To take my kids home (bizarre situation)

[BaleandWhale]

DC were at their dads. Due home at 5pm today.

I was in town doing some shopping and heard a kid crying from the other side of the shop which sounded like DD. Went to look and found all three DC with a woman I've never seen before dragging DD by her hand out of the shop

Obviously I stopped her and said WTF are you doing and who the hell are you.

Turns out she is the best mate of ex's girlfriend. Ex had to work so left kids with his partner. Partner decided to take them to town with her mate. Partner then went to get her hair blow dried at one of those pop up blow dry places and left DC with her mate. Youngest DC (5) was upset and refused to leave the shop. Big department store so she had managed to get her three floors down during the tantrum.

DD asked to come home with me and then the other two said they wanted to as well. The woman starts saying I couldn't take them as she didn't know who I was. Oldest is 11 and clearly saying that's my mum!

Anyway I took them as they are due home soon anyway.

EX has just phoned and gone ballistic that I had no right to take them and partner is frantic about it.

AIBU to take them home with me?

Right so OP is duty bound to keep her ex in the loop but his actual DP who had responsibility for them can dump his kids with whomsoever she sees fit, without informing him, and nip off for a blow dry that could no doubt have been done three hours later when the kids had gone home?

I agree, the kids probably are worried. Especially now Dad has been on the phone whining about poor old Jane and her hurt feelings.

Err no, don't think I said that.

You said the OP should have informed him. Why? No one else was. He didn't have a clue where his kids were or who they were with or that his GF who was in charge of them was uncontactable stuck under a blow dryer.

And upsetting them further by dragging them back to Jane possibly for a massive public showdown.
Op was bang on. Putting the childrens emotional welfare first the adults wellbeing comes second.

Boney I wasn't the one who started calling this a scene.

One poster said that all the children were not upset, two of them were fine.

I pointed out that all three children, fine or not, were asking to leave with their mother.

Another poster said that of course they were asking to leave with their mother, they'd just witnessed a scene.

You've gone through my post quite carefully but you haven't explained what you think I've assumed. As I said, it's all there in the OP's posts.

But you have said that a child crying in a shop isn't a scene. Perhaps not, in itself, but in that case why was Jane's friend trying to drag her outside? She obviously thought the child was making a scene, and she joined right in with it by dragging her out before the OP got anywhere near them.

She did not ask any of the parents (those pesky people with the responsibility to make that call) if it was acceptable to allow someone unknown to both parents and pretty much to the kids to look after them.

This is not just nipping for a quick wee/changing room but I'm within shouting distance. The unknown person is unlikely to be registered insured child care as if that was the case it would be likely to be the first thing she said so not one of the only people with the actual PR had the chance to ok it or not. She then also made herself unavailable should an emergency occur.

Both parents had thought she was looking after the children she was not.

That's what she did wrong. You don't get to make decisions like that with other people's children

Hygge

You have made the assumption of were the "scene" started, to pp that posted about the scene meant where the OP stepped in and started swearing.

The rest is based on that assumption as is

"She obviously thought the child was making a scene, and she joined right in with it by dragging her out before the OP got anywhere near them."

We may as well assume that she had agreed to take them for cake you do not know what she was thinking.

Verity

But she didn't did she, it is irrelevant to the thread

"Let's hope the op doesn't have any really difficult situations with the dc to deal with, she may well be overwhelmed."

This is really PA and insulting. She did deal with a difficult situation and put her children's emotional wellbeing first as any good mother would do. Adults' feelings and what is "polite and proper" comes after the childrens best interests at that moment.

It's not what's "polite and proper", it's safeguarding.

None of the adults in this situation seemed to know each other. The safe thing, for the children, would be to establish who is who, and inform the other adults who was taking the children.

So the sensible, safe thing to do would be for everyone to go back to Jane, then agree who was responsible for the children. Still putting the children's feelings first, but also making sure everyone knows where the children are, and who with.

As people have said, if I were looking after my stepchildren, I am responsible and am going to make sure that they are looked after. If a woman I didn't know tried to take them, I'd refuse until I can speak to DH and confirm who she is, and that it's Ok for them to go. Actually, thinking about it, I'd refuse if I knew who she was, until DH said it was OK for them to go.

I can't imagine going out with someone else's kids, and coming back without them!

This makes me laugh - the op has long gone, probably thinks we are all barking mad.

