A list of questions designed to help you answer that question.
You can probably think of some additional/better questions. The text of the article that precedes the list of questions suggests a question that is not on the list: Will your child attract the attention of adults who will feel responsible for helping him?
Maybe that question was left off the list because it seems to be more about your chances of getting in trouble than about the actual welfare of your child. But it is about the child too, because you've probably taught the child not to accept help from strangers, and a stranger who feels compelled to attempt to help a child is going to create a troubling situation for the child.
Now, maybe you think people should mind their own business and leave children alone, but we all have a point at which we would help a child. Maybe there should be a list of questions to help you answer the question when should you approach an unaccompanied child and ask him if he needs help.
I was at Whole Foods here in Madison the other day, and I saw a little child — maybe 2 or 3 — wandering around in the wine and beer section looking overwhelmed and lost. I kept my eye on the child and a store employee had already started to talk to him, so I watched the 2 of them to make sure everything would work out okay, and finally the dad wandered over from the deli and reconnected with the child. At that point I walked away, and as I reflected on what that situation felt like to the child, based on the expression on the child's face and imagining being that small and in that maze, it made me cry.
Do you not want strangers to care about your child?
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Calling the cops when a child is at the park is NOT caring for him. There is an infinitesimal chance of anything happening to a child there. But if a child is forcibly taken from his parents, he is almost guaranteed to be scarred for life. Not to mention, he is almost guaranteed to be abused to some extent in our abysmal foster care system.
@natatomic Did you read the part of the article that said: "An arrest affidavit regarding the case revealed that lifeguards noticed the little boy sitting alone outside the pool area Saturday afternoon. They reportedly had seen him around the pool unsupervised on about five previous occasions. Concerned about the boy's safety, the lifeguards notified police of the situation.”
If you were a lifeguard, how many times would you observe an unattended 7 year old near the pool before you would feel that you should take some preventive steps?
I will answer your last question--yes I want a stranger to care about my child. My 3 year old got separated from us at the San Diego wild animal park when it started to rain and everyone was wearing rain ponchos (i.e., everyone looked the same so it was hard for a child identify a parent in the crowd) and leaving in a big mob. Luckily another woman stopped him and kept him in one place until my frantic calling out for him caught her attention. I still shudder at the thought of what might have happened if this good Samaritan had not helped. I would think that every parent would want an adult to check and see if an unaccompanied child was lost or needed help.
Agree that "If you were a lifeguard, how many times would you observe an unattended 7 year old near the pool before you would feel that you should take some preventive steps?" but not sure that the preventive step should be calling the cops.
The lifeguard calls the cops, the cops come talk to the child and learn that he is playing in the park. The cops tell the kid to have fun and then tell the lifeguard the kid is fine, he is playing in the park.
If the cops are concerned about perverts in the area they should have been the ones to find the kid alone and give him a head's up about the perverts.
Maybe the world is and always has been crawling with perverts, maybe it was sheer luck that I was never once approached by a pervert in all the years I played unsupervised in parks, woods, ditches, construction projects.
I made it through three kids without once being arrested, so I guess there is that. They roamed pretty freely.
"Maybe there should be a list of questions to help you answer the question when should you approach an unaccompanied child and ask him if he needs help."
Haven't we been over this already?
I can remember when I was young seeing a lost scared little boy running in a mall behind two young women who were on ahead of him and upon seeing the alarm on my face, they turned around to see the little boy and to assure him they would help him find his mother.
If you were a lifeguard, how many times would you observe an unattended 7 year old near the pool
The purpose of the lifeguard is to attend to 7 year olds he observes near the pool.
natatomic,
"Calling the cops when a child is at the park is NOT caring for him. There is an infinitesimal chance of anything happening to a child there. But if a child is forcibly taken from his parents, he is almost guaranteed to be scarred for life. Not to mention, he is almost guaranteed to be abused to some extent in our abysmal foster care system."
Amen,...
If you were a lifeguard, how many times would you observe an unattended 7 year old near the pool before you would feel that you should take some preventive steps?
Me? Millions. I spent many hours at the public pool "unattended" except for the lifeguards when I was 7.
