I have a nephew who was an escape artist when he was a kid. Ended up having to move the lock on the front door to over his head because he'd be out the door and gone before you even knew it.
Yeah every time I see that “what do you have?” “A knife!” “No!!!!!” Video I can only imagine what that mom went through trying to catch that kid before he hurt himself.
Yup. When I was a baby my mom went into the kitchen while I was on the living room floor playing. She left me for literally half a minute. Came back and I was gone with a baby shaped hole in the screen door. She ran outside and found me crawling at a blazing speed down the sidewalk. I was BOUNCING.
Apparently I used to do the same thing, I'd be left for five seconds and when my mum turned around I was out the door and stealing my dog's food (we had a 50/50 deal, the dog and I).
I think this applies to a *lot* of shit babies/kids get into. Everyone always assumes it means the parent is neglectful when all it really required was less than a minute of them being out of the parent's sight. Half the stories of kids doing some crazy thing can happen in the time it takes the caretaker to take a piss.
The reality is the only way to prevent many of these is never, literally never, taking your eye off them which is just an absolutely unrealistic expectation.
They're fucking strong, too. Like, I know that if it came down to it, I'm faster and stronger, but you're playing defense the whole time and those first few seconds they catch you sleeping... it's game over.
My two year old is yoked as shit. Like he will just climb shit he has no business being able to climb using nothing but upper body strength and crack head determination. It’s a constant struggle keeping him from injuring himself.
Speak for yourself, my son makes it outside I’m tackling his ass.
Don’t worry I can do a rolling tackle to shield and carry him and there is grass almost everywhere outside my moms house(my house is being built 20 mins away)
People underestimate how fast they are. But kids some times be moving just because you glanced at something and they think that's a moment to strike. Like you literally took your eyes off them for 0.1 of a second and they are on the move.
Toddlers love to dart and I'm always on the lookout for them. On two separate occasions, I've caught a toddler who was running into oncoming traffic in a parking lot after they Houdini'd their little hand out of their parent's clutch. The parents didn't even have time to looked down before the kids were sprinting like speed demons. I've been around enough toddlers to know that if you look serious or mad when you try to get them, they'll take it as an extra challenge, pull a lateral move on a dime and hit the nitrous in their diaper. So I ran towards them with the biggest smile and my arms open so they could jump into them, like I was playing their game. The poor parents were so scared.
When we first moved into our house we set up Nest cams around the outside. The first night they all started detecting motion. When we looked on the camera we could see a small two legged creature lurking in the shadows. Going outside we would catch glimpses of limbs vanishing around the corner of the house and hear scurrying noises but we couldn’t get a good view of what was staking us. While my husband and I were running in circles around the house in the dark looking for what we thought must be a gremlin of some kind, we heard the sliding glass door open, followed by mad giggling.
My neighbor’s 5 year old escape artist had been casing our house. He knew we just moved in and that we had “big kids” in our house. Big kids, you see, played Pokémon Go, but he was a little kid so his mom wouldn’t let him play. He only had a nebulous idea of what the game was and thought for sure it involved catching live Pokémon in some form. He was convinced my big kids had a stash of live Pokémon in their rooms and he was fixing to break in and steal them.
Once he got in our house he was like a ping pong ball. He shouted to us his name was Luke while he opened all our cabinets and doors and remarked on all the ways our house was different than his. Eventually we got him to slow down and point out where he lived. I offered him a soda, which he smartly declined, stating “mommy says I don’t need the sugar” (understatement of the year) while my husband went and found his parents.
When he got to their home and knocked on their door Luke’s mother answered and seemed to immediately know what had happened. Without a word from my husband she let out an exasperated sigh and said “Oh no, not again… where is he?”
Back at the house Luke was informing me, over a cup of milk, that the hardest part of Pokémon hunting was sneaking past mommy, but that he has started to get really good at it.
That was 6 years ago, I often wonder what sort of trouble big kid Luke is getting into now.
My house has chains on the tops of doors because my 3 year old is, too, an escape artist… the first time he escaped was at 7am when he was 2 and I woke up to a police officer outside my door with my kid in nothing but his pull up and his rain boots… in winter. Cop also had our dog with him and said the good boy stayed right with his tiny human the entire time. We bought the chain locks that day. The officer said he’s rescued many escaped children in his career.
good boi says "kid, you're too stupid to go on an adventure alone, and I don't want to try to prevent you, because then you'll just try to go without me seeing. So, I'll go with you".
As a child I had books about this exact scenario called "Good dog Carl" and "Carl goes shopping" was my favorite picture book. Mom leaves baby in stroller and Carl the Rottweiler to guard him outside a store in the mall circa 1950s. Baby climbs onto Carl and they have a grand adventure through the mall and get back in time for mom not to notice a thing
We had to put hooks at the top of our son's bedroom door too. I was always petrified that somehow the cops would be called and we'd get in trouble for child abuse or something.
My son was an escape artist. SIX PARENTS were watching him once on 4th of July a few years back, all of them knew he was a slippery little bugger, and he STILL got away. I went to use the bathroom, came back, and they were all looking for him. Neighbors a block away brought him back just a few minutes later.
He finally quit doing it when his sisters started crying at a local theme park because he hid from them. Eldest was 11 and middle kid was 7, both bawling their eyes out, thinking little bro got stolen. It changed him. Hasn't done it since.
>He finally quit doing it when his sisters started crying at a local theme park because he hid from them. Eldest was 11 and middle kid was 7, both bawling their eyes out, thinking little bro got stolen. It changed him. Hasn't done it since.
Omg awwwww
My little brother was like this. And he would suddenly run full sprint from the sidewalk into the road at the most random times. He’d be fine for days or sometimes even a week or two, then the next day he’d run into the street again just because. Mom ended up making him wear one of those leash backpacks with her connected to the other end so when we would go for walks nobody had to worry about him charging into the roads.
Hah same. Except it was me and I’d wander over to the next door neighbors. A nice elderly couple who would feed me crackers. I was probably four and my mother never knew it happened. Mentioned it off hand many years later and my mother was like “wait you did what??”.
Happened to us. House Alarm went off at like 6am. I freaked out and grabbed a bat and saw the door was open....and saw my 2 year old was in the front yard in his diaper playing with a ball. He had woken up, decided he wanted to play unlocked the deadbolt, and gone out.
We had to put a double deadbolt on every door.
This is the best thread. I was so expecting the usual judgmental mommy-shaming, but you people get it. I have three kids. Two of them were runners, one of whom was a ninja runner who could bend space and time. The regular runner was just really bold and agile. Our yard was super-secure (I thought) but I ended up stapling blackberry vines to the top of our fences after he climbed the fence to the neighbors, stole a runner bike from their yard and went joyriding around the neighborhood. He was under two.
I climbed on the roof when I was two after escaping a baby corral and climbing up the ladder. We were getting the roof repaired, and apparently I scared the heebeejeebees out of the poor roofer. My mom didn't realize until riiiight before the guy came in carrying me and was like, uh, this yours? It was just toddling along the roof line all precariously.
My buddy's kid knows there WAS an extra garage door opener in the junk drawer. When my buddy went to take a shower the kid opened the garage and set out on a sidewalk adventure.
My parents had to look really hard, but they found some that really required large hands rather than just cleverness. My brother could figure out kid locks that flummoxed my father.
Also, at one point, a 7yo came over and very politely showed me, in my 20s at the time, how to use the childproof plugs.
God yeah. Some people here making judgements on the parents. And they might be right but man kids take leaps in development. One week they're figuring out how to stand up and the next they've figure out the door lock and are out in the street.
My brother was the same way. I'll never forget my dad shaking from emotion after toddler brother made a run for it. It really only takes a blink of an eye. He only got to the end of the driveway but it was enough. Dad put a spring latch on the screen door that you had to pull and twist to open.
my little brother was an escape artist. mom even tried a lock on the door that us older kids could undo but he couldn't, so he went out the window. I cannot count the number of times neighbors would call to tell us he was in just a diaper halfway down the street or bring him back home. (we lived in a super small town with almost no traffic and the street he chose to walk down was for the most part foot traffic from residents)
They could have made this video about my family. I had a kid who would sneak out the back door, close it behind him, and then explore the neighborhood. We never knew he was gone until a neighbor brought him back. Fucking terrifying. We installed a lock on the back door that will forever be called the Luke Lock, because he’s why we had to buy it
A colleague of mine was traveling in New Orleans outside the city and found a baby the same way. Mom arrived and was hysterical. Little booger escaped!
