to think if you take a child to the seaside you should ensure you look after them and this may involve you getting off your arse a bit?

[MrsMaturin]

Having a minor rant about something we saw at the beach today.

BIG beach, big sea, windy. We are all sitting eating our picnic when a large beach ball blew past about 50 metres away. Followed by a small (5-6 yr old) child crying her eyes out. Roughly level with us the ball picked up speed and we could see she couldn't catch it. Dd2 (13) and dh went off down the beach after it and I went to talk to the kid. I asked her who she was with and she pointed to a group about 400 metres away at the top of the beach. I said we would try and catch it and she just walked off sadly. Dd and dh finally caught the ball after another stranger stopped it - perhaps as much as another 500 metres down the beach and almost in the sea.
I followed the child up the beach. When she was about 20 metres from the group a woman came to talk to her. I followed them back to the group - where woman proceeded to stuff her face with pizza - and said my family had caught it. Mum? then started telling the child to go with me to get it which the child clearly didn't want to do so I started walking back towards dd2. Finally the child followed me and the woman followed her very slowly moving no more than around 25 metres away from the group by the time we returned the ball to the kid who was still choking back her sobs.

Now AIBU to think that:

a) if you take kids to the fecking SEASIDE you should keep half an eye on them and not let them wander unchecked towards the sea and conversations with strange women wearing seriously awful cardis ?

b) if you take kids to the fecking seaside on a windy day it should occur to you to keep a check on stuff that could blow away? Seeing that you're the adults after all....

c) if your child is very, very upset you should show her a bit of loving care and not simply tell her to trudge off down the sand with said stranger?

Beach woman - if you're reading this yes I'm judging you and the other 12 people you were with. Try looking after your kids so other people don't have to By way of contrast we saw another ball being chased by a kid later on. Dad was there too and when she couldn't catch it he took over. I'm a very casual parent but there are limits even to me.

YANBU! We went on a school trip to the beach last year. Class was playing a game and across it walked an unaccompanied 2 year old, aiming to walk round the headland and out of site.

We caught him and tried to find who he was with. Eventually we took him to a large group of people some distance away and he did belong to them. He'd been with us at least 30 mins and no-one had noticed. When we told mum where we'd found him she told us to bugger off as 'we had made our point'

I've got a cardi matching that description! Is yours from Next? And no YANBU (feels need to add a relevant comment!)

Choccotrekki yes it worked well to be honest and made us feel a tad more relaxed. We used it most places really not just the beach. You can generally hear a shrill whistle.

Our friends thought we were a bit Barmy but so what!

Anne imagine not seeing your 2 year old for 30 minutes on any outing let alone by the sea. I would be hysterical. People are unbelievable really.

YANBU

The more confident you are in the water, the more healthy respect you should have for the sea IMO. I would never let a 5 year old wander far enough away from me at the beach that I couldn't sprint to them in 30 seconds.

We live in a coastal city (not UK) - there is a v wild beach but v popular about 45 minutes from our place. I am a good swimmer and I am usually too scared to get in. I definitely never go in deeper than upper thigh. I am constantly amazed/horrified at people who are clearly not good swimmers throwing themselves in the water, often in shorts & t-shirts as well. There are lifeguards patrolling the beach but they're not bloody miracle workers.

I think people who don't spend much time by the sea/think about it really underestimate the power of the waves. Same thing with those photos of people on quays during the storms.

I once found a tiny child (about two or so) playing alone right at the top of a 'down' escalator in a large dept. store. No sign of mum. I got the child away from the escalator and we went in search of her mum - who was at the other side of the store. I handed kid over, started saying where I'd found her, and mum 'thanked' me by calling me an interfering [very rude word]!

Can't remember if I was wearing a bad cardie, though

YABU. Buy a new toggle and sew it on.

YANBU - my mum once had to rescue a child in the sea who was on a dinghy in the deep water being blown farther out to sea by a strong wind - mum and several others saw what was happening and swam out to save the child.

When they took the boy back to his mum apparently she could barely lift her head to bother to say thank you.

Later on he was back in the sea on the dinghy again!

I judge parents like that and I don't care!

The cardigan is a concern tbh. I can't get past that at the moment.

My son went missing on the beach in West Wales last year. I offered the lifeguard a description of my son (blond, black and blue wetsuit, 6 years old) and we looked around the beach at the other 100 or so children matching this description.

Beaches are tricky places.

I agree that a lot of visitors have no idea how dangerous the sea can be, even when the sun is shining. The local news is full of incidents all through the summer; near-drownings, lost children, complete ignorance of tides, getting caught in the current in an inflatable boat or whatnot.
Those are only the ones deemed newsworthy, there are thousands of unremarked ones.