As soon as my youngest son could walk, he would just take off. It was freaky how fast he could disappear and how far he could get in a store, at the mall or from the house. He was never scared; quite the opposite--it was always a grand adventure (which made it all the more annoying.)
I completely agree with Michael.
The world I grew up in had some perverts, but I never encountered them. Neighbor kids had that experience and the perverts who approached them were arrested. But it didn't keep any of us kids from going to the park unsupervised. Our parents just made us aware of the danger strangers can present.
The nanny-state world I fear is the one that would have arrested my mother when my little brother (still in diapers) wandered off in pursuit of our older sisters. A neighbor on the next block over found him walking along and called Mom. Today, if they had called the police, Mom would be in jail. That seems bizarre to me.
By the way, that little brother now flies 767s over the Pacific and to Europe.
To you nanny-statists: If it takes a village to raise a child, do you want the villagers to call the cops or step in to assist the child?
Ann, why did you just watch the little boy in the grocery? Were you afraid of what people might think of you if you intervened? I didn't understand your message in this post.
I remember being dropped off and picked up at the town pool, and biking there myself when I was a little older. I don't remember my mother or father sticking around.
It might be useful also to think of a list of things that adults can do if they see a child unattended. There are a number of things that fall short of calling the police, and unless there is some imminent danger I would say all of these should be done before resorting to calling police:
-ask the child if his/her parent (or other caregiver) is nearby
-ask if the child knows when the parent or caregiver will return
- ask if the child knows his home phone # or cell phone # for parent
-If it is a young child, especially one who is distressed (suggesting an accidental wandering or separation from parent), either remain with child and help find the parent, or take the child to an authority figure or management of the store and ask them to help locate the parent (most stores will call for the parent over the PA system)
-if the child is at a pool or other location where there are age regulations in place, inform the child and offer to call his parents
This isn't an exhaustive list, and most of these do presume situations where a child has accidentally become disunited from family members. This also presumes that one isn't worried about being suspected of stalking children- probably more of a concern for men than for women. If men find themselves in the concerned adult situation, they might want to find a nearby adult woman and ask her to intervene, or lean toward the steps that involve store employees or such.
The other complicating factor is how to teach your kids whom to trust. There's no easy way to convey that since there is nuance involved (strangers might try to help, but bad strangers might try to trick you into thinking they're helping- not an easy distinction for kids to grasp, and even harder for them to remember and plan their reactions when in a frightening situation.)
Yes, I want strangers to care about my children.
If you find a kid alone by the edge of a pool repeatedly, you've got to contact someone, hopefully the parents. But if you can't contact the parents, I guess you're stuck calling the police. Bad situation.
I wouldn't want to call the police unless a kid was in immediate danger and the parents were unreachable or the kid's home situation was so bad that foster care would be preferable. (And what a high bar that would be!)
Do you not want strangers to care about your child?
Well, it does take a village to raise a child, so I would say yes to that.
Yes Crack we have, and the answer is always "blame whitey".
I was tending toward perceiving the mother as being irresponsible until I watched the clip. A few things I noticed:
1) Boy seems to be sociable - not a "shrinking violet" type.
2) When approached by the lifeguards, he ran to the park.
3) A felony charge seems kind of harsh if this was the first time the police confronted the mother.
4)Mother half a mile away, accessible by cell phone that the kid was carrying.
The question "when is it acceptable for you to leave you child unattended" is almost impossible to answer, because children and circumstances vary so much. But the question, "when is it acceptable for the police to arrest a parent for leaving a child unattended" is much easier: Hardly ever.
We live in a free (or free-ish) country, and our society makes it the parents' responsibility to raise the children. If a parent thinks that little Bobby (or Bobbi) can take care of himself in the local park, the parent makes that decision based on greater knowledge of the child than the cop on the beat (or some bureaucrat in the child welfare office). Sure, maybe the parent doesn't know about the registered sex offenders in the neighborhod, so providing that information to the parent would be useful, but it doesn't take an arrest to do that.
No one makes perfect decisions on all subjects at all times, and I might make a different judgment about leaving a 7 year old alone than you would, but only in the most extreme circumstances would I support the kind of intervention described in this story.
"Do you not want strangers to care about your child?"
