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 !

There are too many parents who are more interested in their phones than their child when out in public. I feel sorry for the kids who want to join in with me and mine playing because their parents aren’t the slightest bit interested in them. I’m not a babysitter - play with your children

Kids often chat to me when I'm out, it's lovely and teaches them to interact with adults they don't know, their parents are around but not necessarily hovering, you make judgement calls on this sort of thing as a parent. Living in a smaller town in the sw people are a lot more friendly than in cities and the children seem to grow up able to to care of themselves out and about because they are used to just a bit more freedom

Op I could have been the mum many times over in this situation.
I bet the mum watched her child approach you and decided correctly that you were extremely low risk. Then I would have quickly whipped out my phone to text a friend back or sort a picture out for school or something. You can be sure I'm aware of my child and checking every few seconds.
I also believe it's important for small children to interact with harmless strangers, to learn how to live in the world. I purposely allow these kind of situations.
So basically, wind your judgy neck in.

That’s a very insulting comment. And picking someone up on their spelling is really out of line. Back off, bully!

Most children are harmed by people they know and trust. “stranger danger” is totally over stressed. Be far more vigilant about who is around the child behind closed doors. Chatting to a stranger is not an issue but mums on the phone are!

I wonder how many hundreds of thousands / millions of innocent interactions happen every day between adults and children versus the number of children abducted. I’m pretty risk averse but I do think we are becoming isolated as a society and it’s good to have little casual social interactions, I live somewhere friendly so frequently stopping to have chats with random folk. On the dog walk especially.

There are numerous threads on etc/ect calm down

I agree it’s helpful for children building social skills by talking to lots of people and being able to make small talk with strangers, but the parent should always be watching the child at least

I think that is likely. From my observation of people on pavements, using a smartphone shrinks the visible universe to around a meter from their body. No information can enter or exit this boundary. I see it daily, the situational awareness of people using phones is appalling, it is a manifestation of the very safe society we live in which has eroded the natural instinct to frequently be aware of your surroundings and look out for hazards.

Every time I see one, I think smart-phone-dumb-user.

My kid chats to everyone!
But, I’m always there too.

if she had quietly got up and beckoned the child to go with her then the mum could have turned around 2 minutes later to find her child gone

There is zero chance my dc at any age would have just followed a stranger like that and if they were picked up or something by a stranger, they would’ve screamed their heads off.
Plus an abductor would have to be really brazen to take a kid in broad daylight in those circumstances. They could so easily be noticed by someone and caught red handed. Or identified later. Anyway, there’s little chance the mum wouldn’t have noticed someone walking away with her child, she was aware enough to call the kid away.
This hypothetical situation is ridiculous and op, you sound like a total weirdo the way you’ve phrased it.

I despair at the parenting of today.

Only a few weeks again, I was at the bus stop watching a child of aged about 6 to 8 repeated bashing the glass bus shelter with a wooden truck. He was really hammering away at it, while his mother was oblivious as she was too busy starring at her phone.

After about 5 mins, I said to the child, 'Please can you stop that!' but he continued hammering away at the glass, harder and harder each time. So I raised my voice, adopting a sterner approach and said 'I said stop that,' at which his mother swung around and glared at me!

The amount of shit parenting you see today is unbelievable! People raise their kids like wild animals...

Unless the OP locked eyeballs on the mother's eyeballs the entire time she was chatting to a strange child, she has no idea whether the mother was perfectly aware or not.

That's not a normal interaction.

The child is clearly needy for interaction/ contact/ connection, and knows she won't get that from the mother. A child whose parent consistently chooses her phone or other distractions over interaction with her child will seek connection elsewhere.

I would have been as concerned as the OP. That child is very vulnerable to malevolent strangers.

Looking after the most precious thing in your life apparently involves watching crap on YouTube, or texting your mates. Not only are you taking your eye seriously off the ball but you're not actually engaging with your child. You know, like talking to them now and then. Remember those days anyone?

A child asking random people a couple of questions is absolutely normal.

Indeed!

Honestly I worry about some of those posting on this site if they think it's not normal for young children to want to engage with others around them.

Kids should be taught not to go off with strangers - there's nothing wrong with talking to strangers and it's actually quite good experience for children. What if there was an emergency where they needed help and the child had been taught not to speak to strangers?

Loads get ect versus etc wrong on here. The word is etcetera hence etc not ect. However, what's with it in uppercase? I thought it was shorthand for a famous footballer..

A child whose parent was on her phone for a good while as a once off wouldn't have behaved as this child did. She would have hung around by the mother and waited, or she would have pestered the mother to play or interact. This child has clearly no expectation of attention from the mother.

Same.

Of course it is. It was a 2 minute interaction and it ended when the mum called her back.

It was a snap shot. You have no idea how much the child is interacted with during a full day.

I think OP's point is that the child was not in sight of the mother. It's not a warning against lettering your children interact with people but about allowing them to wander completely out of sight, which seems like a sensible warning.

Im an oldie so remember the old popcorn eating emoji. So you come on a mums on the internet forum and tell mums off for using the internet while with their children. Do you not suppose that everyone responding to you right now has a child in tow. Honestly how did you expect this to go?

Being an aunty for a couple hours isn’t the same as being a parent 24/7, sometimes people are tired or ill too, or have other problems.