This. Wish we could charge the neighbor with something so this nonsense stops. |
| My four year old is alone playing in our (fenced) backyard all the time chatting with neighbors. This neighbor is such a jerk, I really can’t imagine their side of the story. I hope the DA loses his job over this. The charge is absurd and makes no sense - he knew he couldn’t charge her with neglect so he’s looking for anyway he can to punish her for not having a husband basically. Gross misogyny. |
| That mom is awfully lucky she's white. |
| My nephew used to leave the house and run to the neighbor’s house to “play” with the neighbor’s child, while my sister was in the shower or doing something in another room. She is a very good parent, and her other child never did anything like this. I think it’s a personality, a social, risk-taking child will do this with a mom or a nanny or an older sister. |
So do both of you choose to ignore the statement that the 14 year old found the child within 10-15 minutes? So she had no idea where the child was for 10-15 minutes. That girl should not be babysitting her sibling. She is not responsible enough. And you have no idea how long the child was gone the first time the complaint was filed. |
There has to be some common sense. It will be harder for mom to work now because of this. Unless she or her neighbor moves, she is going to have to have to be a helicopter mom, and not let her son play outside, by himself, until he is much older. This will prevent both mom and son from being more independent. |
The only times that we know of too. |
She may have checked around the house and yard first before going to the neighbors. That could be part of the 10-15 minute time frame that they are referring to in the article. |
Kids at that age like to hide. There have been stories of parents who panicked and called for help only to find out that the kid was still in their house when help arrived. |
Why didn't the neighbor just text the sister, if this is so emergent? Calling the police is a wildly outsized response to a preschool-aged child going to the neighbor's. |
Why? Her whiteness didn't stop them from arresting her, putting her in cuffs and charging her. |
This! Stuff like this happened all the time in my middle class, small town neighborhood growing up. Kids showed up at other people's houses, neighbors would check in with parents (or an older sibling if the parent was at work, which was not uncommon) to make sure they knew the kid was over. The end. Sometimes you'd wind up with a parent or sibling who wasn't great at watching their kid, and neighbors would need to be a bit more vigilant, but people barely even considered this annoying -- the point was to take care of the kids in the neighborhood. No one called the cops. Now, I actually think there are situations where it would have been good to call the cops, because I also grew up in a time where there was a lot of corporal punishment and I actually wish there had been more social reprobation for doing that. But kids playing at a neighbor's house? On what planet is that even a problem? |
There is 0% doubt in my mind that the neighbor is also white. I literally cannot imagine a world in which a Black or Latino person calls the police for a child going to the neighbor's house without his older sister knowing. So we may have found the one and only situation in which whiteness was not a benefit. |
| What a crappy neighbor. |
She didn’t have CPS come and remove all her children. |