Nope, not at all. I'm not at the point yet where my child's walking around on her own, but you've given me a great idea: coach her to say, "my dad is nearby and I will tell the police you touched me if you don't leave now."
That's what it's come to.
We should always help when we see lost children. It's tough for men though, because they might just start screaming, "Stranger danger! Stranger danger!" and suddenly you're not a man trying to help a child, but a creep and scary.
The thing that bothers me? It's hard keeping track of children. It really is. And we treat parents like criminals when they fail, and we act like there should be some fix.
Get over it. Bad things happen sometimes. We ought not pile on tragedy on top of tragedy when a parent loses track of a child.
Maybe the world is and always has been crawling with perverts, maybe it was sheer luck that I was never once approached by a pervert in all the years I played unsupervised in parks, woods, ditches, construction projects.
This guy went missing at the age of 5 on a sunny Saturday afternoon in 1983. Small town (2000) people. Kid was within two blocks of his home,lagged behind his older siblings on their way home from the park. A known sex offender from a community about 30 miles away was seen in the town that day (this was before registration). Never found the body.
After 30 years, search for Bobby Joe Fritz continues
It is indeed luck - for some, it's good luck and nothing happens, for others it's bad luck and a kid goes missing to never be found.
I got separated from my little girl in a water park once when she was four or five, got confused inside a huge climbing castle, and went out using a different exit from the one where I had told her I would meet her. The park attendants were surprisingly not helpful at all when she didn't emerge on schedule, and a good 10 minutes went by while I tried to find her, getting more and more worried by the minute. Ten minutes may not sound like much, unless you have ever gotten separated from your very young child in a huge crowd in a strange place. It's a long time, and I was pretty much beside myself by the time I found her. She was being taken care of by a lovely woman -- a teacher, as it happened -- who had spotted her distress and was keeping her safe and calm while searching the crowd for an obviously frazzled mom. At the reunion, all three of us -- including the Good Samaritan -- burst into tears. Yes, I was glad that this particular stranger cared about my child!
If you were a lifeguard, how many times would you observe an unattended 7 year old near the pool before you would feel that you should take some preventive steps?
By age 7, my brothers and I had gone through swim lessons a couple years before that -- in the summer, we had swim passes stitched onto our suits and walked down to the pool on our own (in fact, I'm not sure my Mother ever came to the pool with us--we were walking to school every day, so of course we would walk for swim lessons too).
I think part of the concern these days is that, due to extreme risk aversion, calling the police is likely to be a really BIG DEAL, that can have significant adverse consequences on the parents and the child. If the cops just checked into it, talked to the parent, maybe suggested that 7 is a bit too young to be in the park or by the pool by themselves, then sure, fine, call the cops.
But the cops today will inevitably call Child Protective Services to take a look. And then there's a social worker involved, with the power to become drastically involved in that family's life. Cops must document the entire thing, creating a lasting record that will long outlive the child's youth. If the parents get busted a second time for something that gives some busy-body offense, then that becomes a second strike.
At a pool, there's management. They should, presumably, have policies, including whether and at what age unattended children are allowed.
My stepson is a lifeguard at a neighborhood pool this year. They often have parents who, despite the rules, leave younger children behind. If the child behaves and doesn't wander off or disobey much, no problem. If he or she does cause problems or pose a safety risk, then the lifeguards tell management, and management speaks to the parent.
So yes, I want people keeping an eye on my child, just as I keep an eye on their children, if they seem in distress. But as a parent, I get to decide, within reason, what levels of risk to take, how to balance appropriate watchfulness with letting children have the freedom to explore and learn on their own. Not Mrs. Grundy. Not the lowest common denominator of paranoia that some random person at the park may have.
My little brother's nickname was "Will Call" for how many times we had to pick him up at a customer service desk after he'd lost himself.
I would think that every parent would want an adult to check and see if an unaccompanied child was lost or needed help.
Agreed.
Sometimes you can do that without actually calling the police.
@PatHMV "maybe suggested that 7 is a bit too young to be in the park or by the pool by themselves."
Why? Is it? Where's the chart of "too young to be in the park ages", why is 7 on it, and who made that determination? What was the process? Is 9 on the chart? Is 14? Why not?
