lost small child (Full Version)

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DavidLee44UK -> lost small child (7/9/2011 1:48:59 PM)

i did some late night shopping on thurs

in croydon

spotted a little girl crying

loads people were just walking buy, i went over and asked she was ok

she said shed lost her mommy

min later a woman came over, and started talking to her, asked little girl who she was she replied mommy so i walked away

sad that these days people see a crying child and just walk on by

have a friend with epilepsy she says she can at a seconds notice crumple to ground she says same peop[le just ignore her and walk on by

what would u have done with small child walk on by or help and why do so many just walk on



AneNoz -> RE: lost small child (7/9/2011 3:32:58 PM)

quote:


what would u have done with small child walk on by or help and why do so many just walk on
Of course one renders aid, this is the duty laid upon us each. To do otherwise is to act contrary to the world as it was to be.



LillyBoPeep -> RE: lost small child (7/9/2011 3:35:43 PM)

modern people are odd -- they're afraid to reach out to each other or help with anything.
though i will say, once i went walking down the road, and i was wearing a winter coat that was WAY too big for me. i was mistaken for a young child and several police officers drove up to me and asked me who i was, how old i was, and if i was okay -- they had been getting calls about a "lost child walking down the road in a black coat." =p
so you know, there are people out there who do care.
while it was odd (i was 24 at the time hahaha), at least i know when there really IS a kid walking down that way, someone is paying attention.



OMGlikegagme -> RE: lost small child (7/9/2011 3:43:18 PM)

when i was a kid i lost my parents in the mall so i started crying and crying. cop comes over says "hey kid what's wrong?" i said "i lost my mom and dad officer can you help me find them?" he said "i dunno kid i mean there's just so many places they could hide here."

no respect i tell ya i don't get no respect.

(rodney dangerfield)



VaguelyCurious -> RE: lost small child (7/9/2011 3:53:16 PM)

I found a little kid crying in the aisle of a massive sainsbury's in Bristol, once - his mum had set up a meeting point with him in case he got lost but the place was so big that he couldn't find it, and he was pretty hysterical. So I took him to where it was, and then his mum was so grateful that she tried to buy my shopping for me, which was nice.

But he'd been lost a while, and nobody had stopped. And that place is hella crowded - quite a few people must have walked past him.



DavidLee44UK -> RE: lost small child (7/9/2011 3:53:56 PM)

i def think theres something odd about not participating in life

london is full people who walk around what i call iphone zombies not looking just on phone

they cross busy streets on phone listening to music

prob they think theres an app on every phone that when there hurt little arms come out and carry them to hospital

and on buses amount people who hold private phone calls so loudly that even people from alpha centauri can hear



juliaoceania -> RE: lost small child (7/9/2011 4:06:17 PM)

I would look for someone in charge, whether it be a store clerk, etc, to help handle such a situation. I wouldn't leave until it was resolved, but kids these days are taught to seek such people if they need help. I would never encourage a child to follow me somewhere else.



DarkSteven -> RE: lost small child (7/9/2011 5:58:32 PM)

Good for you, David.

Unfortunately, julia's right, and being taken for a pedophile applies much more to us men than to women.

I would have stopped to talk to the girl but would have been very cautious about it.



slvemike4u -> RE: lost small child (7/9/2011 6:33:56 PM)

This has nothing to do with a "little" child...but I think it applies.I was driving through a shopping mall parking lot one day,following my sister with my mother in the car....when I saw a young woman/girl being thrown in a van.
I immediately stopped following my sister(she continued driving to the resteraunt we were heading too oblivious to what was happening in her rear view mirror....lol,she's a putz[:)]) So I pull up at the scene of this altercation blocking in the van...and demand to know what is going on....as best I can decipher what I had stumbled not was a young girl of the Islamic faith who was being forced against her will to go with her father.Seems the mother and father was separated....and from what was being yelled,and cried...the daughter was getting a little too Americanized under the mothers care....so the parents had met in a parking lot to "exchange" parental custody.....only the daughter wasn't having it.
While all this arguing was going on...and amid violent threats from the father and his friend...I had called 911.The young girl was crying,as I pulled up he had struck her....before the officers arrived some other bystanders came along...including a self professed veteran from Iraq...that we could have done without.....he introduced some very unnecessary bigoted opinions and remarks into what was already a volatile situation....Though one byproduct of his stupidity was my taking advantage of the distraction he caused with his silliness to remove the girl from the van.....wherein the mother started cursing at me.At that point I told the mother no one was going anywhere till the authorities arrived.
At this point the father and friend took off without the daughter...followed shortly by the arrival of the police officers....I had the young lady in my car....told the officers the father had struck her a few times that I had saw pulling up...which the mother vehemately denied....but the daughter confirmed...gave the officers a description of the vehicle as well as the license plate....at this point the mother got on her cell and must have called the father and told him he better get back there...cause the cops were putting out a BOLO on him.
Gave my statement...and contact information...than went to meet my sister...who was frantically calling us....thinking we dumped her and went off to eat without her....lol
I often wonder how things worked out for that young lady....I guess I will never know.[8|]



