“Stranger Danger” is highly over rated.
At two in the morning? I mean, I’d be asleep, not taking care of kids. Plus if I’m their sister, I’d assume my mother was taking care of them, but then I was a lot younger when I had a sibling that young.
Not if you expect him to answer.
You’re adding a bunch of “what ifs” which may or may not be true. Unfortunately we could do that all day long. So lets look at what we do know:
Teenage daughter was not remotely concerned about the children.
I would have freaked out because I would care about my brother and sister. Hell, I would freek out if I found anybody’s kids were outside crying at 2 in the morning.
Yeah, I guess I’d be freaked out if there were kids out in the street at two. I just didn’t know, personally, that you had to take care of them at all hours of the night…honestly, if I had to take care of kids in the house and it was the middle of the night, I’d just assume they would be asleep and I wouldn’t have to do anything.
No, but once you reach 100,00 posts you can call me Big A.
You mean, like if they were crying in the hallway outside your room, you wouldn’t need to do anything? If you heard them wailing in their crib, you wouldn’t need to do anything? If they were pounding on your door and screaming “Help! There’s a burglar in the house!” you wouldn’t need to do anything? If someone came in your room and said “I just threw up in the bed” you wouldn’t need to do anything? If your little sister came in your room and said “there’s people in front of the house that want to talk to you because Johnny woke them up at 2AM by shrieking ‘Mommy’ on the sidewalk” you wouldn’t need to do anything?
I would at least assume that my responsibilities include being able to hear if anyone crying. I.e. no noise-cancelling headphones, no being passed out drunk in the bathtub, no being in a coma from drug use.
Yeah, but if I were asleep, then I probably wouldn’t be able to hear them. Then again, I’m a light sleeper so I guess I’d probably hear crying in the hallway. I don’t know–small children definitely make me uncomfortable, so I’m probably not the best person to sit for them.
I have 13,30 more than that. 
IF someone was crying in front of the house loud enough to wake up the people in the house next door AND the house one past the house next door on the other side, do you think you would be able to hear that?
I mean, if you’re the kind of person that would sleep through a murder with furniture being knocked over in the bedroom next to yours, then yeah, I wouldn’t advise you to hang out a shingle advertising babysitter services.
Yeah, I would hear that for sure…
And at that point, would you perhaps think that there’s something you should do? I don’t mean to belabour the point here, but this teenager was a doofus and one reason I regret calling the police is that I would have loved to be the one to give her a speech on responsibilities and why being an idiot should not be a badge of honour.
Hey man, I watched sitcoms. I know the act.
“Stop crying before I give you something to cry about!”
Now, if I was only a sibling, I couldn’t deliver this classic line:
“I brought you into this world, I can take you out.”
You mean the way your wife slept through it all? Thank goodness she won’t be caring for children, right!?
We were two houses over as I’ve said a couple of times before. If it was right in front of our house I’m sure she would have heard it. Our kids sleep in the same house as ours, not two houses down. When our children were babies and sleeping in a separate room, she would hear them crying. Also our kids know that if something is wrong they should come into our room and tell us. When we leave them with babysitters, we tell the children “if something is wrong you tell the babysitter and she will contact us.”
I did, and I lived in the suburbs. Of course, I was a 17 year old boy and not a 17 year old girl, and I wouldn’t have attacked someone without at least figuring out what the heck was going on, by screaming, “I’m armed. Who the fuck are you and what do you want?” If you got “perforated” you’d have to earn it by being dangerous.
No, I wouldn’t go into someone else’s house without either permission or an obvious need for immediate action. I seriously can’t believe no one tried knocking on the door and ringing the doorbell before calling the cops. Is everyone completely incapable of resolving difficulties without appealing to authority anymore?
All the people who were tearing into the girl for her responses to the police officer, 1) Do you not remember being a teenager? 2) Have you ever been woken up unexpectedly at 2:00? and 3) Have you ever had to deal with being lectured by a cop at 2:00 in the morning after being woken up unexpectedly when your parents aren’t home, because your idiot little brother and sister did something un-fucking-believable like wandering around outside when they should have been in bed asleep like you were?