I'm a little surprised by the reactions here, because this seems like the kind of crowd who has a good sense of what "police power" is. Well the police have apparently arrogated to themselves an enormous amount of power to fuck up a lot of lives, on whatever whim suits them, and the reaction here seems to be, "oh those stressed-out parents. We should probably cut them some more slack."
Why can't we get a consensus that instead, everyone in the police department involved in this case should be put in the stocks in the square for a couple of days and have shit thrown at them?
When I was 5 or 6, my younger sister and I, along with a couple of neighborhood kids, were wondering around walking on the road. Coming towards us was an adult man. As he got close, he exposed himself. We ran home and told my dad, who went to look for him but couldn't find him. We were NOT stopped from wondering around in the future. We had been properly instructed on what to do when encountering such things. BTW, this was doing the rotary dial era!
When I was 5 or 6, my younger sister and I, along with a couple of neighborhood kids, were wondering around walking on the road. Coming towards us was an adult man. As he got close, he exposed himself. We ran home and told my dad, who went to look for him but couldn't find him. We were NOT stopped from wondering around in the future. We had been properly instructed on what to do when encountering such things. BTW, this was doing the rotary dial era!
Alex,
"Yes Crack we have, and the answer is always "blame whitey"."
Considering whites made the ghetto, you're right!
Isn't what's missing in this post data? Such as data on how many children have been hurt by being left alone at a pool at the age of 7, organized chronologically. That would help making an informed, rather than emotional, decision.
I learned my lesson years ago about unattended children. After dragging a toddler out of a downtown Seattle intersection, and discovering the mom was deep in thought at the nearby wine shop - I got a new asshole ripped by that mom. She screamed at my co-worker and I so hard, I thought she was gonna pop an artery. There were some veiled threats...next time, I look the other way. It was a quiet part of downtown (Belltown) and it would have been her word against ours in her attempt to paint US as the threat, instead of the cars/trucks on the city street.
No thanks. Too much liability involved with even being AROUND children - so I avoid them like the plague. Despite this policy, I have had my background checked for volunteer gigs so many times, its comical - merely because I might be ON SITE at the same time as a child. Guilty until proven innocent is the general POV of most parents.
"Ann, why did you just watch the little boy in the grocery? Were you afraid of what people might think of you if you intervened? I didn't understand your message in this post."
Because a store employee got there first and I watched that interaction until I was sure the boy had been helped. I would have liked to help, but it wasn't something that required two adults to solve, and the employee was solving a store problem and deserved deference, in my view.
"The nanny-state world I fear is the one that would have arrested my mother when my little brother (still in diapers) wandered off in pursuit of our older sisters. A neighbor on the next block over found him walking along and called Mom. Today, if they had called the police, Mom would be in jail. That seems bizarre to me.."
Today, your mom would behave differently.
My parents by today's standards would get arrested for the sunburning they exposed me to every summer.
Notice that the question I asking in the post is not when should there be criminal charges. I am focusing on what the parent should do and what other adults should do.
As a parent, you should not want to put your child in a position where other adults will find it necessary to take responsibility for your child.
So... where is THAT line?
Althouse -- that's the thing about police power. It distorts everything.
So you say that you want it to be about the relation between parents and other adults, and let's focus on that. But, we can't -- because these days, those other adults can call the police.
So first, let's put some police in prison (Federal Pound Me In The Ass Prison) for arresting parents for being parents. And lets put some adults in the same prison (to pound or be pounded by the ex-police) for filing false reports.
Then after we've stopped this insanity, we can have your interesting but sadly inadequate discussion about responsibility and such.
@Red Rose -- yup. Exactly.
I did post something above on this idea that having a registered sex offender in your neighborhood means that the police have the power to arrest all parents in that neighborhood. What a remarkable thing! Especially when the evidence is exactly the opposite.
(There's two reasonable stories that explain that data: either that sex offenders don't "shit where they eat", or that *registered* sex offenders have the sense to keep their heads down in their own neighborhoods. Regardless, it's the kind of data we should be using instead of making vague emotional statements to put parents in prison.)
"not sure that the preventive step should be calling the cops."