Haven't read all 300+ posts, but OP, yanbu. I would hate to be in your position and would have done the same.

I'm sure she'll handle them admirably seeing as she handled this one so well.

Agree Lem

The 'stepmother' figure in this situation knew nothing about what was going on as she was elsewhere and not answering her phone.

It wasn't a parent who left the children with a friend - they were left with a friend of a friend of the father who was a stranger to both parents and had barely met the children. Where do you draw the line?

The what if line isn't really that helpful - we can all play that game. What if Jane had actually fulfilled the caring responsibilities she'd agreed to? What if the police had been called because a shop worker was concerned? What if the youngest child had run away from the friend? Puts the friend in an awkward situation.

I think I would probably have tried to go and speak to the girlfriend who was having her hair done, or at least wait until the mate of girlfriend had managed to establish that I was who I said I was.

Otherwise it puts these two women in a very difficult position whereby they have basically handed over someone's children to a stranger (as far as they are aware)

But you were right to take them with you, just probably not without making sure everyone knew you were their mother.

Boney

I haven't made an assumption, it's all in the OP's posts, including the part about Jane's friend wanting to remove OP's DD because she was embarrassed.

The OP's child was loud enough to be heard and identified from the other side of a large department store. The OP has said that.

That would have drawn attention from more people than the OP, especially as Jane's friend and the OP's children had come down three floors in the shop during the tantrum (again, said by the OP, so not my assumption).

Scene wasn't my word to describe the situation, but we can call it anything really, a disturbance, a commotion, a tantrum, a woman dragging a strangers very vocal child along by her arm, whatever, but it was happening before the OP got there.

It's possible but unlikely that a group of four people, one of them screaming and being dragged by another, got through three floors of a department store without attracting any attention other than the OP's.

And she says Jane's friend was embarrassed by the tantrum, which indicates that yes, people were looking, people had noticed. So I haven't assumed that either, the scene was taking place and Jane's friend was embarrassed by it before the OP overheard and went over.

But lets say nobody else was paying them attention, either before the OP got there or afterwards.

Her elder two children had just witnessed their sister having an epic tantrum and be dragged along by a woman they don't know, having only met her once previously.

I can see why in that situation they might want to go straight home with their Mum when she appeared unexpectedly in the middle of all that and that's why I said that they may or may not have been fine but they still understandably wanted to go home with their Mum.

Micha
Talk about safeguarding ? She was having her hair done dumped the children on a friend in a busy shopping centre and didn't pick up her phone when called.
"Safeguarding" sorry but What nonsense

Hygge

We disagree on how you interpret the OP's posts, and the start of the "scene"

I have posted that
I agree that the OP should have intervened.
I don't disagree with her taking them home (as such).
I disagree that the OP handled the situation in the best manner possible, In that she could have calmed the 5 yr old and should have spoken to "Jane" face to face and resolved the situation fully before taking them home (if the situation still required that to happen).

I don't think we can disagree on how I interpret the OP's posts, although we can say that you and I have obviously interpreted them differently.

You might not consider that a woman dragging a tantruming child down through three floors of a large shop is a scene until the moment the child's mother intervenes.

While I might not call that a scene either (because it was the poster I was replying to who called it that) I think that it would certainly attract some attention and I have taken the OP's word that she believes Jane's friend was embarrassed and trying to get out of the shop.

And I doubt that many parents would have reacted differently to the OP when witnessing it, whatever you want to call it, and not gone straight over to find out who the woman was and why she had hold of their child. Or not taken their children home when they said they wanted to leave with her.

I do agree that speaking to Jane in person may have been better, but equally it may have caused a bigger 'scene' again. We don't know. The OP is probably the best judge of that, but she was in a strange situation where none of us really know how we might react or how clearly we might be thinking either.

Other than that, from your last post we seem to have agreed on absolutely everything, so I'm not quite sure why we've ended up discussing it in such detail.

YANBU OP. And Jane is a silly twat for getting her hair done instead of looking after the DCs.

The MN rule that if you trust an ex with the DCs, by extension you trust who they trust to look after them is bollocks in this situation because it wasn't your ex who gave them to janes mate, it was Jane. The trust doesn't extend as far as that! I think that rule is nonsense anyway because, in your situation, you ex actually can't be trusted to choose somebody suitable!