Party child not collected 2 hours after party end

[mooey89]

DS’s 5th birthday today.
Party attendee dropped off by a lady who was not mum. I don’t know mum or other lady at all. Never spoken before.

Party finished at 2pm, at 2.15 I text to check how long. ‘So sorry, childminder isn’t replying to my texts, I’m 2 hours away, can you keep hold of him?’

So we took strangers child home with us. At 2.45 I text again. ‘DS is going to his dads at 3, any news’?

At 3.20 I get a reply ‘I’m 50 mins away, still not heard from the childminder’

He’s still here, my DS is long gone!!!

He’s very well behaved, sitting in front of the TV eating birthday cake,

BUT AIBU to think
A) there’s no childminder - what childminder forgets a child and when being reminded that you’ve forgotten doesn’t drop everything to run and collect?

And B), would you not have phoned me?!?!

Aw I’m glad onion, do you mind if I ask where she was from? I’m Edinburgh originally but now west of Scotland and I always get a face when I say bairn instead of wean.

Oh don't be daft - feed the bairn - entertain him - no-one has died - we all muck in for one another. Just arrangements got cocked up - sometimes they do

I work 2 hours away sometimes or more and my husband even further! If we were let down by a child minder you’d be having to wait 2 hours for one of us. It’s shit but it can’t be helped.

Sodding we're East Coast. But Ive lived away for decades and Bairn is something I only hear when my brother and is family visit me.

And your mention of wean has not got me thinking about when we'd all come back from Butlins in Ayr after a fortnight there and we'd be speaking with Glaswegian accents. We'd even call each other weans. We were about 8 years old.

Its been nice chatting you

gillybeanz Ok, if you’ve witnessed it happening then it must do and I don’t dispute that. I don’t think you should think that of everyone though. Also, not everyone has friends or family that can help put. I genuinely don’t.

I try and keep a bit of east coast in our home (DP is from Arbroath), so we use a lot of the dialect we grew up with and I steadfastly refuse to call my bairns weans

Haha that sounds about right, we used to do the same when we were wee! It’s a Haven now!
Nice chatting to you too

I had a friend who rang me in a panic saying that she wasn't going to make it to pick up her dd. I calmly agreed, getting a text to show permission, and took her dd for something to drink/eat in a cafe. She actually got incredibly delayed (plausible story and not CF) and I looked after her for two hours! It happens. If my lovely friend hadn't been able to get me to do it, she'd have been super stuck.

This will have been an unfortunate accident. No mother would leave their child alone with another mother they don't know very well and just hope they'll be okay...
The poor woman.

Was the left child from a middle class background?

@Creambun2
Why is that relevant?

Not gotten to end of the thread yet but who the f* leaves a child of five alone at a party... all the parties we go to (my son is six on august so done a fair few reception and yr one parties ) mums/dad's etc stop with them... five is too young to be left "alone" at a party

What kind of parent sends their child to the party of a child whose parents they don’t know without leaving some contact details?
YANBU!!
I never left my kids at any kind of social event without leaving a contact number. What would have happened if the child had had an accident or felt unwell? I always let the adult running the party know if someone other than myself would be picking up my child. Surely it’s common sense. This child’s mum put you in a very awkward position especially as your son wasn’t going to be there with his friend. His mum may have been genuine but she was also very irresponsible. She should have let you know in advance who was bringing her child to the party and who would be collecting him. It wasn’t fair to assume you would take care of her child and that you had nothing better to do. I would be very angry if this happened to me with no very good reason. I would keep a look out in the future. Find out from other parents if this is a one off or a regular occurrence. Does this mum dump her child at parties and go off enjoying herself assuming that the party host will babysit her child till she returns? Does she leave her child at play dates for longer than agreed? Is she a user?

If you’ve been happy to leave the child with another Mum at the party, you’d be happy enough to leave them for another few hours. I think not explaining about the cm makes it more likely it was made up. That doesn’t mean she might not be having a hard time and deserve sympathy, but the same could apply to the OP!

OJZJ all the parties that my DD had or attended in the mid 00s were parent-free, as were the parties that I had or attended in the early 80s. Do you insist on staying with your child at school/beavers/rainbows etc?

@OJZJ, there's nobody on Earth who could have persuaded my last-born to be accompanied to a party at 5. But my first-born would have wanted me to accompany him at 11. Maybe if you have more children, you will be a bit more understanding.

Team mum! She was (very sensibly) discreet to refuse to give any details about her childminder.

I think the lady who dropped the little chap off at your party was the mum who had him at a party last weekend and been left with all week

OP did very well, I would not still be looking after the extra child 2hours after the party if I didn’t know the parents and they hadn’t given me a plausible reason as to why the child had been abandoned. I have no idea how to contact SS or the police but would have done or taken the child to the local police station. I am not a registered childminder and would not be doing anyone’s childcare for them.

You wouldn’t have done that DeathlyPail. The police would have laughed you out of the Station!

In these situations I would just assume the mum needed help and beg glad to help with it. There have certainly been times when I've been held up or delayed and had to call in a favour. Sometimes it's best not to dial up the drama to 11. I wonder what social services would say if called in these circumstances, I mean they're not overstretched or anything dealing with actual instances of child abuse.

@nottaken you don’t know me and I would

🤦‍♀️

deathly it’s not a police matter at all and they would tell you that. So you would be fucking crazy to just jump a child in the foyer of a police station.

Let's hope Deathly never has a crisis and needs anyone's help.

What if the OP just really had to go? A flight to catch, or a job interview, or starting her shift at the hospital as a brain surgeon?
She would have to have left the child with someone else, or at a police station