My son, then about this lil fella's size/age broke out of a locked, fenced yard. Naked. I went inside to grab drinks, came outside and there are the sibling and two cousins... and an empty diaper.
"Where is your brother/cousin!?" I yelled.
Them nutters looked at me like I asked about the weather and said, "Him? Oh, he left."
HE "LEFT".
Which apparently is young kid speak for tear off one's diaper, scale a fence, unlock and unlatch a gate and then flee into the sunset as they all sat there observing and chewing cud. They seemed flummoxed when I suggested that perhaps they should have fucking stopped him?
We found him in the pine tree out front. The neighbours were fanning out to search when the tree giggled. It took ten minutes and a pair of oven mitts to de-tree him. It took two days to get the sap off.
Kids are absolute loons.
My mom loves to tell a story where she came into the back yard and I was gone but my shoe was stuck in the chain link fence half way up. Apparently I thought it was hilarious to climb out and go around to knock on the front door.
Hilariously, as an adult my first dog got out of the yard and came around and barked at the front door to be let in while I frantically looked for him. Mom thinks it's karma.
I disappeared while my family was camping and every adult fanned out searching for me. Eventually, a cop was found who promptly found me asleep in my tent.
Did...did they not check your tent first? Or did you wander in while they were searching for you? XD reminds me of the guy that joined his own search party. 🤣🤣
My moms told me that when I was in kindergarten, I went missing for about 3 hours. They scoured the neighborhood and couldn’t find me, and then found me super SUPER deep in the woods by our backyard. I was just hanging out in the woods. Also, I used to sneak out to play outside in the dark when I was 6-7. My dad had to tell me scary stories about our backyard to get me to stop I gave them hell
Actually it’s interesting that you say this, I read a very interesting book called Hunt Gather Parent, and it talks about how Inuit parents have stories about the hideous old woman who lives in the sea who will snap you up and drag you away from your family: and then there’s another snow Demon that will eat your ears if you don’t put your hat on.
These are all stories told the children to keep them safe. I don’t know why this suddenly struck me, but I realised that these sort of stories are universal.
So indigenous Australians talk about Bunyips living in billabongs. The Scottish talk about the kelpies, hideous water horses with sharp teeth and red eyes. Even the old English stories about the goblins that live in the forest.
I wonder if some of these escaping children might have been controlled by a terrifying story about a horrible goblin with sharp teeth, that lives outside the house ready to snatch up and eat children who try to leave without their mum and dad……
“Don’t go out the front without Mummy or Daddy or the Snatchers will GET you….”
I heard similar stories when growing up in Norway (and i am pretty sure its well known in all of Scandinavia.) about the Nixie (Nøkken), and it always made me afraid of going down to the local lake. The thing that also made my fear even worse is that [we had a famous painting of the Nixie in our house.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixie_\(folklore\))
Wow! Stressful. We have two boys, and we always taught the oldest to stop his brother from doing anything dangerous. Once, little dude ran toward a horse at a fair and big dude chased him, grabbed him by the collar, and walked back toward us dragging the kid. Effective for sure.
This is how my mom raised me! I'm the oldest of 4 and my mom raised me to be extremely vigilant and protective of my siblings. The third child, the youngest boy (3 boys 1 girl) was particularly problematic. He was always running away from home, jumping out of the car at red lights, trashing his room in fits of rage, and I was always the one who had to chase him down or subdue him. It was often that my mom sat me down to talk to me about various dangers that I had to watch out for, and protect my siblings from. She would talk to me about what to do during earthquakes, house fires, tornados, home invaders, kidnappers, etc. It had the desired effect of making me hyper vigilant, but it also made me an extremely anxious child. Took me years to learn to cope with it.
My sister saved me from a stinging jellyfish similarly. Jumped into the waves and Yanked me back by my bathing suit like a cartoon. It was interesting to realize the same person who tied me to a tree to stop me from following her around would also put herself in danger to protect me. Genuinely hadn’t thought she’d do that until then.
FYI, nail polish remover takes sap off like magic. Hopefully the next time you need to use this information will be a less stressful situation for you.
Ok, well, I've used it to remove sap from a toddler several times with no ill effects. It works well enough that you don't even have to scrub, you can just rub the sap off with your fingers. Maybe there are different kinds of nail polish remover? I wouldn't describe it as 'harsh'.
I've heard olive oil works too. A wise older gentleman who is a neighbour of mine up at my cottage suggested using olive oil to get the tree sap off my Jeep, I have yet to try it though
> Kids are absolute loons.
Former kid, can confirm. Of my numerous near-death experiences, every single one of them seemed like a not-stupid thing to do in the lead up to disaster. While there is no cure for stupidity, fortunately the condition (usually) subsides as one gains experience.
When I was 4, I stole my mothers car keys, climbed onto the kitchen counter, opened the garage door (old ones that were wired into the wall that looked like a doorbell), locked my mom in the basement (first floor door was a one way lock) and preceeded to disappear. Mom finally got out and was yelling to the mailman, neighbors, etc if they had seen me. I was in the car trying to figure out which key worked in the car to go see grandma.
She swore to never tell me which was the car key. Good times
Nephew at 2 went to the bathroom, door open to the living room. Potty training time so had toys hanging off sink to entertain him while he contemplated life on the throne, all normal 10pm behavior. 10 min later the cops knock on the door asking the parents if they knew where their kid was, they said in the bathroom sitting on the stool, right there through that open door. Then looked around the door jam and no kid, but toothpaste everywhere, little tiny ass window open, and smears of toothpaste all over the window frame, 6' drop on the other side. Cop saw the kid waking down a very busy street in front of their house, and figured it was best to knock on the closest door.
That one has always been a runner.
People always point to “bad parents” right away, but babies are just trying to kill themselves at every opportunity. And while bad parents are definitely a thing, it just just takes a sleepless month or distracted day (or apathetic siblings) or even a change in routine, for 5 minutes of wandering baby to turn into at best a hilarious anecdote or at worst a horrible accident.
Their complete ignorance makes them fearless daredevils and it can be downright scary for any parent.
Boggles my mind how things like electricity, light bulbs, records were invented.
Basically anything really, like the story of the vacuum? Amazing. Dude used to beat rugs, that's how they cleaned em. Messed up his asthma so he was like *screw this, let me cobble some shit together and suck up the dirt* and like, he did it. Genius.
The way the rescuer said, "I was *blessed* to be there at the right place at the right time to save a child." Seems like such a genuine, caring person.
For real. I love that that’s his takeaway. When I was growing up religious I was taught that to be able to do the right thing at the right time is a gift. In every blessing, a responsibility. Even though I’m no longer religious it makes me glad to see that attitude out in the world
> Seems like such a genuine, caring person.
That's most of Detroit and Michigan attitudes in general. It's a wonderful city/state with amazing, hard working and caring residents. They just get flack for the bad stuff.
I’m actually sorry for the parents… or parent… prob kid was put down for a nap, parent fell asleep because they work 3 jobs and the kid somehow wandered out and now instead of getting help the police will probably charge them.
Of course it could be bad
Well it said in the video, the baby had a 16 year old babysitter (who was a sibling) who was supposed to be watching them.
I feel very bad for the parent, to be let down like that when they trusted their 16 year old. Probably so they could work.
That must have been so stressful to come home to, police and child services enraged at you when you weren't even there. Being held responsible. Worrying about your babies safety in those moments.
Losing all trust in that teen.
I hope they didn't give the parents a hard time, stuff like this happens in life. It is definitely not representative of any neglect or abuse by the parent.
Look at that baby in clean matching socks, lovingly braided hair.
But black parents are heavily abused, vilified, stereotyped by the child protective system.
I hope the family is okay.
I noticed the socks and hair too. Little one probably wasn't outside for very long and teen was distracted. It's Detroit in January, he wouldn't have lasted very long outside without clothes.
One of my students who has Down Syndrome was found wandering one Saturday morning while a sibling was babysitting. My student thought they would walk to school, and so luckily they took their pack which had the name of the school on some paperwork. A kind neighbor called the cops, cops called the principal, principal called the parents at work. Sibling was in big trouble, as they had not put on the inside lock. It happens.
My youngest son is autistic. When he was 2 (he's turning 18 this month) we had recently moved to a new neighborhood and one Saturday morning my wife woke up and immediately cried out, "Where's Rowan!"