The problem is not the cops but the crazy court system that takes children from parents. My daughter wandered away when she was three. She got all the way to a corner gas station two blocks away before someone noticed her. My wife had missed her and called the police. The cops brought her home standing in the front seat of the cop car. She thought it was a big adventure. That was 45 years ago.
That is not what would happen now.
Seventy years ago, I walked to kindergarten four blocks and across a busy street.
"As a parent, you should not want to put your child in a position where other adults will find it necessary to take responsibility for your child."
When I was a child, it was understood that the neighbors watched all the children.
When my children were young, some of that persisted and we had a nice neighborhood where most mothers watched kids.
Some of the problem is the loss of community feeling. The court system is an awful substitute.
Anne,
"where other adults will find it necessary to take responsibility for your child."
The problem with our society today is where the other adults draw the line, not where I as a parent would draw the line. Common sense is severely lacking in a significant part of the population.
About a two weeks ago at this post What Is Behind This Generation of Hard-Working Strait-Laced Kids you had said I come from a time when children roamed free, and it happened because back then parents believed in freedom and self-reliance. They were not bad parents.
Somehow I came across this (in articles about mom arrested for leaving daughter at park while she worked.
In that article, is reference to a woman who was cited for leaving her child in a car for a few minutes:
“Listen,” she said at one point. “Let’s put aside for the moment that by far, the most dangerous thing you did to your child that day was put him in a car and drive someplace with him. About 300 children are injured in traffic accidents every day—and about two die. That’s a real risk. So if you truly wanted to protect your kid, you’d never drive anywhere with him. But let’s put that aside. So you take him, and you get to the store where you need to run in for a minute and you’re faced with a decision. Now, people will say you committed a crime because you put your kid ‘at risk.’ But the truth is, there’s some risk to either decision you make.” She stopped at this point to emphasize, as she does in much of her analysis, how shockingly rare the abduction or injury of children in non-moving, non-overheated vehicles really is. For example, she insists that statistically speaking, it would likely take 750,000 years for a child left alone in a public space to be snatched by a stranger.
“So there is some risk to leaving your kid in a car,” she argues. It might not be statistically meaningful but it’s not nonexistent. The problem is,” she goes on, “there’s some risk to every choice you make. So, say you take the kid inside with you. There’s some risk you’ll both be hit by a crazy driver in the parking lot. There’s some risk someone in the store will go on a shooting spree and shoot your kid. There’s some risk he’ll slip on the ice on the sidewalk outside the store and fracture his skull. There’s some risk no matter what you do. So why is one choice illegal and one is OK? Could it be because the one choice inconveniences you, makes your life a little harder, makes parenting a little harder, gives you a little less time or energy than you would have otherwise had?”
Later on in the conversation, Skenazy boils it down to this. “There’s been this huge cultural shift. We now live in a society where most people believe a child can not be out of your sight for one second, where people think children need constant, total adult supervision. This shift is not rooted in fact. It’s not rooted in any true change. It’s imaginary. It’s rooted in irrational fear.”
I definitely want other adults to care for my children if/when we become accidentally separated and they needs guidance. Like Ann, I think a good test of whether one should step in is the look on the child's face. Do they look scared or frantic or worried? Are they looking around for Mom or Dad? Or are they simply exercising independence and exploring in a way that might be licensed by the parent instead? However I think the bar for involving the state should be EXTREMELY high -- definite evidence of abuse or neglect, for example. Lets be neighbors, not accusers.
"Today, your mom would behave differently."
LOL! Then you don't know my Mom as well as you think you do. She would do exactly what she did 60 years ago!
After all. if it was all right in her mind then, it MUST be all right now.
Michael: The only time I was ever approached by a pervert was outside a bike shop in Berkeley. Who knows, I may have looked a tempting youth in my bike shorts and jersey (both all wool in those days, ouch). Me, I couldn't quite figure out why a male total stranger was inviting me to a dance. Ah, innocence.
Ann writes: "I am focusing on what the parent should do and what other adults should do.
As a parent, you should not want to put your child in a position where other adults will find it necessary to take responsibility for your child.
So... where is THAT line?"
As a parent and friend of many parents, I can say that the likelihood of (unintentionally) putting one's child in such a position at least once is a near certainty. So the problem is not the parents, it is the criminalization of the inevitable. Who wants that society? Not me.
