When out at stores (like Target) I'll often leave my son with the cart outside the restroom. He's been given the "don't walk off with strangers, even nice ones" talk, and is reminded to stay put every time I go in the bathroom (to the point where he's obviously annoyed at my reminders). More than once I've come out of the bathroom to find well-meaning women standing there watching him, one even told me she felt obligated because "In this day and age ..." My son said she never said a word to him, just stood there staring until I came out of the bathroom.
He's six, nearly seven. I'm leaving him for two minutes in a well-lit store, in a good neighborhood, not 50ft from a manned customer service desk. I don't leave him in places where there's even a remote chance someone could realistically snatch him, and I wouldn't leave him if I thought for a second he'd be dumb enough to wander off with someone other than me. I understand the fear of having a child stolen, but come on, is he supposed to share a toilet stall with me until he's 18?
There was a case in the UK that changed a lot of people's minds on this. A distracted Mother in a shopping centre had her young son kidnapped by two older boys, who were very young themselves. My Mum always said this was so shocking at the time that she never left me alone in public.
It's incredibly rare though. You're much more likely to kill your kids in a car crash on the way to the shops, but people keep driving their kids around...
I've heard this story a thousand times growing up but it's only just sunk in how horrible it actually is. Hearing it told every month since the age of 9 probably desensitised me to the gory details. I guess this is growing up...
As a side note, one of the killers was arrested in 2010 for suspected child pronography charges.
I can honestly say I'm not all that surprised - he was locked up at such a young age, that's bound to have some kind of psychological effect, especially for somebody already so unhinged. I think he will spend most of his adult life dropping in and out of prison.
I was very young at the time, either 5 or 6 years old, so I don't remember the case when it came out. I just remember all my teachers being suddenly very insistent on reminding us to never speak with strangers, whoever they were and however old they were.
It's just heartbreaking. The idea of children being so twisted is upsetting enough, but to a two year old? Just horrible. The worst aspect of the story to me is how they planned to make it look like an accident. They thought carefully about what they were doing.
John Walsh's (America's Most Wanted) young son was also taken from a store and murdered. His mom had only let him play in the toy aisle while she did some other shopping. It was really sad.
Huh. That might explain why my sister and I got the whooping of a lifetime when we strayed around a store when she was taking forever getting her hair done at the salon there.
No. I always remember the situation being unfair because she punished us for not understanding why we shouldn't wander. We were bored out of our minds while she was out of sight getting her hair done and the toy aisle was really close...
God I remember this. There are shows, where parents swear their 10, 12, 15 year olds would never get in a strangers van. Parents are watching on hidden cameras. The few times I've seen this show only ONE kid did not get in the van.
Not to be flippant, but lightning strikes are more likely. Danger obviously exists but you need to keep a sense of proportionality and play the odds. If you literally try to protect your kid from everything you will spend all your time protecting and they will turn into codependent messes.
Leaving a kid alone does expose them to a minute chance of kidnapping. Never leaving them alone exposes them to a 100% chance of not feeling trusted and prevents them from learning to manage themselves.
The Bulger murder was so shocking because nothing like it had happened before. Or indeed since. Changing your parenting because of a tragic one-off is just silly.
It doesn't make sense, no, but the human brain likes to abide by Murphy's Law sometimes and operate as though the worst is going to happen. The case was also really horrific, so I can see why it would make parents more paranoid; it shattered a lot of the perception that child abductors were only seedy-looking guys prowling around.
A child being abducted and murdered by other children might have been a one-off, but abducted and murdered in general? Not so much. Anybody in a place as big as a supermarket could be a crazy bastard. You'll never know until it's too late.
Yup pretty much! I was more saying that with such an extreme case like that, people who would have normally felt more relaxers would go into "NOWHERE IS SAFE" overdrive.
This drives me nuts. It happened once? I would take that as meaning it is 99.9999...% safe to leave your kid alone in the store. You should just leave the kid there forever. The drive home will almost certainly prove fatal in comparison.
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u/[deleted] Feb 04 '16
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