Dear parents, please pay more attention to your kids.

[anissa834]

Some kids are way too comfortable with strangers and some parents pay little to no attention to them.

Yesterday while I was sitting on a bench, there was a mother and a kid sitting on a bench a bit farther. The other bench where the mom was sitting was facing away from me.

And the kid was running around while her mom was on her phone not paying attention to her surrounding. Then the kid started talking to me. At first she said hi and then she started asking me about my favorite color, who is my favorite footballer ECT. We were having a small talk.

Finally after a couple of minutes, the mother firmly told the little girl to come to her.

Luckily for the girl and the mom, I am not a crazy person. I bet if I told to kid to come with me to my car to get some candy, she would've came with me without a second thought.

Parents please pay more attention to your kids !

You think that based on the fact a small child interacted with you for a few minutes whilst her mum was on her phone her mum wouldn't have noticed her getting up and going with you? That's quite a stretch.

Rather than chastise the mum for, what sounds like, a perfectly normal interaction, you decide to come on MN and issue this statement to everyone?

I don't have kids but I have nieces. When I go out with them, I always keep them in my peripheral vision at the very least.

I'm actually with the op on this one

Your child is more important than checking tiktok or whatever

I think there is a balance. I want my kids to be confident and enjoy social interactions and not to hide away scared of the world.

Many child abductions started as innocent interactions.

So you don't have children... It's very easy to say how you should parent when you have no children and taking your nieces out is in no way comparable.

Good lord.

The kid was talking, presumably the mum could hear.

You got asked a few questions for a couple of minutes while the mum was in the vicinity and was listening, then the mum asked the child to come back.

If this is your thought process why didn't you confront the mum for her terrible parenting rather than come on MN to vent about you potentially abducting a kid when the mum was right there?

I thought ECT was a footballer and was trying to work out who

Um - is this bad etiquette?! Because DS adores making friends with strangers 😂 I always see out of the corner of my eye who he's chatting to and call him back if/when it's clear the other person has had enough, but normally it peters out naturally (and more often than not the stranger will mention something to me about how well behaved and chatty he is, so it's not all one way).

But thanks for the parenting advice from a non-parent, really appreciate it 👌

I'm assuming the mum could see/hear her child? It's normal for us parents to encourage our kids to interact with other people! I do agree that it isn't good to ignore them and be on phones, but I don't know that's what was happening here.

I'm with you on this one OP. Seems to me like this particular child was interacting with you because her mother was ignoring her in favour of her phone.

Are you sure that the mum wasn't paying attention to her child AND using her phone at the same time? You get pretty good at multitasking when you have children or you'd never get anything done in the house ever. If the kid was talking she could probably hear her.

I have one very outgoing child who talks to strangers all the time (and two shyer ones). I might seem like I'm not paying attention but I'm always keeping an eye on her when we're out and about.

Nothing wrong with chatting to strangers when mum is there. It's a normal social interaction. Just because mum was on the phone doesn’t mean she can't hear her child chatting away.

Are you a woman? I hate to say but I would allow DS to get up and chat to a woman. Would be looking more if a man. But tbh even though it may look like I’m not always watching him, I spend my whole life scanning him in my periphery!

God, don’t move to the Southwest. We chat to everyone here.

My grandson will chat to anyone but he won't go off and do it.

I am with you @anissa834 , a couple of years ago I was walking my dog in a very lage park that has some fairly dense wooded areas when a little boy of about 4 yrs old asked what my dogs name was when I told him he said he had a friend with the same name so they ( dog and friend ) should play together .
He the told me about his friend and school they went to .
All this time I was looking around for a adult but couldn't see one.
I asked when his mum or dad was ,he pointed to mum who was about 200 yards away with her back to me. Like you I am sure the lad would of walked off with me with no hesitation.

I walked back to the mum and asked if he was hers and she bit my head of with 'what the fuck has it got to do with you?'
So I just walked off.

I’m with the OP but more in terms of not paying attention to a small child who may get into harms way (nothing sinister but maybe picked up a vale and put it in her mouth which is far more realistic than being kidnapped).

For example I saw a small child today who’s mum wasn’t watching and went up to a dog off lead and tried to pet it, That sort of thing…..

Stranger danger is an outdated concept anyway. I’m sure she was very capable of looking at her phone and keeping an ear out at the same time.

Most kidnappers are known to the child, not random.

OMG. Human talks to another human. SHOCKER.

Apparently there are approx 50 successful child abductions in the UK a year by strangers. Two thirds of these involved someone in a car, so 16ish by a perpetrator on foot. Considering there are 14,075,345 children in the UK, abduction by a stranger on foot is vanishingly rare. It happens, but it's rare and very unlikely to happen when a parent is sat on a bench with their child in eyeshot.

Me too. Too many parents have their heads constantly in their phones, not interacting with their children or noticing what's going on.

The effects are far reaching...

I agree parents or guardians should keep an eye on children, but I wouldn't stop them interacting with people. That's how they develop social skills.