I am so angry..... some parents!

[gravity]

oh my god!!! post christmas sales are on and i went to one of our cities big shopping centres, as i was leaving i noticed a little (no more than 2 years old i'd think) boy standing in the middle of one of the malls. as i was walking past he nearly walked into me. at this point i looked around for is parent/s. couldn't notice any. waited a bit for the crowd to thin out. still no one. i asked him where his mummy was, but he wasnt a big talker (plus i am some strange woman i guess) i walked him out of the busy mall to the edge of the mall. i was a little worried as you never know what you may get accused of just for trying to help these days.... and rightly so by the things that happen today. still no distraught frantic parents anywhere. this poor little boy had filthy feet and a grotty face. so cleaned him up a little bit. i decided to take him to the centre centre-management but before we got there a guard for the centre walked passed. i spoke to him and he thought he recognised the little boy and knew his mother. he mentioned she wasnt the type to care. my blood BOILED! as my mil just told me i should have rang the police but stupid me didnt even think of that. at least an assessment could have been carried out. as i left the centre i saw the little boy and the mother. she looked as calm as a cucumber. not disturbed that her boy had been missing for at least an hour, she hadnt even advised the centre he was missing. i know i shouldnt judge her as i dont know her situation but this whole thing made me so mad. i mean a little one can wander off easily enough(thank god mine have never had the chance we have hold hands at all times rule, dd is 2.6) but if my dd or ds was missing for ten minutes i would be beside myself.
i just cant believe some people these day though, had to vent, thanks for listening

The poor mite! You only have to think of James Bulger and your blood runs cold.
It makes me so angry too, why does SHOPPING seem to come above everything these days?
Well good for you for taking an interest and trying to help. Something similar has happened to me, but this was a 3/4 year old by himself, trying to cross a busy 3 lane road. When I got him home, his delightful father told me that he would give the child a good kicking later for having talked to me, a stranger. I didn't know what to do at the time, except ask the father not to do that as I had approached his son (trying to stop him running out into traffic fgs).

ditto, James Bulger came straight to mind. i was ony a teenager and live in Australia when that happened, yet it is exactly my first thought, there was an old lady who saw what i was doing and came to help me find someone (i had a trolley full of shopping)and i dare not put him up in the trolley. but thinking of that case actually gave me goosebumps.
good for you too! sounds like his father could've done with the kicking!!!
it makes you sad hey, so many people want children and can't and then there are those who just shouldn't be parents
mind you, its things like this that make you go home and really really appreciate what you have especially the little ones
i hope that little boy keeps safe

just re-read that, about the old lady came out wrong, i didnt mean badly be her, i meant we spoke of that case hence the goosebumps

just wanted to clarify that

How sad and awful. I panic if I can't see mine after approximately 2 seconds.....

well, went shopping with dh+friend,dd and ds on monday. Said I was going to this-and-this shop (OK, holding dd's hands..)and thought they were all following me. Turned out ds followed me but dh and friend had gone to anotther shop. So , what a surprise when walking out of the shop and to see ds with 3 policemen...

It's really shocking that some parents can be like that a friend of mine often lets her ds (3) got o other parts of the shops on is own

Last summer I took my dd to an outdoor paddling pool and she made friends with another little girl around the same age (3) This little girl played with us for about an hour and I didn't know what to do when we were going I couldn't just leave her but didn't really want to pick her up and find her parents as I didn't know how they would react. Anyway I walked her around this pool (about the size of a five-a-side football pitch) and found her mum at the opposite end. I couldn't believe it she wasn't even bothered that her child wasn't near her and not only that the water was up to just under her arms.

We were in toysrus before christmas and a little girl of about 2 came wondering past us. I was watching her and she seemed to be alone and then she headed out of the door into the car park. I went and got her and said 'shall we find your mommy' she held my hand, didnt even bother that i was a stranger and we walked round the shop until we found her mom. He mom didnt look at all bothered. No word of thanks just took the child and walked off. Good job i wasnt a child snatcher...

its bloody scarey!! but so easy. thank god we are all parents who are trusting in our instances.
i walked around the supermarket and dd yelled rather loudly "stop holding my hand mummy your hurting me!" teh little cow! i was only holding her hand and she wanted to go the toy section. but still held her hand!!!

