On the one hand, “free-range kids” is just a new term for what basically all parents did in the 80s: let their kids play outside, go to the park, run around with friends without a parent hovering over them all day. I remember riding all around town on my bike before I was 10. Child abductions are actually quite a bit…

Leaving your four year old by himself automatically qualifies you for being a bad mom. End of story. I am a single mom, myself - there is no way in hell I would leave a four year old unsupervised. Bookstore employees are not responsible for my child.

Yeah I don't know what she was thinking. The kid was quiet and well behaved and maybe the mother was thinking she would be done quickly but lost track of time.

UGH these parents. I’ve mentioned this before in BCO but my friend would tell these parents JOHN WALSH’S KID WAS KIDNAPPED IN A SEARS when they’d dump their offspring in our department at Sears.

Ugh, AMEN. In the library I used to work at, people would let their kids run wild in the children’s section, literally climbing bookshelves, while they completely ignored them while on the computers. At least there the children’s section was visible from the computer desk (not that it did much good). Years ago, when I…

I know you’re probably getting piled on, here, but did you miss the part where he was eating greasy fast food hashbrowns in a book store? There’s no way a 4 year old wouldn’t both make a mess *and* ruin a few books doing that.

I worked at a bookstore. In a town. Said bookstore was not in a mall. It was a freestanding building. And that happened twice. Women left their child in my store while they each went to run errands downtown. I told them both that I would call the police if it ever happened again. I am not a free fucking babysitter.…

Im a librarian and we will have kids there till close alone. Its a huge bummer, I work in an area with a really high poverty rate and we make sure everyone has done there homework and I give them snacks from my programs to make sure they have at least eaten something till they get home. The really little ones are…

“THE CHURCH IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE”

And imagine who would get sued out of business if her child had gotten kidnapped (or worse)? You can bet your ass that June Cleaver would be crying all over Geraldo’s shoulder on the teevee news cycle, and the store would be picketed day and night. Ask any lawyer—it’s a recipe for disaster.

Liability.

yeah, free range parenting is about letting your kid look after him/herself, not expected mall employees to watch them for free... and 4 is a bit too young...

Maybe something about books brings out the crazy in people. We had a woman and her twin daughters, not quite 2 years old, come to do personal work at the computers in the children’s section of the library where I work two days in a row. The first day she was great; she asked about our toys, and we brought them up so…

And at that point, wouldn’t your kid be safer by him/herself at home rather than waiting in the street alone at night? Even if you were completely desperate this makes no sense.

Because he was four. Four-year-olds by definition can’t take care of themselves to that extent. They can play by themselves at home while an adult is in a different room nearby, but the mall is not their house, the bookstore is not the playroom, and the bookstore employees are not paid child-care workers. There’s an…

It’s not that simple. She left him alone in a place of business, essentially making the employees responsible for him, regardless of whether they wanted to be or not.

It was really a liability issue, combined with the age of the child. If something had fallen on him, if he’d fallen and hit his head, if he’d been kidnapped? We live in way too litigious of a society for my manager not to be super concerned about the possible ramifications of a small child alone in the store. Plus…

Because a book store isn’t a babysitter and you can’t just leave your kids. Well behaved or not, parents can’t just dump their kids elsewhere to go get their nails done/eat food/shop/whatever. Don’t want to have to deal with your kids? Get a babysitter before you go out.

I don’t think getting nails done is a good excuse for just dropping your kid off somewhere alone, but if he wasn’t causing a problem, why was it necessary to send him away? I mean, this woman isn’t mother of the year, but I trust she knows her kid well enough to know whether he can sit by himself in a kid-friendly…

Yeah, that’s pretty standard shit at a bookstore. I worked at a place that was about a block away from a Cheesecake Factory. Mom and two cute kids in the 4-7 range came in around 11 AM one weekday morning. Mom disappeared shortly thereafter and the two kids hung out in our kids section (which had toys to play with…