I had some random four to five year old child show up on my doorstep, just about out in the middle of nowhere, around 11:30pm this past Halloween. I had a bit of a personal crisis deciding what to do with it.. :)
In any case, I told her to (a) keep her distance; and (b) hang out on the deck while I called 9/11. She proceeded to cry while she did that. *sigh* The cop that showed up very suspiciously took down an incident report (and absurdly asked if he could come in while he did it ... um, no). So, to make the long story short, I can certainly understand this guy's thinking.
PS. And I also made a point of getting the cop's info and calling the PD afterward to inform them of who took the child and when. My motto is: Trust no one!
I understand.
Years ago my wife and I had a 3 year old foster daughter. We took her to a park one day and she walked in front of another kid on a swing and got kicked in the chin causing her to bite her tongue.
Not a terribly serious injury but she just wouldn't stop bleeding. We took her to the emergency room and I was holding her, we were both covered with blood and it looked terrible. She was calm by then and the nurses wanted me to step out of the room. I knew the purpose of that, they wanted to ask her if the big bad man had abused her.
They had to call it quits in that effort because every time I got out of her sight she wouldn't stop screaming for me and they were unable to question her because of it.
Excellent idea.
Had that happen, too. Turned out she went out the back door while her family went out front door. She thought they'd left without her. She knew her parent's phone number (but couldn't dial it, she was so shaken. Dialed 'em up and her mom was there thirty seconds later.