Does anyone else feel bad for the poor teacher that was the victim of OP's experiment? She probably waited to call you because they were frantically looking for your kid and hoping he would turn up. I'm skeptical that they didn't notice that your kid was missing for so long; really they might have been quietly looking for him without sounding the alarm and worrying everyone. I'm just dumbfounded that you would think it's ok to take your child away from the group without letting the teacher know. Did this ruin the trip for the rest of the class? Your behavior was really selfish. You could have instead joined the group and helped out the teacher rather than trying to prove a point.

Jeez. One of my best childhood memories is of being left at the zoo in fifth grade.

Anonymous wrote: Yes, the few incidences of kids getting lost on field trips is scary, but if you live your life by these kinds of pretty rare occurrences, then you might as well give up living.

There are school shootings pretty regularly now. Are you going to homeschool.
Car accidents are pretty common. Are you going to stop driving your car.
There have been a few incidences of plane crashes. Are you going to never fly.

C'mon OP.

Oh wise car accident poster! Please weigh in on influenza!

No,they're not being supervised well, at all. Especially, in a group with a couple children who misbehave frequently. Very distracting for everyone.

At what point do you trust your kids to stay with the group and know what to do if separated?

I chaperoned first graders last year and all I did was count 1-2-3-4 over and over again, lol, it was nerve wracking as hell and the kids were great.

OP you sound crazy and I'm skeptical you are telling the full truth.

Even if you being honest here your children were not really ever in any danger and in your latter example you caused the separation from the larger group.

The parents who are very involved with their elementary-aged kids, chaperone many field trips, and volunteer in the classrooms often get what you're saying OP. I have not been on a single field trip where I haven't seen something fairly appalling happen. I have seen a lost kid on most of the trips I've been on (close-in, 10 rated NoVA elementary). I've also seen stuff like chaperones sending many kindergartners into a public bathroom at the Smithsonian by themselves while the parents sip coffee and chat among one another (sometimes stuff like that is how a kid gets lost). Many of the chaperones are crap, and many of the chaperones have very different ideas of what "supervision" looks like. Few of them approach it like a job for the day, and many of them are there because they took a day off of work and therefore they spend much of the field trip focused on bonding with their own child. I don't know why the parents don't have to get notified when kids get lost happens. In daycare, I believe it is mandatory to report stuff like that.

Many of the kids are dramatically impulsive, too - especially when they get excited and are out of their environments. I was laughing at the trick or treating thread where you had posters confident that their 7 year old sons are so street smart and would of course never forget to look both ways when crossing the streets on Halloween. Duh! Only a helicopter parent would think otherwise... Some of you are so self-involved and overwhelmed with the stress in your own lives that you have no idea what your kids act like in different environments - especially when they're all sugared up and/or doing something out of routine.

But the second you dare point any of this out to parents who don't want to hear it, you're called a "helicopter" parent. Stranger abductions are rare, donchaknow! Well, you know what is WAY more rare? School shootings, but it is universally accepted in the case of possible school violence that precautions should be taken and warning signs should be responded to swiftly in order to try to avoid disaster.

Anonymous wrote:We live in NW DC, and there have always been lots of parents on field trips. Almost all working parents, too, not SAHPs.

I've never been responsible for more than two other kids on a field trip. Where are you guys that you're responsible for up to five other kids, as OP says was the case?

Same.

OP - name which school district where this happened. It's not common in the DC area for field trips to be 5 to an adult for kids that age.

Anonymous wrote:Did you really do this? What exactly did you say on the phone when they called you?

And, while it's terrible it took them so long to realize he was missing...weren't they annoyed when they found out you'd taken him?

Did you really do this? What exactly did you say on the phone when they called you?

We live in NW DC, and there have always been lots of parents on field trips. Almost all working parents, too, not SAHPs.

I've never been responsible for more than two other kids on a field trip. Where are you guys that you're responsible for up to five other kids, as OP says was the case?

Even though you sound a teeny bit paranoid and crazy about this, OP, and I hate to reinforce that, it's true that some field trips are not well organized.

I was once a chaperone to ten 6th graders for a nightmare field trip to a Smithsonian museum. The school staff had never tried that particular field trip before, the museum was PACKED with field trippers that day (Spring Break - poor planning!) and the 6th graders had a very bad attitude. I had the hardest time keeping them together as a group.

Here's what I did: I took individual photos of every single one (that I deleted later) because I didn't know any of them except my own kid, and counted them obsessively every 5 minutes! My nerves were shredded by the end of the day.

I have also been on easier field trips that were supremely well organized - and those were in elementary school, with all the grade teachers and aides who go to the same locations every single year and know exactly what to expect, what kind of crowds there will be, where the problem spots are, if any, and how to keep kids in line.

It seems a little crazy to kidnap your child and wait for them to call. I’ve chaperoned a few field trips at our FCPS school and usually had groups of 1-3. There are so many parents wanting to come, they have to limit the chaperones or parents need to find their own way there and pay their own way. Many do since there is a large amount of SAHMs and parents with flexible schedules at our school. I’ve never been concerned about safety.

Do you let your child go to birthday parties at venues? Those are much more chaotic.

OP, I get what you're saying, but knowing the supervision can be lax, your son needs to know that he's not to run away from the group even if he does see you. What if he thought it was you and it was just someone who looked like you? My kids know not to ever do that. I've chaperoned a kindergarten field trip where one of my charges' mom's arrived and she knew not to run from me. I get lurking to see how long until it's noticed but you should not have driven away with your kid to test the situation. That's just reinforcing that your child can leave where he's supposed to be.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Yes, the few incidences of kids getting lost on field trips is scary, but if you live your life by these kinds of pretty rare occurrences, then you might as well give up living.

There are school shootings pretty regularly now. Are you going to homeschool.
Car accidents are pretty common. Are you going to stop driving your car.
There have been a few incidences of plane crashes. Are you going to never fly.

C'mon OP.

+1. OP is keeping her kid from field trips with classmates due to an irrational fear of a rare event.

Yes, it's possible--but rare--that kids get lost for a few minutes; rarely longer than that. Even more unlikely that the "experiment" OP undertook (in which she took her child away from the group for 2.5 hours before they noticed) would have any bearing on likely real-life situations. In a real-life situation, once a child realizes they're lost, they go to a grownup, and are typically reunited with their group fairly quickly.

OP is overestimating the likelihood of a rare event (getting lost) occurring, and if it does, she thinks it will be worse than it likely would be.

-parent of another 7yo who loves field trips with friends

Unless a child is kidnapped.

PP here. Stranger abduction is an infinitesimally rare event.

"Stranger abductions, such as the case of the three young women in Cleveland, are fearsome because they appear random and so often involve rape or homicide. But children taken by strangers or slight acquaintances represent only one-hundredth of 1 percent of all missing children. The last comprehensive study estimated that the number was 115 in a year."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-missing-children/2013/05/10/efee398c-b8b4-11e2-aa9e-a02b765ff0ea_story.html?utm_term=.32a4c5e0f8c1