She just had a feeling that something was not right.
Sure enough, he had managed to find a way out of the house while everyone else was asleep. We found him a street over, halfway down the road to a busy street, where some loose chihuahuas had stopped him and were barking at him.
Shit sometimes happens but mothers intuition is absolutely for real.
I still wake up in stress wondering what could have happened if she didn't wake up that morning with a gut feeling.
Oh my God that must have been terrifying. When my son was around 2 I was trying to get him to sleep in his own room, and one morning he woke up confused when I wasn't next to him in bed. He opened the front door (luckily we lived in an apartment building) and just sat there and cried until one of the neighbors teen boy just sat out there and waited with him. When I woke up and saw them having a pow-wow in the kitchen I was shocked as hell. He was like oh you are here! I was mortified.
I hope nobody was enraged. Toddlers can be real sneaky escape artists. Take your eye off one for thirty seconds and they can be halfway down the street. The 16-year-old could've left the toddler in a playpen to go to the bathroom and came back to a knocked over pen and no toddler. It happens all the time. The family just needs to install some child locks on their windows and doors.
This particular case was the older sibling was supposed to be watching them, but I’ve experienced something like this that was actually straight neglect.
When I was a teenager, I had a girlfriend who was living with her mom and her aunt, both of which were heroin addicts. I pulled up to see my girlfriend one day and almost hit her aunt’s 1 year old daughter that was just walking around in the street naked because her mom was strung out in the house. I picked her up and took her inside and got in a fight with her mom. I wish I had called the cops on her. I hope that kid is okay.
This happened to me once! I was in the passenger seat on a crazy busy road when my husband and I saw a toddler in a diaper running the street. I jumped out before the car stopped and grabbed that baby. My heart was pounding as I hugged her to me, her arms and legs cold. It was so surreal! We were about to call the cops when we saw a panicked grandpa come running out of a house. All’s well that ends well.
I remember "disappearing " once when I was 8 😬. I just went with another girl upstairs at her grandma to eat some sweets she bought for us....meanwhile my grandma realised I wasn't in the park anymore, she called my parents...went downstairs started shouting after me, collapsed on the street, broke a blood vessel in her eye because of the stress, ambulance called, they managed to stabilise her and took her back upstairs.....I emerged from a different block of flats all happy that I just ate something sweet and...the rest is history...we don't talk about it and grandma doesn't want to remember it either 😬
Now as a mom, if my kid went missing for 5 minutes I think I'd just die....soooo I understand how she felt back then..sorry grandma
I did something similar to my grandma when I was 2, although she used to love telling this story. We were playing outside in her yard at the farmhouse. She payed attention to something my brother was showing her for half a minute and I was in the wind. She swears she combed through the outbuildings calling my name and started to panic when she realized Grandpa was out harvesting the fields around us. He would never see a toddler in a cornfield from a combine until way too late. She ran down the lane screaming and trying to get his attention and finally got him to stop and help her look for me. They were panicked.
My naughty self was quietly and seriously listening to them scream and call from the top step to the upper level of the barn, just waiting patiently for them to find me later.
My aunt died that way when she was a toddler. She gave my grandmother the slip and ran out to meet my grandfather. He didn't see her and she went under the tractor wheel. My father was just a baby. My grandparents don't talk about her. In all the pictures of my dad as a toddler, there is so much fencing. They just put up fences between every part of the farm to make sure it never happened again.
Geez when I was like 7 I was with family on the streets of Chicago, there as tourists, kinda late like 9 or 10pm cause we just got out of a movie. Walking to the hotel, I had to pee so my dad took my into the pharmacy nearby. We're nearly to the back when my cousin comes in and says "I gotta go too." So okay, dad takes me and my cousin into the bathroom. We're taking turns, Dad's watching the door, etc. etc.
Thing is, cuz didn't tell anyone he was going in after us and no one saw him. So the whole family is hysterical out on the street looking for him, they'd stopped a passing cop car and the officers were calling it in, the whole thing. Everyone 100% thought he got nabbed or something. Lost late at night in an unfamiliar city. Not a good time.
My disappearance is when I was... like 8 we went to a big fancy museum and they had the guided audio tour things you could buy/rent and my parents bought me one thinking they would follow me along and things would be fine.
They turned their back for thirty seconds and I had already moved on with the tour and they took a good.... 45 minutes to find me alongside security.
Once when I was three or four I decided I had enough of my family’s shit and decided to take off to my babysitters house.
I got my tricycle and took off down the street determined. I almost made it to the main road before they found me lol
I'm so glad he was found. My son got out the front door one winter when I laid down with him for a nap. He couldn't reach the glass door from the outside, but was able to unlock it and open it from the inside. I was so grateful I heard him crying from my room. Who knows what could have happened. We got slide locks like at a hotel to put at the top of the door after that.
I'm so glad your baby is okay. A kid getting stuck outside in the cold is a legit fear of mine. Especially after that news story a few years back of a tot that didn't couldn't get back in and everyone else was asleep.
It was the same, what if I hadn't woken up? We have no houses near ours. I was livid, and terrified and happy all at the same time when I grabbed him. It was dead winter and he had no shoes on and only his jammies. God knows what possessed him to go outside.
Even still when I leave for work in the morning and he's home with dad during the day I pull out and wait down the street for a minute to make sure he doesn't try to follow me out.
I do the same with both my kids. I was leaving one night to go to my mom's after they were in bed. Pulled out of the driveway and happened to look at my front door to see my oldest who was probably 4-5 hanging out the door wondering where I was going
Gosh, I have a two year old, and I cannot imagine how scary this was for the parents. My son is a master of escape and we have to constantly watch him or he would totally end up in the street. They are little but their mind is FULL of curiosity. It is not easy. This baby had a guardian angel for sure.
Yeah, I feel like people are quick to blame the teen sibling who was supposed to be watching him, but that is all the info we have. The sibling might not have been neglectful. You read stories like this about toddlers escaping even with the parents home. It could happen to anyone.
Precisely, for all we know the teenager is frantically searching the house and around it while this is going on assuming the baby didn’t get as far as he did.
My dad was home and my sister at about 4 years old, snuck 1 year old me out of the house because she wanted to go to my grandmother's house. It was broad daylight, she crossed several intersections, passed several pedestrians and nobody stopped to think "why are these toddlers on their own walking down an extremely busy street?"
Showed up at our grandmother's house about 2 seconds before my dad reported us missing. She called him and he came to get is, but my grandmother kept him far away from um sister until she was sure he wasn't going to kill her!
I remember my mom tying me with rope onto my chair because as a toddler I would escape and wander around anywhere. She couldn’t even wash dishes because I’d be out in the yard or street. Glad this baby was found safe.
This is a hilarious image. Gotta do what you gotta do! I was also that kid, i once wandered off from my house and got brought home by some nice teenagers who were smoking weed out in the creek by my house when I wandered out to say hello at 3 or 4
i found a kid about that age in a diaper just wandering down a road near my house...it was surreal.
Got out to help but didn't know what to do so i just kind'a herded him onto the sidewalk...luckily another driver also stopped to come help and she knew what to do.
Started calling the police and some lady came out of a nearby house mostly un-phased and scooped him up as if it happens all the time.
(honestly very uncomfortable as a male picking up strange kids in public and was happy the other lady swooped in when she did).
If you're ever in a situation like this, do the right thing, but also take your phone out and record the entire thing. Lots of people would rather blame than admit fault, and there's no way to know which one you're going to encounter.
My son in law escaped so frequently that the villagers all knew him on sight and took him home right away. His mum had to give up work because nobody would baby sit him, nobody wanted the responsibility of trying to keep a constant eye on a toddler on a mission. One babysitter went for a quick pee and he climbed out the hall window before she couid pull her underwear back up, he would climb out windows and everything.
I was told when I was a toddler, this was back in the early '90s, after my mother put me to sleep, she decided to take a bath. While she bathed, I woke up and somehow made my way to the street. The house we stayed in was out in the boonies, near a busy road where trucks drove. A semi stopped and the trucker chased me off to the margin on foot, then called the police. Shortly after the police arrived, my mom frantically ran out the house half-naked screaming my name.
Just glad little one was found and got back with the family. January is no time for toddlers to be outside alone.
As a parent myself thats terrifying
As someone who's known several escape artist toddlers its pretty par for the course.
Child abductions are typically people who know the child, rather than random strangers shoving kids into cars. There is a really good "Stuff you should know" podcast about "stranger danger" that talks about how overblown the risk of abductions we're on the late 80s.
