Would you stop someone else's child from running away?

[julienetmum]

Last week I had to nip into the local community centre to speak to the manager as I was hiring it. They have a coffee bar area so I sat dd (4) and ds (2) down with toast whilst I spoke to the manager at the counter. The table they were at were right next to the counter but I didn't notice ds get up and run out of the room (bad mummy!)

A woman saw him go and came over to tell me. Of course I flew after him and caught him at the door. He couldn't get out though as it was security catched.

When I took him back to the coffee bar the woman said to me that she hadn't tried to stop him in case someone thought she was trying to abduct him.

Of course I thanked her and made a mental note never to trust a 2 year old to sit still when told but this surprised me. I wouldn't have thought twice about stopping such a young child from running off if I saw him.

A while back I was driving away from the scholl when I saw a kid about 3 yrs running off in front of his mum, who was laden with buggy and an other youngster, her older kids appeared to be chasing after him, I was heading off down the other road as I saw this happening and I decided to drive on, cut down another road and get ahead of him. I pulled over and ran accros the road, I jumped in front of him and stopped him, by this time he had legged it accross 2 roads. I didn't have to touch him as he was so shocked at me just appearing, I think the Mum was glad but she was in shock and to busy bawing at the child to say much to me. I am glad I did it as I would have still been worried that he had been run over.

Another time we drove past a young girl about 6yrs crying at a bus stop, it struck me as strange as it was quite a bit away from the school and the bell must have only just gone. I mad the decision to park a bit further down the road and took DD with me to speak to her, I was very worried that she would think Iwas going to kidnap her or something. As I was speaking to her her uncle turned up, turns out she had got upset at school and ran out early.