a few times, but I don’t anymore. Any errands I need to run I can do during the day when he’s in daycare or at night when Airman’s home and can take care of him.) Even barring weather-related stuff, some idiot can ram my car, or steal my car or my kid.
However, if it’s a simple matter of going to the supermarket and setting Aaron down while I pick up a box of cereal, that’s what I’m going to do.
UncleBeer, I’d kinda put a little bug in the parents’ ear about not leaving kids in the car unattended.
I have no doubt that this may sound shocking to you and a host of other folks, but, if I noticed it at all, I would do nothing, and go about my business. What should you do? If you are my kind of person, hopefully the same thing. But, from the way your question is posed, somehow I think you would call the police on mom.
This is one subject where I always side with the parents, unless there is an extremely severe case of abuse/neglect that needs immediate attention before someone is being murdered. But this applies to all individuals in this situation, not just parents and children. For example, if I saw an adult going at the throat of another adult with a knife, I would probably call the police. I don’t distinguish violence against children from violence against anybody else.
I sympathize with the parents, because when I was a young parent, I frequently took my eyes off my son’s stroller, or left him in the car for a minute. Because I’m such a European dunce, I was unaware that those were Criminal Offenses. No parent is perfect and on the ball 24 hours a day. Today, we are just worse about noticing what other people do, because today there is no such thing as personal privacy anymore.
BTW, in spite of my putting my son in such grave danger at such a young age, he managed to survive to teenage-hood. Which brings me to another total irony in our fucked-up system. Six weeks after my son turned 18, he had a temper tantrum and ran out of the house and stayed gone for several hours, in the middle of the night no less. He had never done anything like that before or after. When I couldn’t locate him over the phone and at anyone’s house, I became concerned and went to the police. They told me that, because he was just over 18, legally he was an adult and there was nothing they could do. Six weeks earlier when he was 17, they would have set all the wheels in motion instantanously in order to find him.
The child protection laws are severely hypocritical. One second they treat kids like they are fragile little things, then the kid has a birthday and all that nice concern is dropped like a hot potato.
Hummmmm::
See ‘harried’ mom trying to fight Christmas crowds and leaves kid too far away IMO. I can:
a) call the kid cops. ( seems to be the main plan around here.)
b) go get in mom’s face and set her straight.
c) go start a pit thread. ( I kind of like this one myself)
d) wait and watch that the kids come to no harm and when the mom gets back, go quietly and without fuss upon my way.
GunsNSpot – if you must do something, I like your last suggestion best. People are too trigger-happy to call the law on each other these days. I think most of the busybodies do it out of spite or to feel important, not out of real concern for the kids. It takes a big person with a generous spirit to do your suggestion d), and nothing more.
Here’s a beaut for ya…the other day, I was fueling up my truck, as was the guy in the next aisle. Only this guy had his engine running. And his two sons in the front seat. I turned to my wife to say “Look at this asshat” as he headed into the store, leaving these kids, who were fairly rowdy, bouncing around inside (mebbe 5 & 7) the idling car. Holy shit. I waited a minute, he was effing around in the store, so I reached in the car, turned off the keys, and threw them on the floorboard and left. He probably raised hell at the kids, thinking they did it, but mebbe if he believe the kids story about the scary looking guy in the truck doing it, he’ll think twice next time.
( I kind of like this one myself)