Sad incident at our hotel this afternoon

Terrible parenting

That's called neglect. CPS should have been notified. If it happened once, chances are it isn't the first time. Poor kid. Parenting classes are called for, at the very least. :facepalm:
 
I agree that there is such a thing as poor parenting - no excuse for throwing a kid out in the hall for some parental "whoopie." Having said that, I wonder how many of us here can say none of our kids ever got away from us. We had taken the kids to Waikiki (as tourists) and littlest one (10 at the time) got mad for some reason and just walked away. This was at twilight as we were just ready to head back to the hotel. We were frantic, but fortunately, little one was no more than 25 yards away - pacing up and down, trying to cool her anger (forget what it was about - some sort of sibling thing.) Should we have been reported to CPS?

Eldest - about 16 at the time was in the Candy Striper program at a local hospital. We had made arrangements to pick her up at a certain place and time. She wasn't there. She'd gotten a ride (with someone she knew) to the family business - but she didn't tell us until we had returned home. At that point we told her to find her way home (about 3 miles - plenty of daylight.) I've never been so frightened for her as that time, but I was determined she would learn to be where she said, when she said or at least communicate. It was a very long hour before she came home - having taken a crash course in the city bus system. She learned a lot. Were we wrong? I still don't know 20 years later.

Son got picked up by the police for being with a buddy who was bad news. He had left the house with his "good" buddy and one thing led to another, I guess. Son had taken some sort of medicine (probably cough medicine) given to him by the "good" buddy. Fortunately, the officer who brought him in knew our son, us, and his buddy(s). He called about 8PM and told us the situation. He said we could pick son up (now sitting on the Group W bench) at the police station. We took our time to let the kid stew for a while. Were we wrong to let the kid go out at 16? Should we have been more aware of who he might be hanging around with. Should we have immediately headed to the police station? Maybe we'll never know, but I think son learned a good lesson. He never hung around with the "bad" buddy again. We had a LONG talk with the parents of the "good" buddy and separated them for a month. What is the "right" way to deal with this? Who knows.

My point in all of this is to offer a bit of grace to "good" parents who either make mistakes OR are still in the process of learning. End of sermon so YMMV.
 
Sometimes I believe this is cultural. I came out of the grocery store and noticed two young boys (maybe 7 and 4 yrs old) alone in a junker of a car. The weather was mild and I think the windows were down. I thought more along the lines of asking the store mgt to make an announcement more so than calling authorities. I decided instead to just hang around instead since I was in no hurry. I was shocked when two adults emerged from the store. They were obviously immigrants based on their clothing. I pointed and said sternly NOT SAFE! They gave me a look like they thought I was NOT SAFE. Thinking back it would’ve been perfectly normal when I was a kid but times have changed unfortunately.

When I was a kid several families had non running cars in the backyard we played in them all the time.
 
jazz4cash said:
Sometimes I believe this is cultural. I came out of the grocery store and noticed two young boys (maybe 7 and 4 yrs old) alone in a junker of a car. The weather was mild and I think the windows were down. I thought more along the lines of asking the store mgt to make an announcement more so than calling authorities. I decided instead to just hang around instead since I was in no hurry. I was shocked when two adults emerged from the store. They were obviously immigrants based on their clothing. I pointed and said sternly NOT SAFE! They gave me a look like they thought I was NOT SAFE. Thinking back it would’ve been perfectly normal when I was a kid but times have changed unfortunately.

When I was a kid several families had non running cars in the backyard we played in them all the time.
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Yes, I recall those days. Parents would leave us kids in the car while they shopped. I wouldn't leave a kid in a car now on a bet. Times HAVE changed - and not all for the better. YMMV
 
jazz4cash said:
SI was shocked when two adults emerged from the store. They were obviously immigrants based on their clothing. I pointed and said sternly NOT SAFE! They gave me a look like they thought I was NOT SAFE. Thinking back it would’ve been perfectly normal when I was a kid but times have changed unfortunately.
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There was in incident a few years ago in LA where a visitor from the Netherlands was taking a walk with her baby in the baby carriage. She stopped to get some coffee and a pastry a nice local shop. As is the custom in the Netherlands, she left the baby carriage with the baby outside on the sidewalk.

A concerned citizen called the police. The police brought the mother and baby into the station to book the mother on some child neglect charge. A volunteer representative from the Netherlands government had to be brought in, and he apparently spent a good deal of time convincing the police that this was normal behavior in many cities in their native country. Eventually, the mother and baby were released, with a warning to not do that in LA.

Then there's this from 1997:

https://nypost.com/2017/11/25/i-went-to-jail-for-leaving-my-baby-outside-a-restaurant/

When she and Wardlaw decided to grab a drink at a Dallas BBQ in the East Village, she did what she would have done back home. She left little Liv outside sleeping in her stroller.


“I had lived in New York [during school], so, of course, I knew that I didn’t see prams all over the city,” said Sørensen. “But . . . I had been living in Copenhagen, I had given birth to my daughter in Copenhagen, I was raised myself in Denmark .  .  . That’s just how you do it in Denmark.”
Click to expand...
 
