4 year old breaks into store at 3 AM

This reminds me very much of an incident involving my son at about the same age. I left for my job, early one morning, leaving the boy and my first wife sound asleep, so I thought. But, I soon had to return, either because I could not work that day, or for some other reason. I went in, to find my wife still asleep, but the door ajar and my son not at home. There was a chair near the door. It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to help me figure out that my son climbed up to unlock the deadbolt, and then headed out, for parts unknown.

I chose the right direction to track him, initially, and soon found a store clerk that had seen him, about three blocks down the street. He had come in there and grabbed a toy. The clerk tried to hold him, but he bolted when the man was occupied with a customer.

The trail ran cold.

I went back to the aprtment, hoping he had returned on his own, or else been returned by some samaritan. He was still gone, however. As Ipondered what to do next, the phone rang. It was the day care center we had beentaking him to. He had showed up there. My wife had slept through it all.

and if that had happened today, the day care would have called CPS and you'd be without a son for a week or two as they decided to call you unfit parents.

That's exactly why I didn't immediately call the cops.I feared, even then, they would pull something like that.

That is SO something Seth could have done at that age.

One morning back in '94 I heard the back door open while I was cooking breakfast. As I came around the corner to see who it was the little three and a half year old from down the street (who adored Seth) was opening the door and coming in on her own. "Well, Heee-lloo there Ms. Squinney!" she said in the the most cheerful (major) southern drawl you can possibly imagine. "What's for breakfast?"

I was stunned. It was barely 6:00 and not yet light. She was still in her bare feet and pink pajama's with the snaps at the waste that connect the top to the bottoms. Her wild brunette curls were further evidence that her parents were not likely to even know she was out of bed, let alone out of the house.

About twenty minutes later I was able to rouse the parents with the constant ringing of their phone. Her Daddy was not happy. She left just as chipper as she had arrived, explaining to her Daddy that she had wanted to have breakfast with Seth.

Yeah, this happens to the best of parents.

That is so something I could have done when I was that age. Probably did, don't remember any more. They didn't have silent alarms in those days or cc tv surveilance. In fact, there was no tv. Ah, the good old days

In my opinion -- CPS finds a kid that does okay on his own his parents should get a handshake.

Okay, not all the time.

But it seems to me that if a kid shows the slightest amout of competence that the parents become suspect these days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBbbrRwqeig
Here is the surveylance vieo.

I like how the kid greets the police at the door when they come.

"Hi! Come on in! I found some really cool stuff here to play with, wanna see?"

That's not going to be a highlight in the closing manager's employee file when review time comes around.-

I know that none of you will want to hear this but when i first read this story last night, I knew that this was a black child. Why? Because he'd been taken away from his parents. If this had been a child of white parents, everyone would have gotten a big laugh out of it, the little boy would have been viewed as curious and headstrong"a real Buster"and that would have been that. But instead, simply because of their skin color, the parents are suspect.

You could be right.

You know eoe, you have a good discussion point....a good point period

I'll tell you what I pictured in my mind while reading edgar's first paragraph...

Seeing it was beaumont texas, and a dollar general store (figuring the demographics of a neighborhood with a dollar general), I pictured a white kid, but with trailer trash parents. I mean, we all know "those" people let their kids run wild in the dirt streets, and anyway, they're probably too drunk, or busy watching NASCAR.

That impression was momentary, and I went on to read the next post. It wasn't a surprise that could happen to anybody, kids are clever. Remember how Dakota Fanning kept escaping from her foster parents house to sleep with her dad in "I am Sam?"

By the time the video was presented, and saw it was a black kid, I thought "oh no, now some people will be coming out of the woodwork to draw conclusions on this."

I grew up in Beaumont so this story has more than the usual local interest to me.

When I was about 18 months old I took it upon myself one morning to go down the street to visit a neighbor who kept a small monkey as a pet. The trouble, as you might imagine, is that 18-month-olds aren't great with directions, and before long a passing police cruiser was compelled to assist. When I was unable to provide the conscientious officer any help in locating either my destination or original starting point, he proceeded to run me downtown as if I was some bum on the bowery.

A few hours later, as the Beaumont Enterprise reported the next day -- must have been a slow day on the city desk in 1959 -- a frantic mother showed up at the precinct station to find her young charge happily balancing a patrolman's cap atop his head and eating a morning's ration of ice cream.

No CPS in those days, I am quick to remind Mother. And no mention ever made again of the monkey, by anyone in the family.

Maybe you have to be American to think that way, but it never would occur
to me that this might have been a black kid. That's so very sad that we (society)
can't get passed this yet.