I agree that there is a world of difference between strangers or neighbors helping a child who might be in distress, and sitting on your butt, not helping, and instead calling the police. But I've always thought that, before you call the cops on any one, for any reason, you should be fully prepared for that person to have the worst day of his/her life. If the situation merits that (someone is breaking into your house? do you care if he has the worst day ever? of course not. call the police) then make the call; you're responsible. But if it's not completely obvious, just don't do it.
"After all. if it was all right in her mind then, it MUST be all right now."
I don't know that she thought it was right even then, but now that there is more severe disapproval, I think she would take greater care.
Remember, in the old days, mother was at home while the kids were out playing, and there were mothers on call in nearly all of the houses.
Today, we're seeing women going off to work, leaving kids on their own. Some of these cases are people who are simply skipping making childcare arrangements.
At what age can you leave the child to be his own babysitter? It's a big expense to be avoided, and it's not what we saw in the old days.
When I was very young I wandered away from my mother at a department store. I was lost, but eventually a clerk saw me and took me back to where my mother was frantically searching for me. I don't remember the incident as being particularly frightening, but sixty-some years later I still remember it.
As a parent, you should not want to put your child in a position where other adults will find it necessary to take responsibility for your child.
That boat sailed a loooong time ago...that's why we have WIC, food stamps, free breakfact and lunch at school....
Hell Obama is busy importing 60,000 more children for us to take responsibility for....
First of all, I will say that Disney World allows children to ride rides unattended if they are at least 7 years old. They do not even need an adult with them to enter the line. So a child can come up to any ride, any show, or anything at all really, entirely unaccompanied, and unless the child specifically says they are lost, cast members are completely allowed to let the child roam free.
Here's the flow chart I would use:
Would the child be better off in foster care than in this current situation? If yes, call the cops. If no, proceed to the next question: Is there still some potential danger, even if only a little? If yes, observe child, talk to child to get information on whereabouts of the parents*, and perhaps find the parents to discuss (and warn) the parents further. If no, leave the child be.
*If parents cannot be found, consider calling 911 if there are no other options available.
There are very, VERY few situations in which I would ever call the cops. I have done so once, however. I saw a little girl - MAYBE 4 years old - wandering around my very large neighborhood all alone. I watched her for about 10 minutes, and once I realized she was wandering aimlessly and no one was watching her, I went and talked to her. Unfortunately, she either didn't speak English or was too afraid to speak to me, so I could get absolutely zero information out of her. I held her hand and walked around with her for about 30 more minutes, all the while I was asking neighbors if they knew who she was or where she lived. It was then that I finally called 911, only because I literally had no idea what else to do. No one seemed to know her, she couldn't tell me where she lived or where her parents were, and I certainly didn't want to take her to my house to get accused of kidnapping! Fortunately, the mother eventually came looking for her (although she didn't seem too distraught - perhaps she didn't realize how long the little girl had been gone?), and it was then that the cops showed up. They talked to the mother, but that's as much as I know. Never found out what happened after that. Unless there was some horrible situation discovered within the house, I doubt the little girl was completely removed from the home or the mother arrested. The girl wouldn't be the first child in the world to sneak out the door unnoticed for a time.
"Lets be neighbors, not accusers." I think Jessica is SO right! Everyone, including a child, needs to discover his independence and his boundaries. Otherwise how is he ever to function as an adult? I am in my 60s - I admit that times have changed. It isn't as safe out there as it used to be. However, if we don't show our children how to live in the environment in which they find themselves, we do them a great disservice. It is impossible to stop all harm - we kid ourselves if we think we can. We surrender our responsibility and the goodwill of our neighbors if we always call the authorities. What an impersonal and ridiculous cop-out, pardon the pun, that is.
It's a waste of time to long for the past but it sure was nice place to grow up!
I have 3 sons, 8, 6, and 3.
I have taught them to *trust their instincts*, and *trust most adults*.