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Koolau said:
Yes, I recall those days. Parents would leave us kids in the car while they shopped. I wouldn't leave a kid in a car now on a bet. Times HAVE changed - and not all for the better. YMMV
Click to expand...


Yep- Mom did that frequently with the 5 of us in our little town In the 1960s. She said that once one of us wailed, “But what if somebody STEALS us?” At the time it was funny.
 
I used to walk to and back from elementary school in Detroit when I was 6.
 
At maybe 12, I walked the 4.5 miles from our house to Main Street to buy candy. No sidewalks, very rural countryside, absolutely beautiful. What astounds me, now, is that my very protective parents didn't scold or forbid me to do it again. I mean, I must have been gone for hours and hours.

And I don't recall any motorists catcalling me, which was already starting to happen when Mom and I walked around larger towns to shop. Possibly because at that time, there was very little traffic and I knew to get back in the woods if I heard a car.
 
RobbieB said:
I used to walk to and back from elementary school in Detroit when I was 6.
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So did I, starting at age 5 in kindergarten after the first week or so. The walk was about a mile. And Dad thought nothing of leaving me and sisters in the car while he stopped in a bar for "a short one". DW was sent to a dentist appointment halfway across Washington, D.C. at about age 8 involving two bus transfers. No big deal at the time.
 
I walked to elementary school, even in kindergarten. 1/2 mile, 4 lane suburban street, but fairly quiet back then. But we had several school mates nearby; I had 3 classmates on the same block. My sister walked with me on the way to school, I walked home with classmates. Everyone walked to school, so it was normal.
 
I also walked to school, by myself, almost a mile, and in the UK often near dark especially the way home. Still, even then, this was the 70's, and stories of child abductions and the like weren't zero. I remember a car pulling up behind me on a stretch of the road that bordered a wooded patch (total movie setting for a child snatching...) and a woman in the car asked me if I wanted a lift. I froze, said no, she drove off.

I must have been about 8 or 9, but even then I was old enough to know what that could have meant, and reported it to my parents and the school. I can still see her face. No idea if I dodged something terrible or just missed a ride to school.
 
RobbieB said:
I used to walk to and back from elementary school in Detroit when I was 6.
Click to expand...

I lived on the very edge of my school districts (Brooklyn, NY), so I could see the elementary school, one block away, that was in the other district. So i walked about a mile the other way to my assigned school. Same thing for Junior High.

Amethyst said:
At maybe 12, I walked the 4.5 miles from our house to Main Street to buy candy. No sidewalks, very rural countryside, absolutely beautiful. What astounds me, now, is that my very protective parents didn't scold or forbid me to do it again. I mean, I must have been gone for hours and hours.

And I don't recall any motorists catcalling me, which was already starting to happen when Mom and I walked around larger towns to shop. Possibly because at that time, there was very little traffic and I knew to get back in the woods if I heard a car.
Click to expand...

When I was 8 or 9 years old, I learned that there was a Revolutionary War era cemetery on the edge of my neighborhood. It was about a 2 1/2 mile walk, crossing at least 3 main avenues. Even then I had an interest in history, so on a Saturday morning I went there. Got home later, no doubt played with my friends, and I doubt my parents had given a thought about where the heck I was.
 
I can well remember, as a little girl, being warned not to talk to strangers - not that I met many - and never, ever to get in a car with someone I did not know.

This was in the 60's, and my parents had been parents since the 40's, since I was a late-life kid for them. It's not a new fear at all. I bet 19th-century kids were told never to get in a horse-drawn carriage with strangers.

Aerides said:
I also walked to school, by myself, almost a mile, and in the UK often near dark especially the way home. Still, even then, this was the 70's, and stories of child abductions and the like weren't zero. I remember a car pulling up behind me on a stretch of the road that bordered a wooded patch (total movie setting for a child snatching...) and a woman in the car asked me if I wanted a lift. I froze, said no, she drove off.

I must have been about 8 or 9, but even then I was old enough to know what that could have meant, and reported it to my parents and the school. I can still see her face. No idea if I dodged something terrible or just missed a ride to school.
Click to expand...
 
Dtail said:
Uphill both ways? - for a different thread.:D
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Yeah, things were different back then. Much less paranoia. Cars didn't have seat belts either.

My mother gave me the totally serious talk about not going with or talking to strangers, you yell, you run and you don't go with anyone that doesn't have a uniform (police or fire) on.

But hey, other than that, go outside and play. And that was miles at times.
 
Fly boy is right that decent parents can become caught in a horrible vice once a agency gets involved and thinks there’s child neglect. As a former social worker I have seen both sides. I spent 4 years in child protection. There weren’t any other social worker positions for 2 years hence my return to graduate school to work with people with disabilities. Much less heartbreaking.
 
RobbieB said:
Yeah, things were different back then. Much less paranoia. Cars didn't have seat belts either.

My mother gave me the totally serious talk about not going with or talking to strangers, you yell, you run and you don't go with anyone that doesn't have a uniform (police or fire) on.

But hey, other than that, go outside and play. And that was miles at times.
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My mother told me not to talk to strangers, but I never found anyone stranger. So that didn't work too well.