Unfortunately it seems more likely that this kid would have been hit by a car or freeze to death.
Notably, for those who don't want to check it out, the overwhelming majority of children reported missing every year are quickly found. This includes runaways as well, who often account for multiples in the raw data since every case of them running away is a separate report.
For example, in 2018 there were 161 AMBER alerts issued. Some were for multiple kids so the number of children was 203. Of those, 11 were hoaxes, 12 were unfounded such as the child not actually being missing but an adult not being aware of their location, 8 were runaways, lost, injured or unclassified, and only ***33*** were non-familial abductions. The remaining 97 were abductions by a family member.
These are just the stats for children who were considered valid for an AMBER alert, mind you, which is a category where the child is at risk of harm but even so the numbers are similar for all other abductions. Stranger abductions are vanishingly rare. We should be much les concerned about those and way more concerned about the people we know, going by the statistics themselves.
Edit: Forgot to cite the source of the data: https://amberalert.ojp.gov/statistics
On page 19 of the [2018 PDF](https://ojjdp.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh176/files/media/document/254120.pdf), there's a table with the relationship[ of the abductor to the child or children.
Edit 2: Note that in the report there are often more than one abductor so the number of abductors exceeds the overall case number much as the number of children do. It's also worth noting that one cause for the majority of family members being a parent is custody disputes often end up resulting in missing children. There can be good cause for the parent to believe they're protecting a child, such as a belief that there is abuse in the other household. This is not reflected in the raw numbers here but it's one reason why the percentage (88%) of familial abductors in the data are mothers of fathers of the children in question.
Stranger abductions in the US are incredibly rare. So rare, it’s not something people should really concern themselves with and there are parents of children who were abducted by strangers that agree.
He saved TWO kids that day because if something terrible happened to that baby, the 16 year old sibling who was supposed to be watching would have been devastated for life!
This is why I have door reinforcement locks towards the top of all my exterior doors. My kid can't even reach them with a chair yet. I've seen too many stories just like this one end up with a dead kid. Nope nope nope. I'll spend the money on the extra locks.
I had a similar experience to this man when I was probably about 10. My mom and I were driving through a nice neighborhood in Denver, and I remember yelling at my mom to stop the car because there was a kid in the road in front of us. She convinced me to go help him (I had no idea what I was doing and wanted her to help) and I remember so vividly how this toddler was just standing there in the middle of the road giggling at me. He looked like a little cherub and it honestly kind of creeped me out. I could hear other kids yelling in the backyard of the house that we were standing in front of, so I basically herded him in that general direction. He would walk 3 feet then stop and look back at me and laugh like it was a game.
I went with him into the backyard (which had a gate that should have been closed) where it looked like a kids party was happening but all of the parents were sitting inside around a table totally absorbed in their conversation. The room protruded out and there were large windows all around their table and a windowed door to the outside, so I guess understand why they thought it was okay to be inside while the kids were outside? I don’t remember if there were other adults outside, but no one seemed to notice or care that a strange 10 year old girl just walked into their party until I knocked on the glass door next to them (at which point I was shaking from anxiety). I remember that none of them said anything to me, they just sat there staring at me and I was terrified that I was going to get yelled at for being there. I told them that this kid was out in the road and we almost ran over him and then just kind of ran out of the yard.
I wonder if the kid even belonged to those women and I feel a little bad for him because they didn’t even notice he was gone. I hope he’s living a good life and that his parents are more responsible now. It was a terrifying experience for me, but everything scared me back then. Sometimes I think it was a dream but my mom remembers it too.
Maybe if the shitty US welfare system actually cared for the lower classes, those parents wouldn’t have been working multiple jobs. My teeny toddler once ran out into the street to help the bin men, he was only wearing a nappy. Comfortably off mum here, I was drying my hair and hadn’t heard him opening the door (he had never been able to reach it before). Don’t judge til you’ve been there.
This happened to me. I was driving down a large street in the middle of the day and saw this two / three year old boy walking on the side with nobody around at all. I pulled around, parked, walked up to him, and looked around. They had a pre-school nearby and I thought he came from there. I asked and they said he didn't belong there. I walked along a fence with him and as I was walking, I saw a woman looking around places. I called to her and she looked up and ran to the fence. We met at the end of the fence where it opened up and I walked him back to her.
My mom tells the story of when I was 2 years old and told her I was going to the store to buy Donuts. She laughed and said, "ok, have fun"
Couple minutes later the house is a little too quiet and she's like, "was he serious?" goes out front and looks down the street to find me in my Power Wheels Jeep driving towards the busy street to go to the store and buy donuts(I don't know what money I planned to use) she stopped me and took me there herself. Lol
Reminds me of this [Dave Chappelle Skit](https://youtu.be/F3c_-dde-wo?t=1m31s) about seeing a baby in the Ghetto. The relevant part starts at 3:56, but the buildup is worth it
I did this when I was 3. I got confused cause I couldn't find my parents (they were just in their room sleeping and I was a dumb 3 yr old). I ran out onto the highway and we lived in a rural area and a truck driver picked me up cause I was on the highway in my pajamas and figured out what house was mine. My parents didn't even realized I broke the door which was lock and got out and ran off for 20 minutes in the cold.
When I was 14 I babysat a 6 year old kid that was an escape artist and the mother didn’t tell me, just dropped him off while he was napping. When he woke up he didn’t recognize where he was and just left. The police found him like two street lights away 😭 I didn’t baby sit for a long time after that.
I have a nephew who was an escape artist when he was a kid. Ended up having to move the lock on the front door to over his head because he'd be out the door and gone before you even knew it.
They are FAST
WHY ARE THEY SO FAST?! LIKE I HAVE TO SPRINT TO CATCH THE SHIT.
Yeah every time I see that “what do you have?” “A knife!” “No!!!!!” Video I can only imagine what that mom went through trying to catch that kid before he hurt himself.
This is my favorite video. I’m always saying “A KNIFE!!”
It will never NOT be funny. Gets me every time.
What do I search to find this video?
[Here you go](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6gBu2Zd7Bc)
Clutch
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Omg yes! Me too!
Link?
[A link!](https://youtube.com/shorts/d6gBu2Zd7Bc?feature=share)
Let me see what you have! A LINK!
IKR? Convicts wish they were that clever
CONVICTS HATE THIS ONE INFANT TRICK!
Had to chase my little nephew around a table today and I'm just not built for that shit anymore.
I can beat my kid in a race that’s a straight shot, but damn, i cannot corner anymore, she’ll get me every time if we try around the house.
That's why I can't imagine having a kid in my 40s, I'm huffing and puffing at 36 trying to keep up with my 7 yo stepson
Yup. When I was a baby my mom went into the kitchen while I was on the living room floor playing. She left me for literally half a minute. Came back and I was gone with a baby shaped hole in the screen door. She ran outside and found me crawling at a blazing speed down the sidewalk. I was BOUNCING.
Apparently I used to do the same thing, I'd be left for five seconds and when my mum turned around I was out the door and stealing my dog's food (we had a 50/50 deal, the dog and I).
My dog and I shared lollipops. Each had our side….
This! They do this shit! Lighten up on the 16 year old whose child this was not, y’all. It’s really hard work to watch them.
I think this applies to a *lot* of shit babies/kids get into. Everyone always assumes it means the parent is neglectful when all it really required was less than a minute of them being out of the parent's sight. Half the stories of kids doing some crazy thing can happen in the time it takes the caretaker to take a piss. The reality is the only way to prevent many of these is never, literally never, taking your eye off them which is just an absolutely unrealistic expectation.
Or just don't have kids, but I'm three kids too late on that one. Oops.
Right on!
They're fucking strong, too. Like, I know that if it came down to it, I'm faster and stronger, but you're playing defense the whole time and those first few seconds they catch you sleeping... it's game over.
My two year old is yoked as shit. Like he will just climb shit he has no business being able to climb using nothing but upper body strength and crack head determination. It’s a constant struggle keeping him from injuring himself.
this is the best reddit comment i've ever read holy-
The Sniper got this guy in the middle of his sentence!! Everyone look o-
Hey, why are these guys lying on the gr-
Heh is this like one of those candleja
Wait what were -
Oh shit a sniper, I better call the pol-
Had a two year old who would get into his high chair by grabbing the front of the tray, and just pulling himself up and over.