Termyn8or -> RE: lost small child (7/9/2011 6:49:21 PM)

"spotted a little girl crying "

Sadfully, this world is so fucked up that if you go to aid a kid like that they might think you are a molester or something. So some people stay away.

Fuckin great ain't it ?

T^T



rawtape -> RE: lost small child (7/9/2011 6:59:34 PM)

What you observed, David, is a rather common phenomenon known as the Bystander effect in social psychology -- a situation in which individuals do not offer assistance to a victim in an emergency situation when other people are present. There are several explanations, but the primary one appears to be an effect of monitoring other bystanders' behaviours to see if they think it necessary to intervene. Of course, all the other bystanders are doing the same thing, with the end result that no one ends up helping.

You did the right thing, but do heed the words of Julia and DS. People nowadays are very quick to jump to conclusions.



juliaoceania -> RE: lost small child (7/9/2011 7:44:12 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Termyn8or

"spotted a little girl crying "

Sadfully, this world is so fucked up that if you go to aid a kid like that they might think you are a molester or something. So some people stay away.

Fuckin great ain't it ?

T^T


And unfortunately there are weirdos just waiting for such a situation to take place so they can lure such little ones off never to be seen again, fuckin' great, isn't it?

My son was taught to seek an employee and tell them that he was lost. It never happened, but there was a contingency plan in place for such an event.



LinnaeaBorealis -> RE: lost small child (7/9/2011 7:48:47 PM)

My ex-husband & I had just finished a meal at a restaurant with my whole family & we'd gone outside to wait at the bottom of the steps leading to the front door of said restaurant. While we were standing there, a little girl came flying down the stairs--literally--& Denny reached out & grabbed her & set her on her feet at the bottom of the stairs. The look the little girl gave him & that the parents gave him was to me very sad. They looked at him not as this child's rescuer but as a potential threat to her. Had he not grabbed her, she would have fallen down concrete stairs & who knows how serious her injuries might have been.

I understand why parents are so paranoid these days, what with the media whipping them up into a frenzy by reporting everything as though it were commonplace rather than rare occurrences. But it really is very sad that people won't stop to help a crying child anymore. In my day--back before dial telephones--everybody took on the responsibility of raising every child, everyone reached out to help. And everyone disciplined everybody else's child too. We all knew that if we did something in front of any adult, they'd put us in our places & when we got home, the parents would discipline us again!!

I would definitely stop & ask how I could help the child, because I can't stand to see or hear a crying child; I have to go fix the problem & make the child happy again if possible. And I'm impressed that slavemike would do what he did for that child. I would probably have called 911, but I don't think that I could have gotten involved to the point that you did. Although I really don't know that; I've surprised even myownself sometimes.



littlewonder -> RE: lost small child (7/9/2011 7:56:36 PM)

I've had such a situation happen to me where I've seen a child who has been separated from a parent.

I've told the child to stay put while I got help.

I went to find an employee who then came and took the child, went to the front of the counter and announced child lost over the intercom.

I've had the same thing happen with my child as well when she got separated in a crowd at a fair. Thankfully another parent located a security guard who was able to get  her back to me.

Unfortunately in this day and age one can never be too careful and it's best to search out a party of authority over a complete stranger who may not have your child's best interest in mind.






SorceressJ -> RE: lost small child (7/9/2011 7:58:03 PM)

There are so many reasons why I'm glad to be female in this incarnation. A potential issue such as this is one of them. I am a mother and a grandmother, too. That notwithstanding, I am also much more liable to be looked upon favorably for stopping to help a child than my well-meaning male counterparts, and I have done so and would do so again, without hesitation. That's just how I roll.



Owner59 -> RE: lost small child (7/9/2011 7:59:51 PM)

Bystander affect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIvGIwLcIuw

There has got to be a better way.