I have taught them to ask for help from adults when they need it. My 8 year old made me so happy just a few days ago. We were on our way out of a museum, and the 6 yr old ran ahead, and I walked slowly with the 3 yr, assuming the 8 was with the 6. (The 8 and 6 are supposed to stick together--always--but the 6 didn't care. )
So by the time I got down to the lobby, I was being paged by my son. He had been unable to find me, and did what I taught him: immediately went up to a person in charge, and told them he needed help because he couldn't find me. Which he did. And I immediately returned to his location.
He wasn't a victim waiting for help; he was anxious but not scared. He knew what to do, and saw that people could be trusted--mom to come back, strangers to help.
from a safety standpoint, a child seeking help has a very high chance of picking a good person. A child waiting, frightened, has a higher chance of being helped by a bad person if we decide good people should avoid the risk of getting involved.
What should the lifeguards have done? Depends--could the child swim? Was he starving, left unfed all day?
That cops don't bother to just talk to parents, or even merely have DCFS call and talk to parents is a problem that will only grow, as we adults find the authorities are now antagonists in our lives.
"If you were a lifeguard, how many times would you observe an unattended 7 year old near the pool before you would feel that you should take some preventive steps?"
I was a lifeguard and I regularly saw 7 year olds outside the pool fence. That was a typical summer day in my home town...
40 years ago.
Worth mentioning that if you do call the police because you're concerned about the welfare of an unattended child, and later you're forced into committing a tragic but justifiable homicide, and you're at least part Caucasian while your assailant wasn't, the Party will distort the concern you showed for the child to make the world think you're a monster.
I would say that you want other adults to care about your children, but not excessively. You don't want perverts snatching them, dressing them up in rubber socks, and buttering them like corn, on the one hand, and you don't want Department of Social Service type do-good statists calling down the crushing power of the state every time one of them commits an act of childhood on the other.
I have intervened with an obviously distressed child in public' and will again at need. But all I am going to do is help them find their parent. Sadly, as a male in 2014, I will always be doing it at risk of accusation.
It says the lifeguards saw him standing outside the pool area. He was on the other side of the fence at the pool. These people who were strangers to him started asking him questions, like where his mom was. He got scared and ran off.
The police found him at the park and he talked to them. He was doing what he was told - don't talk to strangers, police are there to help you.
"I don't know that she thought it was right even then, but now that there is more severe disapproval, I think she would take greater care."
LOL!! I don't think so. To her, the story represents the capacity of her sons to escape her supervision and control even at very young ages. "And just look at them now!" she would add. She tells the story as an example of her sons' (yes, the apostrophe is correctly placed) confidence, independence, and adventurous spirits, not her failures.
She did the very best she could do at the time and she would do the same things today. She knows others might judge her very differently, but that wouldn't change what she would do now.
William Koehler (The Koehler Method of Dog Training) recommends carrying hard candy when training in public.
If a busybody accosts you, give him a candy to suck on.
Kids could be instructed in this.
This issue suggests a novel legal approach to, of all things, illegal immigration.
If parents letting their children play outside unattended or driving a little drunk with them in the car is felony endangerment, what about undocumented parents hiking them across the desert in July? Or entrusting them, attended or not, to cartel-controlled smuggler gangs?
Border states prosecuting a few such cases under state law would be perfectly constitutional and would send a powerful deterrent message.
It'll never happen in California, though.
@natatomic @Ann Althouse
Unless he was getting into trouble or hanging around the pool after closing, I would NEVER feel obligated to "get involved" at all. Is the pool not a good place for kids to go without supervision?
I would certainly not involve the police.
If I were a cop, I would certainly not arrest the mom because her kid was out of his yard unsupervised. None of the activists in this scenario acted reasonably.
The cops argued that there were pedophiles at the park. Well, isn't that a job for the police?
@natatomic @Ann Althouse
Unless he was getting into trouble or hanging around the pool after closing, I would NEVER feel obligated to "get involved" at all. Is the pool not a good place for kids to go without supervision?
I would certainly not involve the police.
If I were a cop, I would certainly not arrest the mom because her kid was out of his yard unsupervised. None of the activists in this scenario acted reasonably.
The cops argued that there were pedophiles at the park. Well, isn't that a job for the police?
I was a free range child from age 10 on. It matured me fast and didn't hurt a bit. Had the police interfered, in 1958-63, I'd have been astounded and have grown to hate them.
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