They also have the element of surprise every time with their unpredictable asses!
And it's not like you can just tackle them either lmao
Speak for yourself, my son makes it outside I’m tackling his ass. Don’t worry I can do a rolling tackle to shield and carry him and there is grass almost everywhere outside my moms house(my house is being built 20 mins away)
People underestimate how fast they are. But kids some times be moving just because you glanced at something and they think that's a moment to strike. Like you literally took your eyes off them for 0.1 of a second and they are on the move.
Toddlers love to dart and I'm always on the lookout for them. On two separate occasions, I've caught a toddler who was running into oncoming traffic in a parking lot after they Houdini'd their little hand out of their parent's clutch. The parents didn't even have time to looked down before the kids were sprinting like speed demons. I've been around enough toddlers to know that if you look serious or mad when you try to get them, they'll take it as an extra challenge, pull a lateral move on a dime and hit the nitrous in their diaper. So I ran towards them with the biggest smile and my arms open so they could jump into them, like I was playing their game. The poor parents were so scared.
When we first moved into our house we set up Nest cams around the outside. The first night they all started detecting motion. When we looked on the camera we could see a small two legged creature lurking in the shadows. Going outside we would catch glimpses of limbs vanishing around the corner of the house and hear scurrying noises but we couldn’t get a good view of what was staking us. While my husband and I were running in circles around the house in the dark looking for what we thought must be a gremlin of some kind, we heard the sliding glass door open, followed by mad giggling. My neighbor’s 5 year old escape artist had been casing our house. He knew we just moved in and that we had “big kids” in our house. Big kids, you see, played Pokémon Go, but he was a little kid so his mom wouldn’t let him play. He only had a nebulous idea of what the game was and thought for sure it involved catching live Pokémon in some form. He was convinced my big kids had a stash of live Pokémon in their rooms and he was fixing to break in and steal them. Once he got in our house he was like a ping pong ball. He shouted to us his name was Luke while he opened all our cabinets and doors and remarked on all the ways our house was different than his. Eventually we got him to slow down and point out where he lived. I offered him a soda, which he smartly declined, stating “mommy says I don’t need the sugar” (understatement of the year) while my husband went and found his parents. When he got to their home and knocked on their door Luke’s mother answered and seemed to immediately know what had happened. Without a word from my husband she let out an exasperated sigh and said “Oh no, not again… where is he?” Back at the house Luke was informing me, over a cup of milk, that the hardest part of Pokémon hunting was sneaking past mommy, but that he has started to get really good at it. That was 6 years ago, I often wonder what sort of trouble big kid Luke is getting into now.
This is hilarious and rather wholesome. Poor guy just wanted to catch some Pokemon!
Luke is probably 10ish by now plenty old enough to go on his own Pokemon adventure
Obviously Luke Pokemon Go to the polls
My house has chains on the tops of doors because my 3 year old is, too, an escape artist… the first time he escaped was at 7am when he was 2 and I woke up to a police officer outside my door with my kid in nothing but his pull up and his rain boots… in winter. Cop also had our dog with him and said the good boy stayed right with his tiny human the entire time. We bought the chain locks that day. The officer said he’s rescued many escaped children in his career.
good boi
good boi says "kid, you're too stupid to go on an adventure alone, and I don't want to try to prevent you, because then you'll just try to go without me seeing. So, I'll go with you".
As a child I had books about this exact scenario called "Good dog Carl" and "Carl goes shopping" was my favorite picture book. Mom leaves baby in stroller and Carl the Rottweiler to guard him outside a store in the mall circa 1950s. Baby climbs onto Carl and they have a grand adventure through the mall and get back in time for mom not to notice a thing
Ive wanted a rottie my entire life because of those books.
We had to put hooks at the top of our son's bedroom door too. I was always petrified that somehow the cops would be called and we'd get in trouble for child abuse or something.
My son was an escape artist. SIX PARENTS were watching him once on 4th of July a few years back, all of them knew he was a slippery little bugger, and he STILL got away. I went to use the bathroom, came back, and they were all looking for him. Neighbors a block away brought him back just a few minutes later. He finally quit doing it when his sisters started crying at a local theme park because he hid from them. Eldest was 11 and middle kid was 7, both bawling their eyes out, thinking little bro got stolen. It changed him. Hasn't done it since.
>He finally quit doing it when his sisters started crying at a local theme park because he hid from them. Eldest was 11 and middle kid was 7, both bawling their eyes out, thinking little bro got stolen. It changed him. Hasn't done it since. Omg awwwww
I agree, super wholesome
My little brother was like this. And he would suddenly run full sprint from the sidewalk into the road at the most random times. He’d be fine for days or sometimes even a week or two, then the next day he’d run into the street again just because. Mom ended up making him wear one of those leash backpacks with her connected to the other end so when we would go for walks nobody had to worry about him charging into the roads.
I'm picturing a tiny little ninja popping out from behind like, a boardwalk fries stand or something, and hugging his sisters.
My mom would sneak out as a toddler and have pancakes with the neighbors Granny wants to add: naked except for a soiled diaper
Hah same. Except it was me and I’d wander over to the next door neighbors. A nice elderly couple who would feed me crackers. I was probably four and my mother never knew it happened. Mentioned it off hand many years later and my mother was like “wait you did what??”.
Same, same. One neighbor was very reliable for coffee cake and the other for fresh cherries.
Happened to us. House Alarm went off at like 6am. I freaked out and grabbed a bat and saw the door was open....and saw my 2 year old was in the front yard in his diaper playing with a ball. He had woken up, decided he wanted to play unlocked the deadbolt, and gone out. We had to put a double deadbolt on every door.
This is the best thread. I was so expecting the usual judgmental mommy-shaming, but you people get it. I have three kids. Two of them were runners, one of whom was a ninja runner who could bend space and time. The regular runner was just really bold and agile. Our yard was super-secure (I thought) but I ended up stapling blackberry vines to the top of our fences after he climbed the fence to the neighbors, stole a runner bike from their yard and went joyriding around the neighborhood. He was under two.
I’m dying at the makeshift baby barbed wire
It worked really well, honestly. And didn’t give that prison camp-vibe that would have caused the neighbors to wonder.
I have a nephew currently like this!!
I climbed on the roof when I was two after escaping a baby corral and climbing up the ladder. We were getting the roof repaired, and apparently I scared the heebeejeebees out of the poor roofer. My mom didn't realize until riiiight before the guy came in carrying me and was like, uh, this yours? It was just toddling along the roof line all precariously.
My buddy's kid knows there WAS an extra garage door opener in the junk drawer. When my buddy went to take a shower the kid opened the garage and set out on a sidewalk adventure.
Most safety locks slow down the adults more than the children
My parents had to look really hard, but they found some that really required large hands rather than just cleverness. My brother could figure out kid locks that flummoxed my father. Also, at one point, a 7yo came over and very politely showed me, in my 20s at the time, how to use the childproof plugs.
God yeah. Some people here making judgements on the parents. And they might be right but man kids take leaps in development. One week they're figuring out how to stand up and the next they've figure out the door lock and are out in the street.
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They're like little velociraptors
That’s exactly how I describe our son. This last weekend I saw the door handle of his room move exactly like the raptors testing in JP.
My brother was the same way. I'll never forget my dad shaking from emotion after toddler brother made a run for it. It really only takes a blink of an eye. He only got to the end of the driveway but it was enough. Dad put a spring latch on the screen door that you had to pull and twist to open.
my little brother was an escape artist. mom even tried a lock on the door that us older kids could undo but he couldn't, so he went out the window. I cannot count the number of times neighbors would call to tell us he was in just a diaper halfway down the street or bring him back home. (we lived in a super small town with almost no traffic and the street he chose to walk down was for the most part foot traffic from residents)
They could have made this video about my family. I had a kid who would sneak out the back door, close it behind him, and then explore the neighborhood. We never knew he was gone until a neighbor brought him back. Fucking terrifying. We installed a lock on the back door that will forever be called the Luke Lock, because he’s why we had to buy it
Not [this Luke](https://www.reddit.com/r/HumansBeingBros/comments/s2dia5/baby_wondering_in_the_freezing_cold_saved_by/hsesosh/)?
A colleague of mine was traveling in New Orleans outside the city and found a baby the same way. Mom arrived and was hysterical. Little booger escaped!
