You know, I can just see the post if your friend's 8yo had completely ignored yout child too..
The middle ground is actually very very small, and its very hard for anyone, never mind an 8 year old to satifactorarily stand in it.
As a comnplete aside, and please please don't take this as an excuse to go off on a rant about feeding charts etc - I have a friend who regularly rants about mothers "being bullied" by HCP being "rude and horrible and bullying" becuase their child isn't performing on the graphs for weight gain....however its only bullying because the mothers are educated people who are already doing what they think is right......Trust me, if there was a child in the area covered by her HVs and other HCP who suffered horribly from an uneducated, uniterested mother who HADN'T been pulled up on these things, then she'd be the first to complain about that too...
It is VERY VERY cold - I don;t know where you are but I'm in North East Scotland and I'm concious at all times of children being cold - esp babies who can't tell you. My Nephew once suffered from hypothermia because his father had taken him out for teh day without insisting that he was properly dressed for the conditions. (Nephew had wanted to wear his summer jacket, his father hadn't been "up for the fight" enough to insist he wore his winter jacket, or at least 2 jumpers underneath his summer jacket, and he came back from his day out very ill indeed because of hypothermia). Again, in that case maybe people SHOULD have said to him "That child will be freezing"...
She is 8. I don't understand why you couldn;t have just taken a couple of minutes to explain a few points and SHOWN her that responsible adults and parents make choices after considering them, rather than just "doing things impulsively".
How long would it really have taken to say -
"Do you know Suzie, I've actually just taken his jumper off, because actually its warm inside, so he really doesn't need it when we are inside, but when we are getting ready to go back out in the cold I'll put it back on".
or
"Well sometimes babies do cry because they are hungry but he was fed about 45 minutes ago so I'm fairly sure its not that - it might be that he is tired though as babies often fall asleep after they have been fed".
Remember, this little girl is probably only about a year off having played with her dolls where all you can really DO with a doll is wrap it up warm in a blanket and pretend to feed it...!! Its probably all she knows to do with babies.
Far rather that she took an interest in his welfare and seemed to care about the child than if she had ignored it.