Hopefully she doesn't get more than a slap on the wrist, but it seems pretty rude to basically conscript strangers into babysitting your kid for free.

I was thinking the same thing kf... Rude as it may be, it's not criminal. Or at least, it didn't use to be.

As my high school girlfriend's aunt used to say: "Never get on the bus by yourself! A man could inject you with heroin and you'd be instantly addicted and have no control and he'd take you off the bus and turn you into a prostitute!".

Who was conscripted into babysitting? A well behaved 7 year old in a store with entertainment isn't causing problems for anyone. Nothing in the story suggests that the kid was any trouble, and I'm sure in a Lego store he could keep himself entertained. When I was 7, I would have been ecstatic to be left in a Lego store, bookstore, or toy store while my mom went shopping for clothes and other adult stuff.

Criminal? No. Good idea? Not so much.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's fine (and a good idea too) to let kids be by themselves and in charge of themselves at times. However, I have an exceptionally mature 8-year-old and I think that's just too young for this. Maybe 10-15 minutes in the store next door, but not much more than that, and even then, we're talking a really mature (for his age) kid.

A friend and I were let loose in a mall in similar situations when we were younger. But I was at least 9 and the friend about two years younger. Never more than an hour at that age.

Maybe that mall is super small or something, but they tend to have gotten bigger, not smaller since I was a kid. I think this was bad judgement (most likely), but not criminal.

"Who was conscripted into babysitting? A well behaved 7 year old in a store with entertainment isn't causing problems for anyone. Nothing in the story suggests that the kid was any trouble, and I'm sure in a Lego store he could keep himself entertained. When I was 7, I would have been ecstatic to be left in a Lego store, bookstore, or toy store while my mom went shopping for clothes and other adult stuff."

Skenazy's defense of this woman is based on the employees, shoppers, and security who were de facto in charge of the child.

I think 80 minutes is too long for a seven year old when the mo is not in the store, and not known or reachable. Obviously you and the mom disagree, but the store employees agreed with me. When you put someone else in charge of supervising your kid, you get what you get in terms of the judgments they make in terms of how to handle the kid.

Sooo, did she tell any of the employees they were now babysitters? How long should you keep an eye on an unaccompanied minor that jsut showed up in your place of business before calling the cops? All day?

Also, if you do this, retail workers will hate you forever and never stop telling stories about the incompetent spawner who left their crotchfruit with the assumption that toy store = babysitter.

These days, given the fog of worry that permeates every situation, in order to "just be a kid" my kid needs a phone. She can take out said phone, show that Mom is just a few digits away, and go on with kid busy-ness. (Don't miss my point - the phone is so kiddo can protect herself, not from some unknown danger, but rather from the over-worried stranger who is likely to swoop down and demand to know where her mommy is. Which would kinda freak her out.)

The back-in-the-day stories are nice memories, but you gotta adapt to the times. If you have a kid that you are comfortable leaving alone in a toy store in the mall, you have to equip them for it. It seems naive to leave a child in public without thinking of that.

A phone also lets the store off the hook. An employee can ask, "are you OK honey?" one time. Phone comes out, everyone is reassured, and it should be obvious no babysitting is expected.

At age eight I would ride my bike "downtown" (i.e. to the little shopping area of our quaint suburb) and spend my own money at Walgreens and the old V&S store. I'd buy candy and puzzles, and also school supplies. I was unaccompanied, but I was also a customer. At that age, I always met a friend, so I wasn't alone, but not when I was a bit older.

Now, we weren't hanging around, but we were obviously not supervised. It simply wasn't an issue. I had something to buy, I went to the store and bought it. So, perhaps the issue isn't as much the child being unaccompanied as it is the child looking abandoned.

Yeah, what's not being said here is exactly what state this kid was in. Was he bored and getting into trouble? Getting picked on, being a bully to a 5-year-old, or crying cause he wanted his mom and had been left for an obviously long amount of time. That huge detail has been omitted. If the kid was fine, I think the employee wouldn't have noticed. But I think something was up, and mom was NEEDING to be called.

The flip side of this is that the store would have to defend itself against liability if something happened to the kid who was playing in the store unsupervised for over an hour.

80 minutes of unsupervised child care is not what a retail store is there to provide.

Calling mall security was the right move. The arrest seems over the top to me.

As others here have said; the store employees are NOT babysitters. What if something happened to the kid and they did NOT call? They did the right thing in calling the cops.

Also, was the arrest for just leaving the child unattended? It seems like there is a lot more to that story than just that:

"She is also charged with petty larceny for an unrelated warrant."

hmmm, not so clear cut to me.

