To be concerned about neighbours 20 month old baby playing in the street?

[rainwatwe]

So basically I have 2 kids, both under 4.
They play in the garden but not in the street.

The other day I was driving back when I saw one of my neighbours kids - a 20 month old baby girl playing on a foot to floor bike with her siblings and the other neighbourhood kids who are all under the age of 8.

The child was on the pavement playing near a road.
There was no adult supervision.
This is the 2nd time I have seen this happen now.
I was a bit shocked at this and also concerned.

But this neighbour is one of those people that is very confrontational as previously she has had the police called on her for verbally abusing a senior pensioner.

Around here most of the kids play unsupervised under the age of 9 though, the parents just leave them too it.

@GingerbreadHen7 - Wow really lol?

The kids also take turns into pushing each other ( including the 18 month old) in one of those go karts on the pavement.
I also think this is extremely dangerous, even for the old kids to be playing like this.

I mean, if she was standing by the window I can’t say I’d rush over and tell her to get away from it in case there are any perverts watching no.

If she was in the window doing a naked dance for the passers by then yeah I’d probably tell her to stop. Im still not convinced it’s a social services issue.

I think it does depend on your area. Around here, some families would let children out to play from roughly age 2 (the 20 mo in the OP is nearly 2) with older siblings, if they live down a quiet dead end road. It certainly wouldn't raise eyebrows anyway. But I acknowledge that generally people here give children independence much earlier than I tend to see on MN.

Same here to be honest , they go out with the kids all ages once they can walk properly. These kids are very streetwise. These kids are very independent around here

Sounds fun my kids and grandchildren always loved their nanny gannys

Thats crazy and an accident waiting to happen..pls report! You can do anon im sure...

As a safeguarding, I would report it. Children should that young should be

supervised by an adult at all times. It can be seen as neglect .

I had asked mum to sort her child. Next time I would report it. It's too young.

The kid wasn’t on its own though? And could the parent have been keeping an eye on it from the house?

Keeping an eye on a young toddler playing next to a road from inside a house is negligent. Clearly a child of that age has no road sense and could at any moment stumble and fall or wander onto the road and be killed.

Sunnydaysarehereagain2026 My daughter lives opposite a family who let their 2 under 4 years children climb up the upstairs window naked. It’s an incident waiting to happen. Most neighbours have reported to police and SS , they have visited but nothing has changed.

There’s an 18 month old out there too?

I would report - that is ridiculously young. A family local to us let all their young kids out playing in the street alone for hours on end every single day whilst they sat indoors getting high on marijuana - they were never changed out of their school clothes. The youngest one about 3/4 was found wondering the local park by herself one morning, the police picked her up and when asked what happened she said ‘I was hungry, mummy was asleep so I just opened the door and went outside’ such a sin, anything could have happened to that little girl.

mysteriously now the entire family have vanished but I do hope those kids are ok.

Presumably it didn’t and presumably the OP didn’t do anything about it

How do you know so much about them
OP? I have a toddler, she is tiny but older than anyone can guess. Just curious.

I'd report to social services.

I would probably report to social services. I know of someone who used to let their toddlers play in the street unsupervised, the youngest being roughly the same age as the baby in the OP. Anyway, one of the toddlers was in the road, caused an accident (motorbike swerved to avoid her), police were called by the ambulance crew (for the biker, not the children, who were all unharmed) and they discovered not only the children being unsupervised but general and quite serious neglect. The children were later removed permanently.

How could that avert an accident?

Yeah I don’t get this, I’m in Spain just now and there’s toddlers at the beach naked or in small bottoms, I don’t think it’s a SS issue for a kid to be naked in their own home

Social worker here and 20 month playing near a road with no adult supervision is not acceptable. Ring children's services if it happens again

It doesn’t but if it was in that much danger then why didn’t OP intervene?

She didn’t take action to prevent it getting hurt but instead posted on here.

Is the incident waiting to happen that they fall out the window?

You contacted SW because a kid was outside playing in a nappy? What do you do when you go to the beach?

Yes or fall and severely damage themselves, both little boy children

I know the mum to say hello to and a brief chat, she lives a few doors down from me.

It is tricky as other neighbours have got involved before and it's turned very nasty.
Last year the police were called after she threatened an OAP who lives opposite.

@Anarchy99Err because I was driving home and one of my babies was being sick in the car.