S/o "kids alone:" Has your child been alone in an emergency?

Volunteer

Sun, Feb 26 2017, 3:59 pm

Recently, mothers who advocated for leaving children of a range of ages alone said they believe their children would be able to handle an emergency alone if one arose.

Has anyone's child or children actually faced an emergency while no adult was present? Emergency could include accidents, choking, fire, flood, tornado, intruder, etc.

We all try our best to prepare our children and tell them what they should do, but we never know how they will apply those skills in real situations. I remember seeing the results of an experiment where parents allowed undercover police officers posing as would-be kidnappers to test their children in a park. Most of the parents were confident their children knew about stranger danger, not to take candy, not to enter a vehicle, and so on. But many kids were fooled by the officers anyway.

Even adults don't always apply good judgement under pressure or when caught off guard, certainly children are prone to costly errors.

Please share your story if your child has faced an actual emergency with no adults present. What happened (or, what do you understand happened, if you don't know exactly), and what did your child do? Do you think he or she handled it appropriately? What effects did the event have?

cnc

Sun, Feb 26 2017, 4:14 pm

amother wrote:

I think the thing that will come out of this thread is that no one has actually been in an emergency because they are so rare.

or parents will not feel comfortable admitting to their negligence on a public board

amother

Lawngreen

Sun, Feb 26 2017, 4:20 pm

My neighbor left her 12 year old to watch her younger siblings while she took a walk with her husband.(I believe that at that age it is acceptable) The downstairs neighbor smelled smoke and called the fire dept. to their apt. The kids were very frightened and lost. Luckily there was no real fire, and I passed by to calm the kids down by the window and help them.

ora_43

Sun, Feb 26 2017, 4:20 pm

So how are we defining "adults present"? Because I let my older kids do things "alone," as in, without me, or be alone in the apartment, but the farthest they've been from another adult is the distance from our apartment to our next door neighbors.

simcha2

Sun, Feb 26 2017, 4:22 pm

A better question may be, have your children ever experienced an emergency, at all?

How many of our children have really been in real danger from a tornado? A violent in home intruder?

Of course it can happen, but the percentage is small. (And the people answering this are self selecting, so it will skew higher is my prediction).

cnc

Sun, Feb 26 2017, 4:25 pm

simcha2 wrote:

As I mentioned on the other thread , a fire broke out a few minutes after I got home. Thank G- d it didn't happen ten minutes earlier when my kid was home alone. I leaned my lesson without someone being a korban. Thank you Hashem.

I should add that my plan wasn't for my child to be home alone, I was running late due to traffic but when she called me that she is home- I figured big deal....

It took me another hour to realize that yes it is a big deal when there's no one nearby in case of an emergency Chas vshalom .

amother

Lime

Sun, Feb 26 2017, 4:29 pm

Yes my brother got second degree burns when he got trapped under a heater.

My mother didn't realize, but he learned how to crawl that day.

She left him alone for less than half hour.

He crawled under a really hot radiator.

WitchKitty

Sun, Feb 26 2017, 4:37 pm

Emergencies don't happen often, and the chance of something happening with no adult around is pretty much impossible.
Even those who leave their kids alone (don't ask me why...) have neighbors. Cousins who decided to come visit. Mommy who gets calls from home every 5 minutes.

Laiya

Sun, Feb 26 2017, 4:59 pm

Not sure if this is what you're looking for but twice in my life I found a random toddler on the street, wandering and lost.

BH" I was able to return them, but I was left shaking. One of them was wondering right off a major road, Hashem yeracheim. He was supposedly being watched by an older sibling who'd forgotten about him and gone to ride his bike.

The other one had followed his eight year old sister out the door. She was sent to the store around the corner and didn't notice that he'd followed her out. She was already safely back home; no one had even realized the baby was missing. Yikes.

This isn't like, A fire broke out and no one was there, but it says something to me about parents over-estimating the maturity levels of older siblings.

mommy3b2c

Sun, Feb 26 2017, 5:14 pm

Laiya wrote:

I also once stopped a three or four year old from running straight into traffic on Coney Island avenue. I grabbed him, and a few more people who saw what happened came over. We started questioning him, until finally someone figured out who he was and called the mom. She lived a few blocks away, and didn't even realize he was gone. And he had crossed Coney Island avenue, a street with 5 lanes by himself. Thank G-d it was red for the cars when he did it.

cnc

Sun, Feb 26 2017, 5:15 pm

fsr wrote:

I don't get cousins that just decide to come visit Speechless

In my scenario it was in the summer and I'm one of the very few people that don't go upstate for the summer. There were no neighbors around . I wrote on the other thread that I would leave my nature kids alone if my neighbor in the same house was home and aware that my kid was home alone.

I don't understand why people keep saying emergencies without adults are impossible. I can think of a few offhand that were in the news . I'm not going to post them here - I don't need to pour salt on people's wounds. These were heimishe tragedies that hit close to home.

I don't care if the chance is Is one percent.
Do you want your kid to be that one in a hundred?

Laiya

Sun, Feb 26 2017, 5:17 pm

simcha2 wrote:

There are so many types of emergencies.

Choking (ex. on a random toy or coin found under the carpet) ch"v, kids getting strangled in the cords from blinds, climbing where they shouldn't (ex. baby climbing bunk bed ladder to the top bed; toddler climbing onto kitchen counter for the sharp knife), etc. I know of someone who took a shabbos nap on the couch and woke up to see his dc hanging from the blinds cord; bH he woke up just in time. At an age where I thought ds was old enough to use the toaster, I saw him make himself a sandwich, put it in the toaster and turn it on--with a paper plate sitting on top. shock

cnc

Sun, Feb 26 2017, 5:22 pm

mommy3b2c wrote:

I didn't even think about these emergencies... I was only thinking about my own kids!
You know how many times I've seen this?

I found a four year old girl wandering and crying alone . She refused to give any information about herself, I finally had the presence of mind to check her undershirt which was labeled for some reason with a name and number. ( it's a good thing it wasn't a hand me down ) and was able to reach her mother two blocks down who had no clue her kid was even gone. Although maybe this belongs on another thread because the mom was actually home and the kid technically wasn't left alone.

amother

Aubergine

Sun, Feb 26 2017, 5:51 pm

Even if a child is equipped to deal with an emergency and does in fact deal with it properly, it can still be very scary for the child, and I don't believe it is fair to put that kind of responsibility on a young child.

Volunteer

Sun, Feb 26 2017, 6:10 pm

For those who asked, I would consider a lost child an emergency. Especially relevant are cases where an older sibling was supposed to be watching a little one, and the little one got away somehow. Or, a child who was playing outside unsupervised and wanders off.

amother

Royalblue

Sun, Feb 26 2017, 6:12 pm

As a twelve year old I was watching a few of my siblings while my mother went to the doctor with one kid. I was heating pizza in the toaster oven and it started a small fire (from some drippings on the heat element). I quickly unplugged the toaster and took all the kids to the backyard. I took along a cordless phone and called for help.

momX4

Sun, Feb 26 2017, 9:53 pm

amother wrote:

A classmate of mine was responsible for her younger siblings and one of them died (accidentally) in her care. She never recovered.

thats hard.

When I was younger there was a story going around that someone took her twin baby siblings on a walk. When she stopped to show off the babies to a friend they realized than one wasnt breathing.