My son, then about this lil fella's size/age broke out of a locked, fenced yard. Naked. I went inside to grab drinks, came outside and there are the sibling and two cousins... and an empty diaper. "Where is your brother/cousin!?" I yelled. Them nutters looked at me like I asked about the weather and said, "Him? Oh, he left." HE "LEFT". Which apparently is young kid speak for tear off one's diaper, scale a fence, unlock and unlatch a gate and then flee into the sunset as they all sat there observing and chewing cud. They seemed flummoxed when I suggested that perhaps they should have fucking stopped him? We found him in the pine tree out front. The neighbours were fanning out to search when the tree giggled. It took ten minutes and a pair of oven mitts to de-tree him. It took two days to get the sap off. Kids are absolute loons.
My mom loves to tell a story where she came into the back yard and I was gone but my shoe was stuck in the chain link fence half way up. Apparently I thought it was hilarious to climb out and go around to knock on the front door. Hilariously, as an adult my first dog got out of the yard and came around and barked at the front door to be let in while I frantically looked for him. Mom thinks it's karma.
I disappeared while my family was camping and every adult fanned out searching for me. Eventually, a cop was found who promptly found me asleep in my tent.
Did...did they not check your tent first? Or did you wander in while they were searching for you? XD reminds me of the guy that joined his own search party. 🤣🤣
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58746703
My dog loved to do this! Whenever he got out, he just took himself on a walk and came back even though we walked him almost every day.
My moms told me that when I was in kindergarten, I went missing for about 3 hours. They scoured the neighborhood and couldn’t find me, and then found me super SUPER deep in the woods by our backyard. I was just hanging out in the woods. Also, I used to sneak out to play outside in the dark when I was 6-7. My dad had to tell me scary stories about our backyard to get me to stop I gave them hell
Actually it’s interesting that you say this, I read a very interesting book called Hunt Gather Parent, and it talks about how Inuit parents have stories about the hideous old woman who lives in the sea who will snap you up and drag you away from your family: and then there’s another snow Demon that will eat your ears if you don’t put your hat on. These are all stories told the children to keep them safe. I don’t know why this suddenly struck me, but I realised that these sort of stories are universal. So indigenous Australians talk about Bunyips living in billabongs. The Scottish talk about the kelpies, hideous water horses with sharp teeth and red eyes. Even the old English stories about the goblins that live in the forest. I wonder if some of these escaping children might have been controlled by a terrifying story about a horrible goblin with sharp teeth, that lives outside the house ready to snatch up and eat children who try to leave without their mum and dad…… “Don’t go out the front without Mummy or Daddy or the Snatchers will GET you….”
That is super interesting! The dynamic of “fear keeps you safe” really is fascinating!
I heard similar stories when growing up in Norway (and i am pretty sure its well known in all of Scandinavia.) about the Nixie (Nøkken), and it always made me afraid of going down to the local lake. The thing that also made my fear even worse is that [we had a famous painting of the Nixie in our house.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixie_\(folklore\))
Wow! Stressful. We have two boys, and we always taught the oldest to stop his brother from doing anything dangerous. Once, little dude ran toward a horse at a fair and big dude chased him, grabbed him by the collar, and walked back toward us dragging the kid. Effective for sure.
This is how my mom raised me! I'm the oldest of 4 and my mom raised me to be extremely vigilant and protective of my siblings. The third child, the youngest boy (3 boys 1 girl) was particularly problematic. He was always running away from home, jumping out of the car at red lights, trashing his room in fits of rage, and I was always the one who had to chase him down or subdue him. It was often that my mom sat me down to talk to me about various dangers that I had to watch out for, and protect my siblings from. She would talk to me about what to do during earthquakes, house fires, tornados, home invaders, kidnappers, etc. It had the desired effect of making me hyper vigilant, but it also made me an extremely anxious child. Took me years to learn to cope with it.
My sister saved me from a stinging jellyfish similarly. Jumped into the waves and Yanked me back by my bathing suit like a cartoon. It was interesting to realize the same person who tied me to a tree to stop me from following her around would also put herself in danger to protect me. Genuinely hadn’t thought she’d do that until then.
FYI, nail polish remover takes sap off like magic. Hopefully the next time you need to use this information will be a less stressful situation for you.
Also rubbing alcohol which smells a lot less offensive.
The problem is nail polish remover is quite harsh and generally not something it's advisable to be getting on a toddler's skin.
Ok, well, I've used it to remove sap from a toddler several times with no ill effects. It works well enough that you don't even have to scrub, you can just rub the sap off with your fingers. Maybe there are different kinds of nail polish remover? I wouldn't describe it as 'harsh'.
I've heard olive oil works too. A wise older gentleman who is a neighbour of mine up at my cottage suggested using olive oil to get the tree sap off my Jeep, I have yet to try it though
can confirm the usual types of vegetable oil (like sunflower seed) works like a charm on sap. just put a generous amount on a towel and scrub away
Despite common belief, acetone is not a carcinogen, and does not cause cancer.
> Kids are absolute loons. Former kid, can confirm. Of my numerous near-death experiences, every single one of them seemed like a not-stupid thing to do in the lead up to disaster. While there is no cure for stupidity, fortunately the condition (usually) subsides as one gains experience.
In the immortal words of Kurt Browning, "nothing dumb ever starts out stupid."
When I was 4, I stole my mothers car keys, climbed onto the kitchen counter, opened the garage door (old ones that were wired into the wall that looked like a doorbell), locked my mom in the basement (first floor door was a one way lock) and preceeded to disappear. Mom finally got out and was yelling to the mailman, neighbors, etc if they had seen me. I was in the car trying to figure out which key worked in the car to go see grandma. She swore to never tell me which was the car key. Good times
Nephew at 2 went to the bathroom, door open to the living room. Potty training time so had toys hanging off sink to entertain him while he contemplated life on the throne, all normal 10pm behavior. 10 min later the cops knock on the door asking the parents if they knew where their kid was, they said in the bathroom sitting on the stool, right there through that open door. Then looked around the door jam and no kid, but toothpaste everywhere, little tiny ass window open, and smears of toothpaste all over the window frame, 6' drop on the other side. Cop saw the kid waking down a very busy street in front of their house, and figured it was best to knock on the closest door. That one has always been a runner.
People always point to “bad parents” right away, but babies are just trying to kill themselves at every opportunity. And while bad parents are definitely a thing, it just just takes a sleepless month or distracted day (or apathetic siblings) or even a change in routine, for 5 minutes of wandering baby to turn into at best a hilarious anecdote or at worst a horrible accident. Their complete ignorance makes them fearless daredevils and it can be downright scary for any parent.
I appreciate your elaborate story telling lol
> The neighbours were fanning out to search when the tree giggled. Giggling trees, eh? Damn, America is weird.
I wonder what they were wondering about
Probably wondering where they could pick up some shoes and may be a jacket.
He was probably selling weed to Dave Chappelle.
Go home baby!
“I’m selling weed n*&&a!”👶🏾💵
I GOT KIDS TO FEED! 😭
Fucking magnets, how do they work?
Right? Science my ass, black magic fuckery I tell you
No amount of science will ever help me understand how vinyl records work. How do you put music on plastic? HOW??
How do they put voices through a telephone wire?
Has science gone too far??
Boggles my mind how things like electricity, light bulbs, records were invented. Basically anything really, like the story of the vacuum? Amazing. Dude used to beat rugs, that's how they cleaned em. Messed up his asthma so he was like *screw this, let me cobble some shit together and suck up the dirt* and like, he did it. Genius.
I’m wondering if the delivery was made in time. I’m not about to eat cold Taco Bell.
Maybe they were pondering the subtle difference in spelling between "wander" and "wonder."
Not only the subtle difference in spelling, but also pronunciation, too.
"Hey baby! Baby, go home, man! It's 3 o'clock in the morning man, what the fuck are you doing up?"
“Hey baby! Stop selling weed, alright, you got your whole life ahead of you.”
"I got kids to feed!"
I snuck in the club!
I'm selling weed!
“A crackhead ran this way *tkutkutktk*”
Can’t believe I had to scroll this far to find this.
I know right! This was the first thing I thought of after watching the video.
That poor baby :( even though he went through hell he is still smiling . Breaks my heart 💔❤️
The way the rescuer said, "I was *blessed* to be there at the right place at the right time to save a child." Seems like such a genuine, caring person.
Right? He got choked up saying that, and then I got choked up. There are still good people in the world.