It is frightening how trusting some little ones can be. We found a lost little one (about 6/7?) in Marks and Spencers yesterday. He was sat underneath a clothes stand - saw his feet. Bent down and asked him if he knew where his mum was - he said she was trying on new clothes. He happily held my hand while I marched up to the clothes changing rooms and shouted out if anyone had lost a little boy. A woman queuing up muttered something about "oh, there you are" - no word of thanks - and tbh I suspect she told him to stay under there munching on a bag of crisps so he didn?t have to annoy her in the changing rooms I wish I had been fast or clever enough to stop her and confront her with it, instead I just walked off. How I wish I had asked her outright if she had knowingly left him. He was not a toddler but still far too young to be in a busy shop alone fgs. It upset me for the whole of the shopping trip - poor DDs hand was clamped rather tightly in my own after that.
We have had a few close calls with DD1 wandering off momentarily and every second feels like an hour - just awful.

bloody hell! i didnt raelise when i posted this i would hear so many people have seen the same thing! its so bloody disgraceful! i feel sick

It's sad but true that when you find a small child on their own you first wonder where the parents are but then start thinking "I hope no-one thinks I'm trying to abduct this child." Last year I found a toddler on his own on a busy road. He was probably only about 18mths old. A woman got out of her car and together we looked around for the parent(s). Eventually a man came out of one of the houses further down the road but in the meantime we were unsure of what to do. A few years ago we probably wouldn't have thought twice about taking the toddler straight to the police station but we both said how aware we wre that doing something like that now could be seen as abduction.

it must be our motherly instict i think

this has happened to me twice, 1 was a toddler of maybe 2, the other was a bigger girl of about 4, both times i was scared of taking them to the security guards in case i was accused of abducting them, but did anyway as i was even more scared of what could happen to them, another thing i keep seeing, is people leaving their buggies outside shops, with the baby in it, i just dont know what goes through some peoples minds............

Almost all cases of child abduction are by relatives. Children are not greatly at risk of abduction if their parents aren't watching them. The Bulger case was horrible horrible horrible, but really really rare.

They are, however, quite likely to get run over, beat up by bigger kids etc etc.

If I find an apparently parentless child, I have no problem with picking them up, holding their hand, whatever is necessary, while I look for their parents.

my concern was actually leaving him with the guard whom i didnt know - overbearing i know!you just dont know do ya?
my goodness nqc sounds like you are an old hand at finding parentless little ones....

I'm out and about a lot, and have no qualms about approaching random (small) children.

I do feel slightly twitchy about security guards, but this is (largly) unfair.

I always say, 99.99% of people wouldn't harm a child in any way. 100% of cars would run them over, though.

i shouldn't. i own a security company, i should be a bit better about guards but i am a mother before a security officer......
i must be blind folded (i will be opening my eyes after todat incident tho) its the first time i had seen this

Oh, and once in a while, I find people checking on my kids, as I don't keep them always within two feet of me. DS1 is four, so sometimes is out of sight for a moment or two. But I do get nervous if I can't hear him, and haven't (yet) misplaced him.

I did get twitchy on Xmas Eve, when a drunk man (accidentally) kicked DS1, then held him to ask where his mom was. I was right there, I was just busy getting DS2 out of the way of a reversing van!

aaah, making your getting ran over by a car theory stronger!!! dont you have six extendable arms nqc????

Yesterday in next there was a little boy of about 6 leaving the store in tears, the shop asssistant stopped heim and asked details, as she was saying them over the tannoy the little boy ran outside andme and another lady jsut caught him as a car came round the corner.
Mother came along and said she was in the queue so couldn't come straight away
father didn't come (boy said he was with both)

I had ankles taken out by a mum careering past with empty pushchair shouting "EXCUSE ME" in the Next sale today. Turned round to see her grabbing a toddler by the arm as toddler reached the doors!. She really shouted at the little mite but I think it was with relief - Next Sales & Toddlers don't match - at least she noticed and caught her in time!

Dh and myself were in Tesco once and in the carpark was a little girl of about 6 and her baby brother of about 3 months strapped to her in a baby carrier. Parents nowhere to be found and both were crying. I took baby carrier off little girl who was struggling with the weight and it took 20 mins before mum and dad finally showed. They just took the pair of them without a word. In all fairness the dad did find us later to say thanks but imagine if we had been child abusers. We could have run off not only with the 6 year old but also with her little baby brother too. Shocking

I once a couple of years ago saw a little boy of no more than 2 years old wandering down the dual carriageway in his pj's! I was out of the car like a shot cos the shops were shutting and he could have got run over - i know so could i but i wasnt thinking!
I took him he couldnt talk very much i asked him where he lived he was big on pointing! I rang the police and it was such a cold night luckily we had a car blanket so i had to ring police back to get permission to put him inside the car.The police took half an hour to come bearing in mind 2 mins away is the main link for the motorways system my hubby walked the nearby streets looking for someone who might have missed him.All we can think is he snuck out of the house once in bed.
We never got a call considering
1- i risked my life to drag him off the road.
2.i could have been anyone if one of my own had been in someone elses car i would want to know who.

my skin gets goose bumps reading all of these. like i said when i started this message.... I AM SO ANGRY..... SOME PARENTS!

thank god and bless those litle & not so little ones that have been lucky enough we all have been in the right place at the right time

have a happy new years all us good guys!!

xxxxx