As my high school girlfriend's aunt used to say: "Never get on the bus by yourself! A man could inject you with heroin and you'd be instantly addicted and have no control and he'd take you off the bus and turn you into a prostitute!".

Damn it someone find me a bus!

Whenever I went to Geneva as a teen and wanted to go out at night my mom and Grandmaman woukd freak out and tell me to be caresul and not get kidnapped by arabs and sild into la traite des blanches , ie white slavery.

I was like, um, im short and plump and olive skinned with dark hair and eyes, if some slaver was gonna schlep all the way to europe to kidnap a white girl wouldnt he want a blond???

Blame the lawyers.

If everyone wasn't to quick to sue everyone else for things they should be responsible for themselves, no one would have paid any attention to this kid.

I have two kids who aren't nearly old enough to leave alone in a store. And I think a 7-year-old is too young to be left alone for that amount of time. Kids don't have very good judgment, you know? What if he gets bored and decides to leave the store? What if he has to go to the bathroom? What if he's an annoying, messy little shit like my kids are?

I don't agree with the arrest (are cops being paid by the arrest these days?), but this mom made a bad decision.

This shouldn't be a crime, but it shouldn't be common practice, either. Not because the kid is in real danger, but because it's inconsiderate of the store employees and other customers and just not great parenting. If the kid acts up (even innocently, like he does something he simply doesn't know is rude or dangerous---seven year olds are like that) it becomes up to strangers to deal with it. Either they correct him/stop him (which has put them in an uncomfortable spot) or he just simply misses out on a lesson he needs (bad parenting) while the other customers just take his poor behavior on the chin.

Leaving a 7 year old at a busy playground for a little bit is actually better in some ways. If the kid starts to annoy an adult at the playground, that adult can leave or tell the kid to cut it out without risking his/her job, and it's awful hard for a kid to really make a mess at the park that someone else will have to clean up before being allowed to clock out.

I don't think its so much about danger, kidnappings are rare, but kids of that age are not known for their good sense. Could have wandered off, gotten lost, broken something, all kinds of issues could arise. And how can they tell the difference between a kid left alone for awhile and a kid abandoned?

A playground would have made sense, toy sectionf a store, not really.

Good point on the abandonment.

As to the latter, kids break things, get lost, etc. all the time, the sky by contrast, never falls.

Some of it comes down to how well behaved the kid is. My daughter could handle being alone for hours very early on. My step-daughter, not so much. I've left my daughter in a book store or library for two or three hours while I tended to chores in the immediate area, and she was just fine, some kids can't handle that. I think calling the police was a bit much, and there is no real 'crime' here. That being said, the toy section of a store isn't the place I'd have chosen.

Frankly, it's all about liability, especially if the mom is a single mom (generally more likely to raise a stink about stuff from this retail employee's perspective), and considering if little Johnny slips and falls and hurts himself, or if anything were to happen to him, the LEGO store gets sued, and people at the store lose their jobs. Sorry, but babysitting some kid who can easily cost me my job is not in the job description.

A lot of games/hobby stores I've visited in my life display a variant of this sign:

"Unattended children will be sold in slavery."

I've been told many horror stories about forced babysitting. One store staff even had to feed the kid (mommy dearest dropped him off on opening and came back half an hour after closing). Yes, cops got involved.

30min, sure... hour and a half? Not at 7... EVEN IF the kid is well behaved, as we have seen elsewhere, people feel responsible for the kid, since they are/look soo young.

By 11, not as much, but this is a matter of degree.

There are 2 sides to this coin, the responsibility you invest in your kid, and the responsibility you implicitly invest in everyone else around.

So, it isn't something you should push on people rudely, as they say. The mall is different from your neighbors, and there are limits.

So once you call security, everyone feels the emergency because of the time involved... at 20 or 30 min, this is an over reaction... 80, 90+? now we are getting in uncomfortable territory.

IFF security can't find the mom, then Cops get called, and once they are involved, the contact may require an arrest, becasue this ain't no speeding ticket.

My kid works at a lego store, and actually has seen this before too.

People are either TOO uptight about their kids... or not enough.

Amy,

Is the child a customer? This is a store operating with the intent to sell goods. They are no different than a clothing store or a grocery store except in the type of goods sold. When you leave a child with a sitter or day care the store is compensated for that service. Would it be acceptable to leave your unattended child at Macys or Walmart?

A public park is completely different. Like others I don't think this should be illegal, but it most certainly is rude.