'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'
I don’t know, do other FReepers think I am crazy?
A father puts his kids to bed, closes the door and falls asleep. The kids get out of the house (I did this as a child myself) and the father gets arrested on a 10K bond, even though he doesn’t seem to have any kind of a record.
Now granted it would have been a tragedy if something had happened, and we may not know the full story, but kids do sometimes escape.
Maybe all the cocaine and beer bottles on his bedroom floor made them suspicious. (kidding)
And I don't see why Dad was arrested either but in our current society it doesn't take much.
I once found a child and a dog running loose in the street. The little boy was clearly told not to talk to strangers and ran home. I stayed with the dog until the mom came looking for it a few minutes latter. She was aghast to learn that the child had been out too. She had put special things on the door to keep the kid from opening them but he defeated them. All she did was go to the bathroom. Yes the result could have been tragic in that case too since there were multiple child sex offenders living in the area but as you say “kids do sometimes escape”.
I would want to know a whole lot more about this situation before forming any opinions.
'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'
Initially, this does not seem a fair thing at all to the father.
Are we to expect to physically lock all our kids in their rooms while we nap? Then, when a fire breaks out, they die because they themselves can’t leave.
This is getting crazy.
***I don’t know, do other FReepers think I am crazy?***
You are still perfectly sane and I agree with you. Toddlers are smart, sneaky and speedy. The parents put a *safety* gate on the stairs and probably locked all the doors - so I cannot see where the dad was negligent.
Our perception is being changed because of too many horror stories on missing and exploited children.
Being a parent today means never taking your eyes off your children for a second or sleeping without motion sensors and door alarms.
When I was barely able to walk, probably younger than this girl, I got out of the house and walked down the middle of the street until an elderly neighbor who was working in her yard saw me and walked me back home.
My mother had noticed I was missing a minute or so before, and in her panic couldn’t decide what to do or which way to look—the ravine behind the house with the more-than-a-creek creek at the bottom, the ditch near the blind turn in the road that everyone took too fast, or call the police in case someone had grabbed me. She was freaking out big time, and says she almost had a relief heart attack when she saw our neighbor holding my hand and slowly coming up the street. Also my mother hadn’t been taking a nap. I was just born to be free!
And every time I was put in the crib, I got out on my own.
We didn’t have A/C then, and in the South it gets somewhat warm, so the screen doors were the only thing keeping us in.
So yes, I think there must be cause for neglect charges. If/when the story about his BAC comes out, I’ll post it too.
The father should not be charged. That’s crazy.
I remember one summer morning, my parents were awakened by a phone call from a neighbor before 7AM, telling my mother that my sister was riding her tricycle down the middle of street, naked. No one thought of calling the police.
Totally agree with you. I did this myself. This is ridiculas. When I was two, I did the same thing. I guess I escaped out the front door and ended up at a gas station about 4 blocks from home. I had to cross a busy main street. My mom ended up picking me up at the police station.
I am with you this is more than stupid legal crap run amok. It is like the days when every week we heard that day care centers are run by pedophiles - only to find false claims. Now we are charging parents for being human - this is not even being bad but being human...sleeping.
My son did this once in the middle of the night when he was 3. I snapped the top button of his pants before he left our house, something that I did several times a day when he got dressed or went potty. I remembered the next day that I helped him in my sleep. He ended up three blocks away at a friends house. He woke them by ringing the door bell asking if he could play w/ his buddy Colton.
Later that morning we installed a new lock on the front door that he couldn’t reach.
It happens. Kids are monkeys, they can climb over and over almost anything. It is BS that the Father is in jail.
I could have been arrested.
No you are not crazy. Kids are escape artists, even at that age. If this happened as the father said it did, it was an accident.
Now it is neglect to nap when your child naps?
Damn, there is not enough jail space.