I wake up quickly, even when awakened under odd circumstances, and I’d still be a little incredulous and might not react “normally” in that situation. Anyone would naturally be defensive and not exactly forthcoming, even if they weren’t a typical uncommunicative teenager. I’d also be absolutely LIVID with my siblings and trying to hold onto my temper long enough to not yell at them for doing something like that, especially in front of a cop who might decide to do something drastic that would land all of us in custody.
Some of the questions are weird anyway. I would have had no idea what my parent’s birthdays are; we didn’t really celebrate birthdays for several years due in part to religious beliefs, and my parents never celebrated their own birthdays that I can remember. If my mother was divorced twice, and dating a new guy, I wouldn’t know or care what the hell his name was unless I knew he was going to be sticking around.
Glancing at the phone when asked about whether she could contact her mother is an unconscious tick. I’ve pointlessly glanced at my watch when I’m thinking about a future date. Useless, but I’ve done it. She probably tried calling earlier and went straight through to voicemail. That means either the phone is off or the battery is dead. I’ve been unable to contact my wife in exactly that way, and once you’ve tried a few times over a few hours, you have no expectation that anything will change, especially at that hour.
I can see from your comments that none of you have had much experience with the social services system. One of the worst things in the world to ever happen to a kid is to be taken out of their homes. You should be damn sure that the living conditions of the home are absolutely fucked up before making a decision to get the kids out. I worked as the executive assistant to the director of a social services program for a year and a half and often talked to the case workers there, so I kind of know what I’m talking about. Though it’s been a while since I had any first-hand experience, I really doubt things have changed for the better all that much.
Official custody, even under the best circumstances, is hellishly traumatic for most kids. Even borderline hardcases come back from a brief stay in custody with a notably subdued attitude. Worse, when CPS gets involved there is usually a presumption of guilt against the parents no matter what happened. Have you guys not heard some of the CPS horror stories? Agencies can be almost unbelievably Kafaesque in how they deal with families once they’ve been involved in any capacity.
In circumstances like this, where the parent had a reasonable expectation that an older sibling would be sufficiently responsible to watch the younger ones, having the kids taken into custody would be the start of a parental nightmare. It could take days or even weeks to get your kids back. During that time, living conditions would be (vast understatement) less than ideal for the young ones, they might be separated from their siblings and children are not always kept informed as to what’s happening or when they might be able to see their parents again. How is being removed from a parent’s custody remotely helpful in this case? It’s not, it would be a terrible experience for all the kids and the parents, including the non-custodial parents who might be dragged into the mess.
Ah, and now I will share the great words of the lullaby we sang to my oldest nephew (we being me and my cousins):
Jonathan, don’t you cry
Jonathan, or I’ll poke you in the eye
Jonathan, I’ll give you something to cry about
Nothing to cry about oh no.
Susan
(That’s actually the second verse. I’m still trying to remember the words to the first.)
I once walked over a 1/4 mile because a dog was barking. It was like 20 below zero and 2 feet of snow. I had to put on a bunny suit to make the trip. I rang the doorbell and just stared at them. “dog”, “barking”, “too cold out”. This was around midnight.
Yeah, now that I think back, that was pretty dumb, but I did send the little girl in to get her sister and no one came out.
I didn’t expect the teenager to be happy, but I did expect her to at least talk to the four-year-old or say something to him like “It’s OK” and ask the 6-year-old “what are you doing out? Why didn’t you come and get me?” The 17-year-old is supposed to be more responsible than the four-year-old.
If the teenager is worried about having the kids in custody, maybe she should answer with something else besides a shrug and an “I don’t know” when the policeman asks her “why shouldn’t I call Social Services right now.”
The policeman didn’t want to send the mother a birthday card, he was trying to determine the answer to the question “How old is your mother?” - another piece of information that the teenager did not seem to have.
Nothing wrong with looking at the phone. I was just wondering how she would know her mother’s phone was turned off by looking at her own phone. If there is some magic trick I’d like to know about it! She could have been checking for messages or maybe verifying that the service was terminated like gigi said on Page 1 of the thread.
If this is a common attitude in this country, then I’m not surprised anymore at reading these awful stories of children being horribly mistreated and still left with their parents after neighbours call the police and social workers come to visit.
Did they at least offer you a cup of hot cocoa and thank you for your trouble? Or bring the dog inside the house?