Some lady tried to steal my friend's 3 yr old son at Costco

If your friend's 3 yr old screams, cries, and breaks things the way my sister's 3 yr old does, then I'd say the lady was doing your friend a favor by taking the shopping cart.

 

Please don't do that. reserve it for the playground. not just because the kids might be abducted, it's an annoyance and can be a saftey hazard.

as for the OP, that's some crazy shiet. i probably would not have thought of going to the manager for a lockdown because my ass would have been running up and down every single aisle like usain bolt.

 

Hahhahahahha

 

it doesnt matter if its a upper class neighborhood or not. Sometimes those are easier targets because people let their guard down. Crime does not discriminate.

 

Maybe you should...

I am not saying that you raise your child this way, but we have entirely too many young people that cannot even wipe their own ass. Some children are not being taught self reliance. I have had law graduates apply for jobs while having their parents try and sit in on their interviews.

 

That's horrible... there are so many sick people. luckly your friend didn't act a fool and was level headed..

 

Faulty logic.....

 

There is no logic when your kid is being stolen, why are you in here even talking about odds etc?

Someone tried to nab a 3year old....who cares if it is unlikely, certainly not the people who got their kid stolen.

DD

 

If you are being struck by lightning, the odds of being struck by lightning are 1 to 1.

Makes perfect sense.

Spoiler

STRANGER DANGER.

Spoiler

BOO!

 

You are comparing parents being wary of where their 3 year old is to parents sitting in on a 24+ year old's job interview?

 

Indeed.

Yesterday my son and hit his head on the edge of the table..... SCREW IT .... I have pillows taped to that bad boys head, all the tables were thrown in the yard and promptly burned ... I have taken next week off as well to sand all the corners in my home down. Damn the odds, you can never be too careful.... my understanding is that his bubble will be completed by June 1.

 

I am saying that people are more concerned about something that is EXTREMEMLY unlikely than with how they raise their children.... if you do everything for your child and treat them like an egg, you end up with kids that are not equipped to compete of survive in the real world.... now THAT scares me more than the .00000001% chance of child abduction.

 

I think keeping tabs on a 3 year old is OK. While the odds are extremely unlikely that the 3 year old will be abducted, the fact is they may and the truth is, in this case, he was. How would you feel, as a parent, if you were careless for a few minutes and someone took your young child? Would you chalk it up to a statistical anomaly or would you feel terrible that you didn't reasonably do everything you could, for the rest of your life?

 

the thing is no one can watch their kid ALL the time. the lady in the OP didn't do anything wrong. she just happened to be the victim this time. what happened to the million other times she has looked away? nothing? it sounds heartless to chalk it up to just an anomaly, but that's what it is.

when the kid is 8 and wants to play outside with friends, what is a parent to do? sit outside the whole time just to ensure he's not abducted?

 

I don't think there is ANYTHING wrong with keeping tabs on your 3 year old child either... if you see my original post I said the same thing, my response was in regards to something RAVEN posted concerning "free range" children. I do not think the OP's story relates to the free range move. A 3 year old should not be wandering the aisles of a store, someone else pointed out it is dangerous.

My only point is that there comes a point where you have you have to take the gloves off and let your child explore and experience things or youe can end up with serious issues when they are adults.

 

You'd probably be better off realizing that it was a freak occurrence and not beat yourself up about it thinking it was your fault. What this lady did was not in any way neglectful or irresponsible, and the fact that something totally out of the ordinary happened to her doesn't make her a bad parent. Nor does it justify being paranoid and overreacting to the insignificant possibilities that bad things might happen for the rest of your life.

 

Repped.

 

Sorry, I did not mean to imply that what the parent did in this case was in any way neglectful or careless. My response was a hypothetical to Nook.

With respect to 'freak occurrence', even if I did everything in my power to protect my child, if they were abducted, I would probably beat myself up every day for the rest of my life no matter how I tried to rationalize it.

 

Has she heavily used contraceptives before her pregnancy? What's her body structure like? Does her diet include alot of refined sugars and white flour? These are issues that mess with a woman's natural genetics/hormonal balance and cause her to lose her sense of feminine intuition.

I think it's pretty irresponsible of any parent to go to a busy area without having a locked GPS tracking device installed on their child. Made out of reinforced plastic that would take hours to cut through, unless the robber was fine with amputating the kid altogether. Which, given their state of desperation, is not out of the question.

It's really nothing to worry about. If you try to plan for everything and get into a stage of neurotic overprotection with your kids, you're going to rob them of their sense of autonomy. 3 is a very important age when it comes to the development of the subconscious. Do you want your kid to get up and do something with his life, or just kind of linger around like Moes for the rest of his life? Live for yourself a little, let your hair down, try out some samples at Costco with your back to your kid. If you have a heightened sense of awareness from living life the natural way, these things won't happen to you.

Adrenaline rushes are a part of life. Don't dull yourself from natural interactions with nature.

 

I think the key is reasonably do.. I don't think Nook or DonnyMost are advocating being oblivious but just putting perspective on things.

I remember when I was growing up even at the age of 6 I was allowed to play outsides on my own and so were all of my friends. Now that is almost unheard of and a parent that does so is considered negligent. The fact is that crime has overall gone down and we are a much safer society now than when I was a little kid. At the same time though we seem to be a much more paranoid society.

Crime obviously happens and in this case it happened to the OP's friend. That doesn't mean though that there is a strong likelihood that any given trip to the store a child abduction will happen. Also just to add that my understanding is that statistically child abduction and abuse is more likely to be carried out by someone known to the child rather than a stranger.

Anyway very smart move on the part of the mother here to get the attention of the manager to lock down the store ASAP than to go on a panicked search through the store. This is something I am going to add to my self-defense instruction regarding abduction of family members.