There was a large group of adults and children clambering around the rocks and bothering the seals on St Mary's Island yesterday, stoopid feckkers. Big signs at both ends of the causeway and around the shop & lighthouse telling visitors to stay well clear because a couple of the seals had injured themselves trying to get away from curious humans, but these idiots spent about 30 minutes circling the distressed creatures so their kids could shout at them, dance around waving their arms and take photos. They ignored everybody (including the lighthhouse staff) who told them to stop, the only thing that moved them was the tide coming in.
My judgy pants chafed something rotten.

I would have judged too OP, some parents are diabolical,

We used to live very close to a railway line, and the stretch nearest our house wasn't fenced off, most of the kids would never have gone near it, but there was one young boy, who was always in some sort of trouble. I saw him one day sitting on the line with his hand on the rail, just feeling for a train coming.

I sprinted over there so fast, and practically dragged him home, his mother's response?

"Oh he always does that, he likes to wait til he feels the train coming, then he jumps off, he's just playing"

I was beyond shocked and horrified.

And then people start complaining that "healthy & safety has gone mad"

It bloody had to go mad and attempt to cover all angles to compensate for the completely clueless, ignorant, oblivious and just down right lazy people around.

It never ceases to amaze me people just leaving children to get on with it on beaches when every year the news is full of children and teenagers drowning. I'm a strong swimmer, but like most people learned to swim in a pool, swimming in the sea is completely different, you have little control and have to work hard to get anywhere. An adult has little chance if they get into difficulty a child has zero chance.

YANBU, cardi or no cardi, you judge away

l let my 7 and 9 year olds swim in the sea last night by themselves last night while I sat on the beach stuffing my face with fish snd chips. Was I not supposed to?

Op, yanbu, but I find some of the posts following yours to be rather ott.

I think this lack of care is really common now. So many parents have no interest in their children it seems. Makes me sad when i see little ones at the park whilst mum is busy on her phone. Funnily enough a friend on FB posted today that he had seen a little girl fall off her bike and hurt herself will Mum and friends nattered on, and just ignored the child's distress. He didn't feel able to go and help because every man is a peado.

How are you with checking for rips from the shore I love? I have been in the sea and seen young children floating backwards in a rip with parents just watching from the shore. One child froze when I offered to pull him back in (he was floating out -kicking but drifting in the other direction , was out of depth, daddy seemed to be waving to him from the shore) - he'd presumably been told not to talk to strangers. Anyway I was just wondering whether to ignore him telling me to stay away and drag him in anyway, or point out to his father that he was actually getting into a dangerous situation when a surf coach came over and hoiked him back to shore without waiting to ask for permission.

People often underestimate the sea, I've seen someone (youngish adult) pulled out the the sea this year - he owes his life to some surf coaches, a defibrillator and the air ambulance. He was very lucky that it was a busy day, the following week it was rainy and there would have been no-one there to rescue him.

YANBU. My brother once had to rescue a small child who was struggling underwater in a swimming pool during that 'simulated wave' thing. He brought her over to her parents and explained what had happened. A few minutes later he looked around and there she was struggling again to get her head above water. This time he brought her straight to the lifeguard who ordered the parents out of the pool.

Some people really don't deserve to have kids. And some kids really don't deserve the selfish irresponsible prats they get landed with as parents.

Dunno if you're being unreasonable, but I'm in awe of your ability to estimate so many different distances in metres.

Does your cardi have a special distance-measuring feature?

This is such a sad and awful thread.

YANBU. And while you do get these utter fools in many different places beaches are always alarming. They are lovely but people forget how dangerous the sea can be, even for very strong swimmers. Never mind tiny kids wandering about on their own.

We have the additional excitement of lumps falling off cliffs and people wanting to stand very near the edge to be photographed.
When I lived in Yorkshire, we had the dangerous North Sea, the crumbling cliffs, the tide coming in over flat sand faster than an adult can sprint and the regular burial of teenagers who just had to tunnel into the dunes.
Once it was me, but my dad was watching and hauled me out by the ankles.

As a child watching baywatch gave me a healthy respect for the sea. I still never swim out of my depth. I am still so so wary.

Bring back baywatch.

I don't live near the sea now but I grew up near the sea, am a very confident swimmer, and still nearly for washed out to sea aged 12!

The sea is brilliant, but it's also a bloody dangerous place to be. Once I saw someone with a buggy having a picnic on the sandbank when the ride was coming in fast! I was stood quite close and on edge watching where the ride was coming to check me and DS wouldn't end up stranded but they were merrily eating their picnic.

Eventually I decided it was time to go back to the dry sand because the sea had started to come around us a little bit. I said very loudly "DS the ride is coming in around us now and to comes very fast so we better go back in" then the woman looked up and started packing up.

It's scary. I never leave DS near the sea.