how bad do you think this is......

[paisleyII]

friend of mine runs a sweet shop in a market - a trendy type women came in with what looked like a 5yr old boy and asks is it alright if i leave him with you while i go for a coffee, i will only be about half an hour....my friend had never met the women before. wft, i wish she had asked me, i would have told her where to go. the thing is, i feel sad about the kid, i wouldn't leave my dd anywhere with a stranger, actually, i wouldn't dump my dd off even if it was with a good friend, not out of the blue unless it was really important

the kid left by my stall definately was not in view of the parent/carer - she was there for (i didn't time it) what seemed like ages, at a guesss 15 minutes which is a long time to leave a young kid - all the while i was looking around trying to work out who the mother was - the kid was really short in height and DEFINATELY wasn't in view of the carer unless they were standing immediately by my stall - the courtyard was PACKED at that time and i mean packed, this is normal for where ii work. it is sad how we are mostly alot more nervous about leaving our kids and it is an individual choice, whilst part of me admires more laid back mums who are not so, i would still prefer to be overly careful and thus (hopefully) note find myself in ie the shoes of madeline's parents, just how i feel. having said that, i am not a neurotic mum, i guess i am somewhere in the middle. the mkt where i work isn't in a leafy village green either, it is central in a city in a dangerous area actually

That is very odd! That said, I saw a girl with her mum and another lady in a fairly large shop the other day, the girl was asking to look around and the mum said you can look around if you like as long as you don't leave the shop. The girl seemed sensible, asked how she would find her mum again (the mum responded we won't leave, we will be able to find you and shout if you need us but can't find us) and the girl wandered off.

I know you have to be careful but I thought that this mum was probably giving her child a good taste of independance, I think it is about balancing risks and how much you know your child. However, I am not a mum yet and my view will probably totally change when it is my own child!

I think parents also have to weigh up the risks, but making comparisons or using situations like madeline and james when considering children of 7 years old looking around a market stall are absurd. Where I would allow my dd to have a good few meters Independence, I would never have done this when she was a toddler and I would not leave her to sleep alone in a complex. Its just not comparable.

Sorry supper and bed for the kids, to your question we noticed the pram and thought it was empty and the baby was being carried around by the mum it might have been 15 minutes before we realized there was a baby in the pram. We hadn't seen the pram come in and it was in a corner of the store, so we had to assume he worst we phoned security and they phoned the police, the mother was furious but she claimed she had only been 3 hours and he usually slept 4 so he was fine. She said she new the area, and had done it before. Madness.

Some parents let their children play on items that said display item only and for safety this was not on, we built the stuff in store and often the bolts weren't fully secured so it was easy to move when the display was finished or so we could sell display items without damaging them when unscrewing them. The worst was parents who treated the store like a creche, mostly round Christmas time, they would say just sit hear and read this or play with that while i go next door, you know to another shop. We had to intervene and say that the child couldn't just be left and that we weren't a creche but a shop.

I have friends who work in a place where grown up men and mainly boys sit and paint minature figures and play strategy games with them , they have a lot of children abandoned in there. The worst one was a 6 year old, no coat, no food and no money to get home/to buy food. He was not collected when the shop closed and they could not contact his family. They ended up taking him to McDonalds and walking him home. Mother (apparantly) was drunk and didn't even thank them. I'd have called social services.

I have never heard of this shock I would presume depression/ parent at the end of their tether and in need of help.

why oh why does everyone have to have something wrong with them, a label, why cant they just be an arsehole of a parent who cant give a toss - there are plenty of them out there!

i sell new childrens books, (going off at a tangent here) but i get alot of 'i'm not buying you any but you can read them whilst i go over there....' - it also bugs me that my 'new' books end up with sticky finger marks etc on and thus look/become second hand books - if you have no intention of buying one don't stand there and read the bloody things, my stall ain't no library. the mothers use my box of books to keep their offspring entertained whilst they talk to their friends or wander off. also, recently someone who stalls out next to me had a vintage C.1930's metal kids toy car, their stall is an antique stall (not a childrens toy stall) - the grandmother let 'henry' get in the car and fiddle around with it even though it was clearly a collectable item, also, it had metal bits sticking up that were capable of causing damage ie the top of the gear stick was missing - when the child, what a surprise, hurt himself the grandmother looking embarassed said to the mother who walked over as she had not been there at the time how it was the stall holders fault even though i knew and she knew it was hers for letting him in it in the first place. if it had been on my stall i wouldn't have let the child sit in it. not always dealing with members of the public if you are a trader i can tell ya

she was probably meeting her dealer beertricks

i thought the OP was about a 5 yr old at a sweet stall, and then it deviated onto 5yr old alone for independence?

a couple of years ago a woman at Victoria station asked me if I would mind her baby son- aged about 5 months -while she went to use the loos.

thought it was odd as she didn't know me from Adam but i agreed - public loos are a bit grim so can understand her not wanting to lug a baby in there.

She was gone for about 40 minutes - used the time to: buy a book, nip upstairs to Next and try some shoes on, go to Boots and get herself a coffee....

Some people are just really laid back to the point of negligence when it comes to their kids

op also mentioned a 7 yr old alone at her own stall.

was that the same person? missed that. and then you, i believe, said you'd let you're 5yr old do that and i said whatever i said. i'm sorry, i'm not really with it today and i cant tell if i'm just making randomly unrelated posts or if you're being weirdly pedantic about which bits of the thread i'm allowed to comment on and which i'm not. i suspect a little from column a and a little from column b, and i don't to fall out about it so i'm going to leave it there.

dont be sorry thursday nothing wrong with what either of us has posted. we cant always disagree, I didn't mean to come across as pedantic, that was not my intention. just getting into the spirit of debate. I certainly wasn't getting at you in any way. I think the confusion arose from the fact I made both points in my post and you had not picked up on the other part of the op, no big deal, feel free to comment on what you like, a case of crossed wires.

Had to join in. My mum left me in the post office when I was 2 weeks old, wasn't because she wanted a coffee, pop to next, suffered with depression or anything like that- she just forgot she had a baby. I'll put it down to lack of sleep

excellent, thats good :) i've only been here a couple of days and not used to the no avatars thing yet.

not sure there is a no avating, but hey as I said crossed wires. no big deal. off to do me ironing.

Emandwillial, my mum did that with my sister when she was a baby too. She was worried about going back in and just taking the baby incase someone thought she was stealing her, when no-one stopped her she went back in and told them off for not noticing someone taking a baby.

We were in London and went to the apple store and were at the children's mac area while dh spoke to a staff member. 3 of the 4 computers were being used by what looked like siblings and a member of staff. Next thing the police are there.....the children had been there for around 2 hours as their parents had just dumped them there while they went shopping for new clothes for themselves. 2 of the children started crying loudly and the police calmed them down. The parents still hadn't appeared in the time we were there and the apple staff said they'd not seen them come in but security were checking CCTV to see roughly when they were left.

I heard the police saying that some parents don't get that you can't just dump kids in a store and said it happened a lot in Hamleys.

DS1 is allowed into stores now with his own money and certainly allowed to browse a market stall while we are in the same vicinity if not standing right next to him.

He is a very sensible 7 year old and chomping at the bit for his independance. I trust him to stay where he says he will, to not wander off with anyone who can't say the 'password' under any circumstances.

I would never however have asked any random stranger to keep an eye on him at anytime.

I may not always be in his sight but he is always in mine (though he doesn't know it and neither presumably do the people around him).