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I see shit like this all the time. In fact, one of my biggest pet peeves is parents who haven't taken the time to teach their children basic safety procedures, like holding hands with an adult in a parking lot, or to follow through with following basic safety procedures.
As a childcare worker, I believe it is my duty to keep children safe, even safer than their parents keep them. All of the kids who have been in my care longer than a month know they are 1) not to ever step out of line of sight, and 2) if under the age of 5, to hold hands while crossing a street or in a parking lot.
We don't know what happened downstairs before the child came up. It could have been that the parent instructed the child not to go, but children often don't listen, so the parent has the duty to see that the child does not leave their line of sight. Furthermore, the better solution would have been for one parent to take all of the children upstairs or stay with all of them downstairs, until the prams were brought upstairs. But some people--many people--lack simple common sense.
Personally, my kids know that if they fail to listen in the house, I will not take them outside of the house. They know that if we are out and about, and I tell them to do something, they had better do it, or else we'll not be going out again. But I am often surprised at how many parents are unwilling to take this tack with their children, and how many parents take their kids to places that are perfectly unsuitable for kids.
Really, your entire story tells me that these people lack even the most basic parenting skills. And that sickens me.
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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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