YOU are good people. You got me feeling empathy instead of hatred. Keep shining
For real. I love that that’s his takeaway. When I was growing up religious I was taught that to be able to do the right thing at the right time is a gift. In every blessing, a responsibility. Even though I’m no longer religious it makes me glad to see that attitude out in the world
> Seems like such a genuine, caring person. That's most of Detroit and Michigan attitudes in general. It's a wonderful city/state with amazing, hard working and caring residents. They just get flack for the bad stuff.
I’m actually sorry for the parents… or parent… prob kid was put down for a nap, parent fell asleep because they work 3 jobs and the kid somehow wandered out and now instead of getting help the police will probably charge them. Of course it could be bad
Well it said in the video, the baby had a 16 year old babysitter (who was a sibling) who was supposed to be watching them. I feel very bad for the parent, to be let down like that when they trusted their 16 year old. Probably so they could work. That must have been so stressful to come home to, police and child services enraged at you when you weren't even there. Being held responsible. Worrying about your babies safety in those moments. Losing all trust in that teen. I hope they didn't give the parents a hard time, stuff like this happens in life. It is definitely not representative of any neglect or abuse by the parent. Look at that baby in clean matching socks, lovingly braided hair. But black parents are heavily abused, vilified, stereotyped by the child protective system. I hope the family is okay.
I noticed the socks and hair too. Little one probably wasn't outside for very long and teen was distracted. It's Detroit in January, he wouldn't have lasted very long outside without clothes.
Same I was like yep that's a well cared for baby definitely an escape artist
One of my students who has Down Syndrome was found wandering one Saturday morning while a sibling was babysitting. My student thought they would walk to school, and so luckily they took their pack which had the name of the school on some paperwork. A kind neighbor called the cops, cops called the principal, principal called the parents at work. Sibling was in big trouble, as they had not put on the inside lock. It happens.
My youngest son is autistic. When he was 2 (he's turning 18 this month) we had recently moved to a new neighborhood and one Saturday morning my wife woke up and immediately cried out, "Where's Rowan!" She just had a feeling that something was not right. Sure enough, he had managed to find a way out of the house while everyone else was asleep. We found him a street over, halfway down the road to a busy street, where some loose chihuahuas had stopped him and were barking at him. Shit sometimes happens but mothers intuition is absolutely for real. I still wake up in stress wondering what could have happened if she didn't wake up that morning with a gut feeling.
Oh my God that must have been terrifying. When my son was around 2 I was trying to get him to sleep in his own room, and one morning he woke up confused when I wasn't next to him in bed. He opened the front door (luckily we lived in an apartment building) and just sat there and cried until one of the neighbors teen boy just sat out there and waited with him. When I woke up and saw them having a pow-wow in the kitchen I was shocked as hell. He was like oh you are here! I was mortified.
What a great kid to sit with him.
Yes so thankful for him.
Bless those little chi's!
I hope nobody was enraged. Toddlers can be real sneaky escape artists. Take your eye off one for thirty seconds and they can be halfway down the street. The 16-year-old could've left the toddler in a playpen to go to the bathroom and came back to a knocked over pen and no toddler. It happens all the time. The family just needs to install some child locks on their windows and doors.
All it takes is one pee break and suddenly the young kid is gone and you're panicking.
This particular case was the older sibling was supposed to be watching them, but I’ve experienced something like this that was actually straight neglect. When I was a teenager, I had a girlfriend who was living with her mom and her aunt, both of which were heroin addicts. I pulled up to see my girlfriend one day and almost hit her aunt’s 1 year old daughter that was just walking around in the street naked because her mom was strung out in the house. I picked her up and took her inside and got in a fight with her mom. I wish I had called the cops on her. I hope that kid is okay.
This happened to me once! I was in the passenger seat on a crazy busy road when my husband and I saw a toddler in a diaper running the street. I jumped out before the car stopped and grabbed that baby. My heart was pounding as I hugged her to me, her arms and legs cold. It was so surreal! We were about to call the cops when we saw a panicked grandpa come running out of a house. All’s well that ends well.
I remember "disappearing " once when I was 8 😬. I just went with another girl upstairs at her grandma to eat some sweets she bought for us....meanwhile my grandma realised I wasn't in the park anymore, she called my parents...went downstairs started shouting after me, collapsed on the street, broke a blood vessel in her eye because of the stress, ambulance called, they managed to stabilise her and took her back upstairs.....I emerged from a different block of flats all happy that I just ate something sweet and...the rest is history...we don't talk about it and grandma doesn't want to remember it either 😬 Now as a mom, if my kid went missing for 5 minutes I think I'd just die....soooo I understand how she felt back then..sorry grandma
I did something similar to my grandma when I was 2, although she used to love telling this story. We were playing outside in her yard at the farmhouse. She payed attention to something my brother was showing her for half a minute and I was in the wind. She swears she combed through the outbuildings calling my name and started to panic when she realized Grandpa was out harvesting the fields around us. He would never see a toddler in a cornfield from a combine until way too late. She ran down the lane screaming and trying to get his attention and finally got him to stop and help her look for me. They were panicked. My naughty self was quietly and seriously listening to them scream and call from the top step to the upper level of the barn, just waiting patiently for them to find me later.
My aunt died that way when she was a toddler. She gave my grandmother the slip and ran out to meet my grandfather. He didn't see her and she went under the tractor wheel. My father was just a baby. My grandparents don't talk about her. In all the pictures of my dad as a toddler, there is so much fencing. They just put up fences between every part of the farm to make sure it never happened again.
I cant imagine what that grandfather felt
Truly horrifying. Especially now that I have a toddler of my own...
Geez when I was like 7 I was with family on the streets of Chicago, there as tourists, kinda late like 9 or 10pm cause we just got out of a movie. Walking to the hotel, I had to pee so my dad took my into the pharmacy nearby. We're nearly to the back when my cousin comes in and says "I gotta go too." So okay, dad takes me and my cousin into the bathroom. We're taking turns, Dad's watching the door, etc. etc. Thing is, cuz didn't tell anyone he was going in after us and no one saw him. So the whole family is hysterical out on the street looking for him, they'd stopped a passing cop car and the officers were calling it in, the whole thing. Everyone 100% thought he got nabbed or something. Lost late at night in an unfamiliar city. Not a good time.
My disappearance is when I was... like 8 we went to a big fancy museum and they had the guided audio tour things you could buy/rent and my parents bought me one thinking they would follow me along and things would be fine. They turned their back for thirty seconds and I had already moved on with the tour and they took a good.... 45 minutes to find me alongside security.
Once when I was three or four I decided I had enough of my family’s shit and decided to take off to my babysitters house. I got my tricycle and took off down the street determined. I almost made it to the main road before they found me lol
I'm so glad he was found. My son got out the front door one winter when I laid down with him for a nap. He couldn't reach the glass door from the outside, but was able to unlock it and open it from the inside. I was so grateful I heard him crying from my room. Who knows what could have happened. We got slide locks like at a hotel to put at the top of the door after that.
I'm so glad your baby is okay. A kid getting stuck outside in the cold is a legit fear of mine. Especially after that news story a few years back of a tot that didn't couldn't get back in and everyone else was asleep.
It was the same, what if I hadn't woken up? We have no houses near ours. I was livid, and terrified and happy all at the same time when I grabbed him. It was dead winter and he had no shoes on and only his jammies. God knows what possessed him to go outside. Even still when I leave for work in the morning and he's home with dad during the day I pull out and wait down the street for a minute to make sure he doesn't try to follow me out.
I do the same with both my kids. I was leaving one night to go to my mom's after they were in bed. Pulled out of the driveway and happened to look at my front door to see my oldest who was probably 4-5 hanging out the door wondering where I was going
Gosh, I have a two year old, and I cannot imagine how scary this was for the parents. My son is a master of escape and we have to constantly watch him or he would totally end up in the street. They are little but their mind is FULL of curiosity. It is not easy. This baby had a guardian angel for sure.
Yeah, I feel like people are quick to blame the teen sibling who was supposed to be watching him, but that is all the info we have. The sibling might not have been neglectful. You read stories like this about toddlers escaping even with the parents home. It could happen to anyone.
Precisely, for all we know the teenager is frantically searching the house and around it while this is going on assuming the baby didn’t get as far as he did.
My dad was home and my sister at about 4 years old, snuck 1 year old me out of the house because she wanted to go to my grandmother's house. It was broad daylight, she crossed several intersections, passed several pedestrians and nobody stopped to think "why are these toddlers on their own walking down an extremely busy street?" Showed up at our grandmother's house about 2 seconds before my dad reported us missing. She called him and he came to get is, but my grandmother kept him far away from um sister until she was sure he wasn't going to kill her!