LinnaeaBorealis -> RE: lost small child (7/9/2011 8:10:35 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: SorceressJ

There are so many reasons why I'm glad to be female in this incarnation. A potential issue such as this is one of them. I am a mother and a grandmother, too. That notwithstanding, I am also much more liable to be looked upon favorably for stopping to help a child than my well-meaning male counterparts, and I have done so and would do so again, without hesitation. That's just how I roll.


And yet the hysterical media tells us that women abduct children too. I just think it's really sad that people put so much trust in the news media today. I really don't think that the problem of strangers attacking small children is any worse today than when my daughter was small, but the media is more prevalent. I stopped paying attention to them the day that I figured out that they just wanted to get people upset about what they wanted them to be upset about.

Case in point: When West Nile Virus was discovered in the Southern states & the media had whipped everyone into a frenzy about it, I was watching tv in WA State one evening. They kept showing ads for the 11pm news saying that WA State had the first case of West Nile Virus. So I figured that I should watch the news to see what that was all about. I stayed up & at the very end of the program, thus making sure that everyone had stayed tune through every other story, they finally told the story. Turns out that a man who lived in Eastern WA had traveled in a Southern state, gotten bitten by a mosquito carrying the virus & had gotten ill with it & he was home. So in reality, this man's having West Nile Virus wasn't a threat to anybody in WA State; the media simply wanted to get people hysterical about it. What about all the people who didn't stay up to watch the actual story & all they heard was that West Nile Virus was now in WA State???



juliaoceania -> RE: lost small child (7/9/2011 8:22:19 PM)

quote:

I really don't think that the problem of strangers attacking small children is any worse today than when my daughter was small,


The problem is that the access creeps like this had to small ones has been reduced, the penalty for the crime is much worse, and the likelihood of detection has went up. The likelihood was always there, but people who do this crime are more likely to kill a kid than leave a witness.

A little girl that lived a mile away from me was bribed to perform oral sex when I was around 7 years old, she was walking home from school and he told her he would give her a brand new doll. My mom told me about it to keep me safe... it always happened, it just would be more likely he wouldn't let the same little girl out of his car to tell anyone today



myotherself -> RE: lost small child (7/9/2011 9:36:05 PM)

I stopped to help a boy (about 8 or 9 years old) who was being assaulted and robbed by bigger boys (3 of them, about 13 or 14) at a local train station. This was the middle of the day, and people walked past.

I just walked over shouting loudly "has someone called the police?" and the big kids ran off. The young'un was sobbing, so I stayed with him to calm him down and then asked for his home phone so I could call his parents. When I rang and explained, his mother seemed pretty indifferent. She told me to just put him on the next train and he'd find his way home. I said he was in no state to be on his own and that someone needed to collect him, and offered to sit with him until someone arrived.

She immediately became extremely hostile and offensive, calling me a paedophile. I told her I was going to call the police to deal with the matter and she told me not to because she didn't want Social Services involved...which immediately made me think she'd had run-ins with them before. She insisted I put him on a train on his own. I said he'd been robbed and had no money, so she told me I should pay for his ticket!

I hung up, called the police and they took care of the lad. I also made sure that I made a statement immediately and that they also questioned the kid about my own propriety.

I'm a teacher, and a vile accusation of this kind by this disgusting excuse for a mother could have destroyed my career completely. That's why some people don't get involved, I guess. I hope I never stop caring enough to help, whatever the risk.



LinnaeaBorealis -> RE: lost small child (7/9/2011 10:36:51 PM)

This story reminds me of the time my sister went off riding my bicycle while I stayed home reading a book, which is what I much preferred doing. The phone rang & my mother answered. It was a woman about 2 miles away who was calling my mother to come pick my sister up as she'd had an accident on the bicycle. My mother told the woman to just put my sister back on the bike & send her home. The woman refused to do that, stating that since my sister had been knocked unconscious & her arm appeared to be broken, she wanted our mother to come get her. Our mother actually argued with the woman before finally going & getting my sister, whose arm was indeed broken & her face was all bruised up.

Fast forward 25 years or so...I was at work & a woman called me to tell me that my daughter had had an accident on her child's bicycle & my daughter had insisted on calling me to come get her. The woman sounded intoxicated & said that she was going to just take my daughter home. She told me her arm looked a little funny, but she was sure she was ok. I told this woman that I would leave work & come get her & to give me her address. The woman refused & hung up & took my daughter home where there was no working phone. I left work immediately, went home, got my child & took her to the ER where they set her broken arm.



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