Seriously, I would be very reluctant to get someone crosswise with CPS without a stronger story of neglect than was recounted in the OP. From what I have seen, it is a briar patch you can never leave.
 
Chuckanut said:
There was in incident a few years ago in LA where a visitor from the Netherlands was taking a walk with her baby in the baby carriage. She stopped to get some coffee and a pastry a nice local shop. As is the custom in the Netherlands, she left the baby carriage with the baby outside on the sidewalk.

A concerned citizen called the police. The police brought the mother and baby into the station to book the mother on some child neglect charge. A volunteer representative from the Netherlands government had to be brought in, and he apparently spent a good deal of time convincing the police that this was normal behavior in many cities in their native country. Eventually, the mother and baby were released, with a warning to not do that in LA.

Then there's this from 1997:

https://nypost.com/2017/11/25/i-went-to-jail-for-leaving-my-baby-outside-a-restaurant/
Click to expand...



Three years ago we were in a out of town subdivision in an area we had never been before heading to a wedding. A car pulled to a stop in middle of road on a blind corner turn (looked like an old lady by herself) looking in some weeds. She pulled ahead and left as we ran up on her. I figured she was staring at some deer or something roadside, so as we passed by her spot I looked over there and it was a 2-3 year old boy in nothing but a diaper by the road in the weeds.
My Gf who was driving didnt believe me, I said we better stop. (I think the old lady was thinking about helping but we scared her off being it was a bad place to stop).
Little dude couldnt speak, as he just babbled totally unconcerned. So I threw him under my arm and knocked on all the 8 houses on that little subdivision.
None of them knew who he was. The last house had a boy same age and they hit it off. We called sheriffs dept and left the child with the couple. We called back and they told us Dad randomly came to that street in total panic after sheriff arrived. He lived in a separate little subdivision at least a quarter mile away. Lady said he told sheriff he fell asleep on couch and didnt know the little dude had bolted. That was a weird experience.
 
I walked to elementary school (about 3/4 mi away). From age 5 on. We tended to walk in a pack. No parents holding our hands. Now days I see few kids walking to school. (I live in the house I grew up in, kids went to the same elementary school for the first several years of grade school.)

(Edited to add - there were pedos around then - I remember a flasher in a car incident. And we knew better than to talk to strangers in a car.)

I made a choice to send my kids to a school in a different area for middle and high school so they could do the I.B. program. I sent them 2-3 days a week on the public bus from age 11 up. They rode together. They had a transfer to a different bus... right in front of the sheriff's prison next to the courthouse. I was told by friends this was unacceptable. Younger son is currently eurailing/hosteling through Europe. He actually thanked me for teaching him to be unintimidated by public transit. He can't afford taxis so they take buses/trams/subways from the train stations to their hostels. The friend he's travelling with is well travelled - but hadn't relied on public transit as much - until this trip.

I read a lot about the free range kid mom when my kids were pre-teens and decided to do a modified version of that - teach my kids how to deal with situations. (They had phones, they had bus passes, and they knew to go to the bus driver if there was a problem.)
 
My friends moved to Texas and their 12 yo called Child Protective Services when they disciplined him. They were threatened with removal.

He did turn out OK though.
 
Another one here. I walked to school, about ¾ of a mile, in Brooklyn, NY starting with first grade. My mom took me there the first day of first grade, and I was on my own for the next eight years.

Obviously, it was uphill both ways, in the snow, barefoot, with a 20 pound stack of textbooks plus my lard sandwich for lunch.

In my earlier years, I roamed about the neighborhood on my tricycle, for a radius of about half a mile.

But it was an utterly different time. Imagine two mail deliveries every day (five in the weeks before Christmas). Milk delivered in bottles to the milkbox on your front stoop every morning. Guys roaming through the neighborhood on horse-drawn wagons selling vegetables. A cigarette vending machine in nearly every store. Absolutely no comparison with modern times.
 
A customer of mine had her son call CPS on her and they removed him.

He later begged her to take him back but she said you made your bed now sleep in it.

edit - he pushed her and she decked him.
 
RobbieB said:
A customer of mine had her son call CPS on her and they removed him.

He later begged her to take him back but she said you made your bed now sleep in it.

edit - he pushed her and she decked him.
Click to expand...

DW's niece called CPS on BIL. She was upset that she couldn't do what she wanted and when she wanted. CPS put her in a "house" with other girls. Each girl took turns cleaning the bathrooms. They all made their beds. They had other chores from the time they completed their homework (which was monitored) until lights out. Niece was quite happy to go back home a few days later.
 
Two differences I observe now from when I also walked to school through elementary school, and rode public transportation for middle and high school in the Big Bad City:

1) A lot more people were home. There were more 1 income families, and you would see more people out and about during the time one was walking.

2) Strangers were more likely to get involved to protect kids in public. I can recall many incidents of adults, even teenagers, approaching a situation to ascertain if the child was being bothered by a stranger. Even gangs, or those groups thought of as "radicals" had a "moral code" that young children were off limits and would protect them if they thought they would be bothered.
 
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