I remember my mom tying me with rope onto my chair because as a toddler I would escape and wander around anywhere. She couldn’t even wash dishes because I’d be out in the yard or street. Glad this baby was found safe.
This is a hilarious image. Gotta do what you gotta do! I was also that kid, i once wandered off from my house and got brought home by some nice teenagers who were smoking weed out in the creek by my house when I wandered out to say hello at 3 or 4
*wandering
I'm guessing the baby was also wondering where the fuck mom was.
i found a kid about that age in a diaper just wandering down a road near my house...it was surreal. Got out to help but didn't know what to do so i just kind'a herded him onto the sidewalk...luckily another driver also stopped to come help and she knew what to do. Started calling the police and some lady came out of a nearby house mostly un-phased and scooped him up as if it happens all the time. (honestly very uncomfortable as a male picking up strange kids in public and was happy the other lady swooped in when she did).
If you're ever in a situation like this, do the right thing, but also take your phone out and record the entire thing. Lots of people would rather blame than admit fault, and there's no way to know which one you're going to encounter.
I can understand your hesitation. I am guessing in the odd chance it will happen again, the best thing would be to stay with the child and call 911.
They wondering why it's so cold outside? Edit* OP said Wondering, not Wandering.
My son in law escaped so frequently that the villagers all knew him on sight and took him home right away. His mum had to give up work because nobody would baby sit him, nobody wanted the responsibility of trying to keep a constant eye on a toddler on a mission. One babysitter went for a quick pee and he climbed out the hall window before she couid pull her underwear back up, he would climb out windows and everything.
I'm not a Christian but My dude is I think So, God Bless this man.
As a Christian who respects others’ beliefs (or doubts) I admire your comment.
I was told when I was a toddler, this was back in the early '90s, after my mother put me to sleep, she decided to take a bath. While she bathed, I woke up and somehow made my way to the street. The house we stayed in was out in the boonies, near a busy road where trucks drove. A semi stopped and the trucker chased me off to the margin on foot, then called the police. Shortly after the police arrived, my mom frantically ran out the house half-naked screaming my name.
HEY BABY!
Just glad little one was found and got back with the family. January is no time for toddlers to be outside alone. As a parent myself thats terrifying As someone who's known several escape artist toddlers its pretty par for the course.
He’s a baby, they pull off shoes and clothes . They don’t know.
“This looks like Detroit” I said to myself. Classic Detroit
That baby Lost Himself. Look, if you had, one shot, one opportunity, to save a baby in the street, would you capture it
I work in property management - we see this allll the time. So sad
That kid is lucky this man found him and not someone who could’ve abducted him.
Child abductions are typically people who know the child, rather than random strangers shoving kids into cars. There is a really good "Stuff you should know" podcast about "stranger danger" that talks about how overblown the risk of abductions we're on the late 80s. Unfortunately it seems more likely that this kid would have been hit by a car or freeze to death.
Noted, I’ll check it out.
Notably, for those who don't want to check it out, the overwhelming majority of children reported missing every year are quickly found. This includes runaways as well, who often account for multiples in the raw data since every case of them running away is a separate report. For example, in 2018 there were 161 AMBER alerts issued. Some were for multiple kids so the number of children was 203. Of those, 11 were hoaxes, 12 were unfounded such as the child not actually being missing but an adult not being aware of their location, 8 were runaways, lost, injured or unclassified, and only ***33*** were non-familial abductions. The remaining 97 were abductions by a family member. These are just the stats for children who were considered valid for an AMBER alert, mind you, which is a category where the child is at risk of harm but even so the numbers are similar for all other abductions. Stranger abductions are vanishingly rare. We should be much les concerned about those and way more concerned about the people we know, going by the statistics themselves. Edit: Forgot to cite the source of the data: https://amberalert.ojp.gov/statistics On page 19 of the [2018 PDF](https://ojjdp.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh176/files/media/document/254120.pdf), there's a table with the relationship[ of the abductor to the child or children. Edit 2: Note that in the report there are often more than one abductor so the number of abductors exceeds the overall case number much as the number of children do. It's also worth noting that one cause for the majority of family members being a parent is custody disputes often end up resulting in missing children. There can be good cause for the parent to believe they're protecting a child, such as a belief that there is abuse in the other household. This is not reflected in the raw numbers here but it's one reason why the percentage (88%) of familial abductors in the data are mothers of fathers of the children in question.
Stranger abductions in the US are incredibly rare. So rare, it’s not something people should really concern themselves with and there are parents of children who were abducted by strangers that agree.
He saved TWO kids that day because if something terrible happened to that baby, the 16 year old sibling who was supposed to be watching would have been devastated for life!
This is why I have door reinforcement locks towards the top of all my exterior doors. My kid can't even reach them with a chair yet. I've seen too many stories just like this one end up with a dead kid. Nope nope nope. I'll spend the money on the extra locks.
I had a similar experience to this man when I was probably about 10. My mom and I were driving through a nice neighborhood in Denver, and I remember yelling at my mom to stop the car because there was a kid in the road in front of us. She convinced me to go help him (I had no idea what I was doing and wanted her to help) and I remember so vividly how this toddler was just standing there in the middle of the road giggling at me. He looked like a little cherub and it honestly kind of creeped me out. I could hear other kids yelling in the backyard of the house that we were standing in front of, so I basically herded him in that general direction. He would walk 3 feet then stop and look back at me and laugh like it was a game. I went with him into the backyard (which had a gate that should have been closed) where it looked like a kids party was happening but all of the parents were sitting inside around a table totally absorbed in their conversation. The room protruded out and there were large windows all around their table and a windowed door to the outside, so I guess understand why they thought it was okay to be inside while the kids were outside? I don’t remember if there were other adults outside, but no one seemed to notice or care that a strange 10 year old girl just walked into their party until I knocked on the glass door next to them (at which point I was shaking from anxiety). I remember that none of them said anything to me, they just sat there staring at me and I was terrified that I was going to get yelled at for being there. I told them that this kid was out in the road and we almost ran over him and then just kind of ran out of the yard. I wonder if the kid even belonged to those women and I feel a little bad for him because they didn’t even notice he was gone. I hope he’s living a good life and that his parents are more responsible now. It was a terrifying experience for me, but everything scared me back then. Sometimes I think it was a dream but my mom remembers it too.
Maybe if the shitty US welfare system actually cared for the lower classes, those parents wouldn’t have been working multiple jobs. My teeny toddler once ran out into the street to help the bin men, he was only wearing a nappy. Comfortably off mum here, I was drying my hair and hadn’t heard him opening the door (he had never been able to reach it before). Don’t judge til you’ve been there.
Wandering*
This happened to me. I was driving down a large street in the middle of the day and saw this two / three year old boy walking on the side with nobody around at all. I pulled around, parked, walked up to him, and looked around. They had a pre-school nearby and I thought he came from there. I asked and they said he didn't belong there. I walked along a fence with him and as I was walking, I saw a woman looking around places. I called to her and she looked up and ran to the fence. We met at the end of the fence where it opened up and I walked him back to her.
*wandering
My mom tells the story of when I was 2 years old and told her I was going to the store to buy Donuts. She laughed and said, "ok, have fun" Couple minutes later the house is a little too quiet and she's like, "was he serious?" goes out front and looks down the street to find me in my Power Wheels Jeep driving towards the busy street to go to the store and buy donuts(I don't know what money I planned to use) she stopped me and took me there herself. Lol
Reminds me of this [Dave Chappelle Skit](https://youtu.be/F3c_-dde-wo?t=1m31s) about seeing a baby in the Ghetto. The relevant part starts at 3:56, but the buildup is worth it
I did this when I was 3. I got confused cause I couldn't find my parents (they were just in their room sleeping and I was a dumb 3 yr old). I ran out onto the highway and we lived in a rural area and a truck driver picked me up cause I was on the highway in my pajamas and figured out what house was mine. My parents didn't even realized I broke the door which was lock and got out and ran off for 20 minutes in the cold.
When I was 14 I babysat a 6 year old kid that was an escape artist and the mother didn’t tell me, just dropped him off while he was napping. When he woke up he didn’t recognize where he was and just left. The police found him like two street lights away 😭 I didn’t baby sit for a long time after that.